a*****g
发帖数: 19398 | 1 First Graders Who Were Identified for More Help Fell Further Behind
By Sarah D. Sparks
Back to Story
Response to intervention has become ubiquitous as a framework to teach
students to read in elementary schools, but the most comprehensive federal
evaluation of the approach to date finds that it may hold back some of the
children it was originally designed to support.
First graders who received reading interventions actually did worse than
virtually identical peers who did not get the more targeted assistance,
according to the study released last week by the National Center for
Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. The study focused on schools
that were using RTI for literacy. Students who read just below grade level
at the start of the year had been referred to RTI intended to catch them up
with the rest of the class.
Moreover, students who were already in special education and those who were
older than average for their grades (suggesting they had either entered late
or failed a grade) performed particularly poorly if they received
interventions.
The study, involving more than 20,000 students in 13 states, does not look
at how students with more severe learning problems fare under RTI. But it
raises questions about the evolution of a model originally designed to
target students as soon as they started to struggle, and prevent their
difficulties from escalating to the need for a special education evaluation.
Now, with more than 70 percent of school districts across the country
incorporating RTI in at least some classrooms, it has become more of a
general education approach, with all of the trade-offs that entails.
"We're looking at this framework that has developed over the years and how
it has really played out in classrooms... We weren't expecting to see this
pattern," said Fred Doolittle, a study co-author and a vice president of
MDRC. "We don't want to have people say that these findings say these
schools aren't doing RTI right; this turns out to be what RTI looks like
when it plays out in daily life."
Changes Tier to Tier
Response to intervention involves early identification of students' learning
problems and the use of focused lessons, or interventions—usually thought
of as progressively more-intensive "tiers" of instruction—to improve
learning. Tier 1 calls for all students to receive consistent, research-
based, high-quality instruction in a chosen subject, coupled with ongoing
monitoring to spot emerging problems.
While a large majority of students are expected to learn the content based
only on this first tier, some portion of students—often estimated at 20 to
30 percent—need additional supports, called Tier 2. Students identified for
the second tier are given specific interventions—in reading, this might
mean instruction in small groups to beef up foundational skills like phonics
or reading fluency—and monitored more frequently. Students who continue to
struggle move up to Tier 3, with more-intensive interventions and potential
evaluation for special education.
RTI can be used for a number of instructional purposes. In the study,
investigators from the research firms MDRC, SRI International, the
University of Washington, and the Instructional Research Group found that
across the 13 states, a majority of the schools studied used RTI for reading
instruction in grades 1 to 3.
The researchers focused their impact study on more than 140 schools that had
been implementing RTI for at least three years, and that used four key
elements of the framework: at least three tiers of increasingly intense
reading instruction; screening all students for progress at least twice a
year; regularly using data to place students in Tiers 2 or 3; and using more
-frequent progress monitoring for students in Tier 2 and above to gauge
whether the interventions are working.
The researchers found that in practice, even the schools "fully implementing
" RTI didn't always have a bright line between core instruction and
intervention.
In 1st grade, 45 percent of the schools provided Tier 2 interventions to
groups of students at all reading levels, not just for students reading
below grade level. Moreover, 67 percent of schools provided Tier 2
interventions during the core reading instruction, not just in addition to
it.
"It raises the question then, what is the extent of the contrast and
differences in services provided to students below grade levels?" said Rekha
Balu, an MDRC research associate and a co-author of the study.
That blurring of the lines between core instruction and intervention is
worrisome, said Karen K. Wixson, a reading and literacy professor and a dean
emeritus of education at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
"Core instruction is supposed to be aligned with Tier 2, but Tier 2 is
singling out a particular component and approaching it in a different manner
. The core instruction is broader and covers a much broader range of skills
students need to be exposed to," Wixson said.
If interventions that are focused on a few skills take up more of the Tier 1
instruction, she said, "Students are missing a lot of broader things that
are going to make a difference in their ability to put it all together in
functional reading."
Comparing Students
The researchers were not able to randomly assign students to participate in
the RTI framework or not, so they used a statistical quirk to compare
students.
For RTI, or any other system that uses a cut score to screen students, those
who perform 1 point above or below the cut score are statistically
identical. A student who scores 19 on a reading test with a cut score of 20
will look very similar, day to day, to a student who scores 21, but may have
very different learning opportunities because he missed that benchmark.
Balu and her colleagues tracked the reading performance of 24,000 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd grade students who barely made or missed the cutoffs for Tier 2
interventions in schools.
From fall to winter of the 2011-12 school year, 1st graders who had been
identified for Tier 2 interventions in the fall performed 11 percent lower,
significantly worse, on a test of overall reading ability used by the
federal Early Childhood Longitudinal Study that winter, in comparison to
students who barely missed being identified for interventions in the fall.
"It was the equivalent of losing one-tenth of a year of learning," Balu said
. There were no significant differences in the results for students of
different income levels, racial groups, or native languages.
Students in 2nd and 3rd grades who were identified for Tier 2 had no
significant reading benefits either, though unlike 1st graders, they saw no
significant negative effects from the interventions. Of the 119 schools
studied for 1st grade implementation, only four found benefits for the
students who were identified for Tier 2 interventions, while 15 schools had
negative effects for students in the interventions.
"This analysis is simpatico with what the original intent of RTI was:
preventative, not remedial, getting kids at risk, on the cusp, trending
toward problems and gaps," said Douglas Fuchs, a professor and chair of
special education and human development at Vanderbilt University who was not
connected to the study but who is a longtime proponent of RTI.
But, he argued, such students with "mild and relatively mild learning
problems" are not representative anymore of the students targeted for Tier 2
interventions. "Over time, in many places what's happened is RTI has been
deliberately used as a kind of general education substitution for special
education. My strong sense is that over time, more and more kids with
greater and greater severity of learning problems are being served in an RTI
framework."
Pinpointing the Problem
However, Wixson, who also was not part of the study, said she wasn't
surprised by the negative findings, which she suggests point instead to
problems both in the screening tools used to identify students for Tier 2
interventions and in the array of interventions available for them.
"The most common implementation of RTI is fairly rigid," she said, with
schools often using a single test to identify students for Tier 2 and a
standard set of interventions once they get there. For example, she noted
that the study found that small group instruction and interventions in RTI
schools were more likely to focus on phonics for students below grade level
than at grade level.
"Right there you have a clue that the interventions are focused on these
foundational skills and not as much on comprehension," she said. The
negative results could be explained if the screening tools used to identify
students did not provide a comprehensive picture of what skills they fell
short on, or if the interventions available were not focused on those needs.
"I think these data also reflect the gap between research and practice,
because for so many schools to have such negative effects at [1st grade], it
's pretty surprising," Fuchs said. "It goes to the question of why can't we
scale up... demonstrably effective Tier 2 interventions in schools?"
Both Doolittle and Wixson suggested that school leaders using RTI for early-
grades reading should re-examine how they identify students and what
interventions they provide to them.
Fuchs, however, argued that researchers need to know more about the
differences in the quality of instruction, the types of interventions, and
the progress-monitoring systems used in each of the schools studied.
"For all the schools together, we get a statistically significant negative
effect for RTI interventions. That's something that should raise eyebrows,
partly because it's counterintuitive," Fuchs said, "but the point that
shouldn't be lost here is, if we look at the range of performance in the 119
schools [in the 1st grade sample] we get tremendous variation."
More details about the RTI practices are needed, Fuchs argued, for school
leaders to draw lessons from the study.
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Those details may soon be in the offing.
Jonathan Jacobson, the project officer for the study at NCEE, said the
research agency also plans to make data from the study available to other
researchers who want to dig into differences in teaching practice or other
issues to understand more about what was going on in the elementary schools
that found benefits for students from RTI interventions and the schools
where students performed worse in them.
The study also did not look at the effects of the RTI framework on students
who had more significant reading difficulties, but the researchers are
considering a follow-up study to look at the effects of students near the
threshold for Tier 3. | a*****g
发帖数: 19398 | 2 所谓 RTI，就是使劲给老师上蹶子，期望老师越来越能解决问题
实际上老师的情况很不好，行业的待遇不行，累翻，缺乏尊重，门槛越来越高……
【在 a*****g 的大作中提到】
: First Graders Who Were Identified for More Help Fell Further Behind
: By Sarah D. Sparks
: Back to Story
: Response to intervention has become ubiquitous as a framework to teach
: students to read in elementary schools, but the most comprehensive federal
: evaluation of the approach to date finds that it may hold back some of the
: children it was originally designed to support.
: First graders who received reading interventions actually did worse than
: virtually identical peers who did not get the more targeted assistance,
: according to the study released last week by the National Center for
| f**********n
发帖数: 29853 | 3 谢谢信息，我以前不知道RTI。
这篇文章倒是提醒我了，我老大带回来过一封信，提到过把他们班小孩分层的事。看来
那个就是RTI。
【在 a*****g 的大作中提到】
: 所谓 RTI，就是使劲给老师上蹶子，期望老师越来越能解决问题
: 实际上老师的情况很不好，行业的待遇不行，累翻，缺乏尊重，门槛越来越高……
| a*****g
发帖数: 19398 | 4 这个东西搞了几年了
感觉美国在战略上出了问题，然后搞了无穷战术方案，
不解决问题，闹出新问题，老问题越来越麻烦
做决策少出问题不出问题才是真正的战略决策
【在 f**********n 的大作中提到】
: 谢谢信息，我以前不知道RTI。
: 这篇文章倒是提醒我了，我老大带回来过一封信，提到过把他们班小孩分层的事。看来
: 那个就是RTI。
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