Upside-Down Response to Intervention: A Quasi-Experimental Study.

Abstract

AbstractThis quasi‐experimental study explored a response‐to‐intervention (RTI) design in which Tiers 2 and 3 were inverted for the most at‐risk first grade students in reading intervention in seven classrooms (n = 24) across two culturally diverse schools. These students were matched using propensity scores and compared to a second group of first grade at‐risk students for reading difficulties who received a traditional RTI intervention program (n = 24) from 12 classrooms across nine culturally diverse schools in the same southeastern city. Interventions were identical with the exception of the RTI tier inversion. The intervention largely emphasized word‐level reading skills, with focus on letter‐sound correspondence, sight‐word recognition, and decoding, and also included spelling and fluency. Statistically significant effects were found for the intervention on word reading measures; however, differences for decoding measures were not found to be statistically significant. Given that the decoding assessments had effect sizes of .025 (small) and .037 (medium), a larger sample may demonstrate a significant positive impact of udRTI on these measures as well. Implications for continued study with the udRTI model are discussed.