A Collaborative Planning Framework for Teachers Implementing Tiered Instruction

Abstract

The recent reauthorization and regulations of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004) encourage the use of schoolwide interventions including response to intervention (RTI; Bradley, Danielson, & Doolittle, 2007). RTI refers to a multi tiered system ihat addresses the academic needs of all students by using evidence-based instructional practice, progress monitoring, and data-informed instructional problem solving (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006; Rinaldi & Samson, 2008), A tiered system is an educational model that delineates three or more levels of instructional interventions based on gaps in student skills. A tier is a level in an RTI system thai includes interventions and supports for a clearly defined group of students. RT! is highly encouraged as it ensures high-quality instruclion and universal screening of all children, addresses the needs of struggling learners by providing interventions at increasing levels of intensity, and significantly decreases the number of inappropriate referrals to special education (Vaughn & Ortiz, 2008), As a result, a significant number of public schools in the United States are in the planning and implementation stages of this initiative. In this article, we present a collaborative planning framework for educators implementing RTI. The framework addresses how educators can use universal screening and progress tiionitoring data to plan for instruction al all tiers as well as evaluate the responsiveness of interventions provided at the Tier 2 and Tier 3 levels within the RTI model. The results are a feasible support system by which educators can improve service delivery lo all slu-