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Glossary

| RTI Practices |

Early Intervening Services (EIS)
The concept of early intervening services was introduced in IDEA 2004 and refers to a broad application of scientifically based prevention and support services for students who are not identified as needing special education programs or service but who need additional academic and behavioral support to succeed in the general education classroom.

Fidelity of Implementation
Fidelity of implementation is the delivery of content and instructional strategies in the way in which they were designed and intended to be delivered: accurately and consistently. Although interventions are aimed at learners, fidelity measures focus on the individuals who provide the instruction. (See Fidelity of Implementation.)

Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) Test
Letter naming fluency is an individually administered test that provides a reading prediction measure. Students are presented a page of upper- and lower-case letters arranged in a random order and asked to name as many letters as they can.

Letter Sound Fluency (LSF) Teset
Letter sound fluency is a curriculum-based assessment used to determine a student's ability to fluently decode letters into sounds. Alternate, random forms of the test contain the 26 letters of the alphabet.

Multitiered Service-Delivery Model or Tiered Service-Delivery Model
A multitiered service-delivery model provides tiers of increasingly intense interventions directed at more specific deficits and at smaller segments of the population. (See Tiered Service Delivery.)

National Research Center on Learning Disabilities (NRCLD)
The National Research Center on Learning Disabilities is a joint project of researchers at Vanderbilt University and the University of Kansas with funding provided by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. NRCLD is part of a federal effort to find improved, research-based ways of identifying students with learning disabilities.

Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) Test
Nonsense word fluency is an individually administered test of the alphabetic principle, including letter-sound correspondence, and of the ability to blend letters into words, in which letters represent their most common sounds.

Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)
The Office of Special Education Programs is a federal program of the U.S. Department of Education dedicated to improving results for infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities ages birth through 21 by providing leadership and financial support to assist states and local districts.

Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) Test
Oral reading fluency is an individually administered test of accuracy and fluency in which the number of words read correctly per minute is counted.

Parent Involvement
Parent involvement is the consistent, organized, and meaningful two-way communication between school staff and parents with regard to student progress and related school activities. (See Parent Involvement.)

Positive Behavioral Support (PBS) or Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS)
Positive behavioral support (PBS) or positive behavioral interventions and support (PBIS) is a multicomponent approach to respectfully changing behavior while enhancing capabilities, opportunities, and quality of life.

Progress Monitoring
Progress monitoring is a set of assessment procedures for determining the extent to which students are benefiting from classroom instruction. (See Progress Monitoring.)

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) Test
Phoneme segmentation fluency is a measure that assesses a student's ability to segment three- and four-phoneme words into their individual phonemes fluently. This measure has been found to be a good predictor of later reading achievement.

Research-Based (Activities, Practices, Instruction, Interventions, or Treatment)
Research-based activities, practices, instruction, interventions or treatment are approaches that have been scientifically demonstrated to be effective, regardless of the discipline that developed them.

Regional Resource Centers (RRCs)
The six Regional Resource Centers and Federal Resource Center are funded by the federal Office of Special Education Programs to assist state education agencies in the systemic improvement of education programs, practices, and policies that affect children and youth with disabilities. These centers offer consultation, information services, technical assistance, training, and product development.

Retell Fluency (RTF)
Retell fluency provides a comprehension check for oral reading fluency and helps to identify students whose fluency and comprehension are not consistent.

Response to Intervention or Responsiveness to Intervention (RTI)
Responsiveness to intervention is an assessment and intervention process for systematically monitoring student progress and making decisions about the need for instructional modifications or increasingly intensified services using progress-monitoring data.

School-Wide Screening (Also known as Universal Screening)
Screening is an assessment characterized as a quick, low-cost, repeatable test of age-appropriate critical skills (e.g., identifying letters of the alphabet or reading a list of high-frequency words) or behaviors (e.g., tardiness or discipline reports). Measures are not too complicated and can be administered by someone with a minimal amount of training. (See School-Wide Screening.)

Scientifically Based (Activities, Practices, Instruction, Interventions, Treatment)
Scientifically based activities, practices, instruction, interventions or treatment are approaches that have been scientifically demonstrated by research to be effective. Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, scientifically based research is defined as "research that involves the application of rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain reliable and valid knowledge relevant to education activities and programs."

Specific Learning Disability (SLD)
Specific learning disability (SLD) is one of the categorical conditions considered important for providing legal protections and entitlements. Under IDEA 2004, SLD is defined as "a disorder of one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in [the] imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. Such term includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. Such term does not include a learning problem that is primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage."

Tiered Service Delivery or Multitiered Service Delivery
Tiered service delivery provides tiers of increasingly intense interventions directed at more specific deficits and at smaller segments of the population. (See Tiered Service Delivery.)

Universal Screening (Also known as School-Wide Screening)
Screening is an assessment characterized as a quick, low-cost, repeatable test of age-appropriate critical skills (e.g., identifying letters of the alphabet or reading a list of high-frequency words) or behaviors (e.g., tardiness or discipline reports). Measures are not too complicated and can be administered by someone with a minimal amount of training. (See School-Wide Screening.)

Word Identification Fluency (WIF) Assessment
Word identification fluency is a curriculum-based assessment designed to monitor the reading progress of students. The assessment measures fluency in recognizing and correctly pronouncing high-utility words.