The Problem with Response to Intervention

What is Response to Intervention?

RTI is a method used in schools in order to keep students "on task". By dividing students into tiers teachers are able to apply more rigorous intervention to those students who may need it more. This is an approach with the right intentions behind it but it is also one that allows students of lesser social mobility to fall through the cracks. Looking through the lens of social justice we can see how underprivileged communities may fall into higher tiers and struggle to get back into tier 1. This is most easily exemplified in things like reading groups. Students will be defined for a whole year or more by an exam they take during their first week of school. Some kids fall behind as children and by the time they are in high school they are struggling to keep up with the tier 3 classes.

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How Counselors Can Be Utilized In RTI

Many have had the same concerns with Response to Interventions as I have and the article "Addressing Barriers Effective RTI through School Counselor Consultation: A Social Justice Approach" by Jefferey M. Warren argued that counselors were the way to remedy some of these issues. Warren believes that counselors could be the bridge between students and teachers and administrators, providing a place to go to for the students and a person to educate staff on the issues of the RTI techniques; "School counselors often participate in the RTI process by leading and coordinating student support teams, monitoring academic and behavioral interventions, and analyzing data to determine the efficacy of interventions" (Warren 4). RTI has problems with students being provided a lack of resources at home, biased assessments, and inadequate teacher training. Counselors could at least smooth over some of these rough edges and although it isn't the end all be all it is a valuable thing to keep note of.

The Issues With RTI

The Implementation of RTI: Teachers as a whole are struggling where to draw the lines when it comes to RTI. One teacher's version of tier 2 could be another teacher's version of tier 3. This also opens up the floodgates for teachers' bias. If a clear set of standards for all tiers is not established across schools then students may be getting widely different educations around the country. Overall RTI is great in theory but just the implementation causes a variety of issues.

The Labels of RTI: With the implementation of different tiers in RTI this creates labels for every single student is the "lesser" classrooms. From kindergarten kids will be wearing the labels of "troublemaker" and "golden child". This will also leave teachers needing to give a lot more attention to a slew of students who really need it in tier 3 classroom. And with the teacher being worn thin, "Lack of quality whole-class instruction can lead to behaviour issues. Students may exhibit academic difficulties and/or behavioural issues that need to be addressed" (Lamb 28).

The Complexity of RTI: The RTI program may sound simple in concept but it involves taking every student and monitoring them individually in order to see when, how, and why they may be falling behind in a certain class, "Unfortunately, many schools and districts are not collecting this data frequently enough. Districts and schools sometimes rely solely on quarterly benchmarks that are often long, time consuming, and cover so many skills that teachers and intervention programs become overwhelmed and less effective" (Campsen). The long long lists of data would confuse any of us but these are vital for RTI to work but schools view it as too much of a challenge and instead allow the students who may need the extra help for their least restrictive environment to fail in classes that they cannot adapt to.

The Lack of Individuality In A Group

Even though the goal of RTI is to help the individual and make up for the unfair advantage that other students have over some, many are getting lumped together and forgotten about. As an illustration, students from low-income households frequently suffer severe disadvantages when compared to their richer counterparts. The everyday battle to meet basic requirements such as food and shelter can cause enormous stress and worry, diverting their concentration away from academic endeavors. This persistent anxiety might lead to a lack of interest in the classroom and a limited capacity to participate completely in learning opportunities. Recognizing and addressing these structural inequities is critical to ensuring that every kid, regardless of socioeconomic background, has an equal opportunity to achieve academically. But with these tiers it is very simple to put these low-income students in tier 3 and instead of looking at why they are struggling just mark the group as lost causes. And in these tiers rather than addressing the issues of the students and providing support educators instead focus on the test grade or why the homework was not completed.

Teaching Social Justice While Practicing It

As a future history teacher the importance of teaching social justice is not lost on me. The struggle of teaching about incredibly heinous acts throughout history is apparent and as educators we need to identify how we can foster communities where students and teachers can discuss these issues openly but with respect to there severity. And in a RTI setting this should be more apparent because the whole point of RTI is to help those students that struggle at home who need that extra help and many of those students tend to be people of color who are in low income communities because of systemic issues in our country. Ways to implement social justice would be by allotting time for mindfulness and discussions of how the material covered in class affects the students. Also very relevant in an RTI program would be to have students value each other as allies rather than enemies. In many schools kids think that there is not enough room at the top for everyone and they are extremely competitive but instead as teachers we should be fostering communities that can depend on each other and work together towards a common goals. Very easily in an RTI program can students be afraid of going down a tier and creating unhealthy competition to "beat out" their classmates.

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