This part of the book is the most uplifting part. It tells the story of how the framework of Response to Intervention (RTI) can enable almost all struggling learners to meet academic standards. The story, however, doesn’t have a completely happy ending. While it tells how RTI could work, it also tells how RTI, for many reasons, is not working as it should.
In telling the story, I am drawn to the children’s fable of The Little Engine That Could as a metaphor for RTI. I read it often to my children and grandchildren and I hope readers of this book will get its message as well. We’ve been conditioned to believe that success for struggling learners is as big and forbidding a mountain as the one that the Little Engine was up against. But the Little Engine could, and we as a nation can. We can enable struggling learners to succeed if we are smart and determined, and RTI is the engine to get us there.
Of course, many readers—policymakers and educators among them—will say, dream on. The Little Engine is make-believe. The real-world path up the mountain for struggling learners is blocked by ridge after ridge of educational and political obstacles. Isn’t RTI just another sounds-good grand reform that will fall off the cliffs? Isn’t the massive weight of struggling readers, with deep learning deficits caused by impoverished family circumstances, simply too much for the Little Engine to carry to the top?
For sure, the obstacles in the way of RTI are formidable. But effective RTI is no instructional pipedream. If set as a national goal, if supported by evidence-based and cost-effective resources, and if school systems can get their management act together, RTI can bring almost all struggling learners up to grade-level proficiency. We have the know-how. At the very least, we can ascend much higher than we ever have, or even thought we could.
Chapter 4 first looks at the basic design and operating principles of RTI. How is it supposed to work? What are the best practices in classroom instruction that fuel its power? And, since it’s so good and do-able, why hasn’t it been done on a large scale?
Chapter 5 moves from RTI in general education to RTI-like “specially designed instruction” in special education. Even if RTI were effectively implemented in general education, a small percentage of struggling learners would still require special education. In addition, no matter how hard we try, RTI will not get to its destination overnight. Therefore, RTI-like instruction for students in special education is a dire necessity now. A nationally acclaimed model to make this happen—to raise the bar and improve outcomes in special education—is underway in the Baltimore City public schools and is described in Chapter 5.