Implementing RTI In Urban Schools

So, when we talk about student engagement we need to consider that there are various facets to engagement that are also tied to child development. For example, adolescent development for racial/ethnic minority students also involves the development of a racial/ethnic identity (see William Cross for more information). The degree to which a school environment actually recognizes and appreciates this sensitive developmental phase can impact these various types of engagement.

Thus, practitioners must consider whether the behavioral engagement expectations have been demystified in the classroom on a continuous basis (and putting up rules and expectations is insufficient); whether the instruction and curriculum is cognitively engaging to students (Note: every lesson should consider the Three E’s: Enter, Engage and Expand; Enter a curricular unit, ways to explicitly Engage students in curricular unit, and ways to allow students to Expand curricular unit); and whether every student has a sense of adult supports throughout the school context (students should not walk around schools without having an adult they can talk to and/or feel supported by).

• What Works Clearinghouse
• Content Centers
• RTI Action Network
• National RTI Center

Tier 1 – or the core instructional practice and curriculum- should not be considered as the absence of support. And in urban schools where there is isolation by academic performance, the need for supports at the Tier 1 level is paramount. In the situation you are describing, the absence of support as core to Tier 1 lends for students in your schools to be diagnosed with a “curriculum-based” disability – the proverbial ABT classification (Ain't Been Taught).

The other dilemma facing urban school districts is the complexity of poverty conditions. Unfortunately, urban school districts rarely have isolated a principle or value of what it means to address those issues. In other words, if an urban school district has a significant portion of their students arriving at school with social services (i.e., mental health, physical wellness) they should have an established framework for addressing these issues – such as comprehensive wellness clinics in each of their schools. However such a situation is also tied to the degree of fiscal allocations (mandated and non-mandated) state education departments and state governments make towards such concerns in urban school districts. For example, an urban school district I’ve been working with had to minimize their clinical staff (i.e., social workers, guidance counselors, and psychologists) to levels in which student to clinical staff ratio is 1:200 to 1:300 in order to balance their school budget; in the long-run these cuts will hurt the social and economical growth of this urban city. Thus, the issue of how RTI can be implemented in an urban school district must first consider the more macro policies that are impeding the equitable distribution of resources and capacity in these schools.

For example, the universal screening and diagnostic tools used must laser in on the specific difficulties students are experiencing. Once there is a clear sense of what students need, then your limited resources-specifically specialists- must be deployed to be able to consistently work with those students. This may also mean changing the master schedule such that staff are able to provide concentrated interventions with the greatest fidelity; also staying true to the application of the intervention and continuously monitoring the students’ progress (ideally weekly).

Another strategy I observed a school employ was to move their English Language Learner specialists into the classrooms as co-teaching supports; as a result the non-ELL teachers gained greater instructional strategies for working with their ELL and non-ELL student population.

1. Connect with a local university’s or college’s reading, math, social studies, and instruction faculty to find out if they are looking for school sites to provide research-based interventions as part of a research project.
2. Connect with your regional comprehensive center, which is staffed to support state education departments and at times school districts. They may be able to provide you with information regarding resources for professional development training on research-based interventions.
3. Connect with the publishers of these research-based interventions to find out if they are providing professional development to staff at a low-cost.

Second, as a student is receiving services parents should be provided information about their child’s progress, whether it’s at the end of a 6-8 week intervention cycle or at the end of a semester; parents should have an opportunity to know how their child is responding and how the intervention is being altered to continue the student’s progress.

At the middle and high school level, there are various universal screening tools available, but also the mid-term grades can serve as an indication of academic successes and challenges. The resolution of this problem is not doing more in Tier 2 and 3, but rather fixing the instructional quality of Tier 1. However, I have also experienced in urban schools that fixing Tier 1 requires greater supports and pedagogical vision at the district level; in the absence of that, schools are left to create Tier 2 and 3 supports that serve 30-40% of the school population.

Overall, my suggestion is to concentrate efforts in systematically building the instructional capacity of all your teachers through embedded professional development. For example, focus on a core set of 5-8 instructional strategies for each year that can assist in remediating and accelerating students in the same classroom.