Format

Individual Presentation

First Presenter's Institution

The Academy For Urban Scholars

Second Presenter's Institution

NA

Third Presenter's Institution

NA

Fourth Presenter's Institution

NA

Fifth Presenter's Institution

NA

Location

Ballroom E

Strand #1

Academic Achievement & School Leadership

Relevance

The proposal "Re-Imagining RTI: Creating a Multi-Tiered Support System for At-Risk Secondary Students" best relates to the strand of "Academic Achievement and School Leadership" because it focuses on designing and implementing an effective system of intervention for secondary students who have fallen significantly behind their peers and repeatedly experienced academic failure. The proposal further relates to this strand because it addresses closing the achievement gap for secondary students and promotes learning for all youth, including those who are at-risk of failing or dropping out of high school.

Brief Program Description

This presentation will address how schools can develop and implement a successful Response to Intervention (RTI) model for Youth-At-Risk. Participants will learn how to establish buy-in for their developing RTI programs, implement a system of universal screening, incorporate research-based interventions in their Tier I and Tier 2 classrooms and use progress monitoring to ensure that students are responding successfully to intervention.

Summary

RTI, or Response to Intervention, is an essential component for student success at all grade levels. However, many aspects of RTI are based on research conducted in elementary schools. The need for effective models of delivering intervention for at-risk secondary students is alarmingly apparent, but how do educators effectively design and implement a successful RTI system that specifically addresses the needs of students who have already fallen four or more years behind their peers and repeatedly experienced academic failure? In this presentation, secondary administrators, Title I coordinators, and classroom teachers will not only learn how to establish buy-in for their developing RTI programs, but also how to develop a multi-tiered support system in their schools that successfully identifies at-risk and struggling students before they experience failure in the classroom. They will also learn how to implement RTI with efficacy and fidelity at the secondary school level, which is essential for increasing student learning and turning around low performing schools. Participants in this hands-on, interactive session will take away a wealth of information and materials which can be used to design a RTI model at the secondary level that incorporates high-quality instruction, frequent progress monitoring, increasingly intense levels of intervention and data-based decision making. Additionally, by actively participating in the decision making process and taking on the roles of IAT team members, attendees will learn how collaboration plays an essential role in identifying, documenting and evaluating a student's progression through the multi-tiered support system that is Response to Intervention (RTI).

Evidence

In secondary schools, the need for effective models of delivering intervention to struggling and at-risk students is alarmingly apparent. However, there are legitimate concerns regarding the efficacy of implementing a Response to Intervention (RTI) program at the secondary school level. Given that RTI emerged exclusively within the context of early intervention and primary reading instruction, the studies of RTI at the elementary level currently serve as the frame of references for initial efforts in the secondary school (Duffy, 2007). Studies supporting RTI at the elementary level, or Elementary RTI, have found that RTI improved the performance of at-risk students on measures of literacy and reduced the number of students identified for special education (Carney & Stiefel, 2008; Velluntino, Scanlon, Small & Fanuele, 2006), demonstrated benefits for English language learners (Linan-Thompson, Vaughn, Prater & Cirino, 2006) and students in high-poverty schools (Gettinger & Stoiber, 2007), and resulted in decreased rates of retention and special education placement (Murray, Woodruff, & Vaughn, 2010; Wanzek & Vaughn, 2008). Given the successes of RTI at the elementary level, one can presume that struggling high school students would also benefit from a similar system of tiered-interventions at the secondary school level (L.S. Fuchs et. al, 2010). However, several assumptions of Elementary RTI prove to be problematic in secondary settings, including the notions that a) children should be screened to determine risk status prior to serious academic deficits, b) children must demonstrate a lack of response to general education over a period of time, and c) remediation approaches shown effective for younger learners will work the same for adolescents. Additionally, there are anticipated problems scheduling interventions for struggling students as secondary schools that use a traditional or block schedule will have an impact on Secondary RTI (Burns & Gibbons, 2008).

Concerns regarding the efficacy of implementing Elementary RTI in secondary schools are legitimate. However, if struggling students are to realize meaningful academic gains and experience success in the classroom, some form of increasingly intensive tiered model of intervention must be implemented at the secondary level of education. The Academy for Urban Scholars, a non-traditional high school in Columbus, Ohio that specializes in working with high school dropouts, has taken an innovative approach to RTI and established a framework of intervention that specifically addresses the needs of struggling secondary students who are past the point of prevention. By implementing a problem-solving model of RTI which offers flexibility in who provides instruction and the types of instruction provided and experimenting with various approaches of collecting information and targeting instruction within the content areas, more than half, or 54 percent, of the students at The Academy for Urban Scholars who demonstrated significant academic struggles at the beginning of the 2016 - 2017 school year showed considerable year-end academic gains in mathematics and reading and met or exceeded their expected yearly growth on the NWEA Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments. Additionally, by varying the structure of the interventions that are offered within the RTI framework and not only allowing for courses specifically dedicated to supplementary instruction, but also encouraging content area teachers to deliver interventions within their courses, The Academy for Urban Scholars was able to successfully close the seemingly insurmountable academic achievement gap for our at-risk secondary students. Thus, The Academy for Urban Scholars demonstrates that it is not only possible to design RTI for secondary school programs, but also implement RTI effectively so struggling and at-risk secondary students can achieve academic success.

Biographical Sketch

Molly Ferryman is a twenty-four year teaching veteran who has taught in a variety of academic settings, including a juvenile maximum security prison for males between the ages of 12 - 21. For the past six years, Mrs. Ferryman has been the Title I Reading Teacher and RTI Coordinator at The Academy for Urban Scholars in Columbus, Ohio. In addition to being certified in English 7-12, Mrs. Ferryman has obtained a K-12 Reading Endorsement and a K-12 Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Endorsement. She is also a literacy specialist. Mrs. Ferryman is a graduate of The Ohio State University and has a BA in English and a BS in Education. Mrs. Ferryman lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband, Michael.

Keyword Descriptors

Academic Achievement, Secondary Youth-At-Risk, Response to Intervention

Presentation Year

2018

Start Date

3-6-2018 10:15 AM

End Date

3-6-2018 11:30 AM

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Mar 6th, 10:15 AM Mar 6th, 11:30 AM

Re-imagining RTI: Creating a multi-tiered support system for at-risk secondary students

Ballroom E

This presentation will address how schools can develop and implement a successful Response to Intervention (RTI) model for Youth-At-Risk. Participants will learn how to establish buy-in for their developing RTI programs, implement a system of universal screening, incorporate research-based interventions in their Tier I and Tier 2 classrooms and use progress monitoring to ensure that students are responding successfully to intervention.