RtI Information
What is Responsiveness to Instruction?
Responsiveness to Instruction (RtI) is the process of aligning appropriate assessment with purposeful instruction for all students. In North Carolina, RtI is based in the general education classroom where teachers routinely implement a strong and rigorous standards-based learning environment. The three-tiered approach to providing layers of intervention for students needing support requires a school-wide common understanding core curriculum, assessment practices, and progress monitoring.
North Carolina’s model of RtI includes several key components:
- A 3-Tier delivery model designed to provide support matched to student need based on increasing intensity of interventions
- Evidence-based instruction as the core curriculum in classrooms
- Evidence-based interventions utilized with increasing levels of intensity based on progress monitoring
- Universal screening/benchmarking in Fall, Winter, Spring to determine students in need
- The use of a variety of ongoing assessment data to determine which students are not meeting success academically and/or behaviorally
How Does North Carolina Define a Specific Learning Disability?
A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the impaired ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.
SLD does not include learning problems that are the primary result of vision, hearing, or motor disabilities, of intellectual disabilities, of serious emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
Three Methods to Determine Eligibility for SLD in North Carolina:
- Discrepancy Model
- Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses
- Responsiveness to Instruction (RtI) Model
*Use of a process based on a child’s response to scientific research-based intervention. A problem-solving process MUST be utilized.*Please note: You cannot use both methods. Schools designated and trained by Rowan-Salisbury Schools are the only schools given permission to use the RtI Model for SLD eligibility consideration. The following RtI schools as of the 2012-2013 school year are as follows:
Tier Descriptions
***Parents are vital participants in the entire RtI process.
The Dual Discrepancy Model
RtI can also be explained through the illustration below of “Dual Discrepancy”. Through the use of universal screenings, the child is compared to same grade peers on curriculum based measures. Curriculum Based Measures are brief assessments, ranging from 1 to 8 minutes, that are derived from the curriculum. They assess Early Literacy Skills (Letter Naming Fluency, Letter Sound Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation, an Nonsense Word Fluency), Reading (Oral Reading Fluency and MAZE-Comprehension), Early Numeracy Skills (Oral Counting, Number Identification, Quantity Discrimination, Missing Number), Math (Math Computation and Math Concepts & Applications). When the children are significantly below their same grade peers and they will need to gain skills at quicker pace. If the children do not increase their skill level and have a slower rate of learning compared to their peers, this could be indicative of a Specific Learning Disability.