Article #5 Struggling Readers A Child's Response to Intervention Requires a Responsive Teacher of Reading

Abstract from Lose, M.K. (2007, November). A Child's Response to Intervention Requires a Responsive Teacher of Reading. The Reading Teacher, 61(3), 276–279. doi: 10.1598/RT.61.3.9

There are a number of principles that teachers of reading and administrators need to keep in mind to ensure that Response to Intervention (RTI) enables struggling literacy learners to achieve success within the provisions of the reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA). The author argues for evidence-based RTI approaches that emphasize teacher expertise and sustained teacher development, that are scalable, and that can be implemented immediately by education systems.

The Problem is that state education agencies may establish the criteria needed to identify children with disabilities, but the local agencies choose the RTI model. So the studies above are trying to identify what models work the best. The best evidence-based interventions from What Works Clearinghouse, founded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Educational Sciences. There were 20 models of which one was a Reading Recovery program. The Reading Recovery scored the highest and only three of the remaining nineteen were positive interventions.

The criteria for an appropriate RTI program are Ensure Early Identification for all children struggling with literacy learning and provide a way to correctly identify children who are LD.
early Intervention Services should include effective, intensive, evidence based services. The school should document and provident evidence of adequate yearly progress to a team of highly qualified professionals who support comprehensive literacy developments. The principles of a successful program include: a child learning to red is an individual, the child should respond successfully, the most struggling child requires the most successful teacher, and teachers should maintain high-quality professional development.

The strengths are the research came ot the following conclusions: A child, not a group needs to read. The only valid RTI approach is one in which the child responds in a positive way. In order to be successful even the child that struggles the most needs a trained professional who is an expert and is able to make moment-by-moment decisions. The research also covered beginning reading programs in the four key domains: alphabetic, reading fluency, comprehension, and general reading achievement. A weakness of the 20 interventions reviewed by the What Works Clearing House was that only one of the interventions were a Reading Recovery model. This model scored the highest and it would have been beneficial to have more than one approach of a positive model of this type.

Implications of the article are that teachers have a responsibility to implement highly-rated evidence -based approaches by a skilled, responsive teacher. Reading professionals have enough information from existing positive programs to give struggling students appropriate, and timely responses to the challenges of RTI. The lowest performing students must be identified early so that appropriate interventions and tiers of support can be provided within a comprehensive approach at the first indication of difficulty.