According to the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDE) Response to Intervention is "the practice of providing high-quality instruction and interventions matched to student need, monitoring progress frequently to make decisions about changes in instruction or goals, and applying student response data to important educational decisions."
With this definition in mind, let us take a look at the infamous RtI pyramids from Colorado and from Hawaii!
As you can see the Colorado pyramid blends the tiers together in order to show that we want students to move between the tiers, ideally moving towards the Universal level. This model also emphasizes that community and family support play an important role in the model.
This is the model that is currently being used at an elementary school in Hawaii. Looks a little old school, yeah? Unfortunately, this is the case with most schools not only in Hawaii, but in other states as well... they are introduced to RtI with the old model, which separates the tiers and does not describe what the tiers look like.
I understand that each school whether it is here in Hawaii or back on the mainland implements RtI differently, however I feel that in order to implement the model successfully states need to adopt one model for schools to follow. With this thought in mind, the next questions to ask yourself is, "how do states decide what model to use?" I believe the answer to this question begins with creating RtI teams that can collaborate in deciding what model works best for their state.
*Side Note: Now I want to make it clear to everyone that I am not out to "bully" the school systems in Hawaii at all! My intention is to make people aware that the model is not being used effectively and I want to provide tools, strategies and resources that will improve the overall understanding of what the model is supposed to look like when used effectively.
Here are some "back to basics" links that I found helpful from www.rti4success.org:
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