Introduction
I enjoyed reading the papers by Sharon Vaughn, Randi O'Connor and David Tilly and will try to synthesize their findings in this short commentary. The authors are to be commended for their work in addressing the concept of intervention tiers and eligibility for special education. While all three papers focus upon the impact of RTI, they do it in two distinct ways. In my mind, the articles by Vaughn and O'Connor are controlled research studies run as scientific experiments. They use random assignment of students, control groups, review treatment integrity and typically there are clear parameters for treatment variables related to duration of implementation. Tilly's article takes another route. It is a description of how the Problem Solving Model is implemented with almost a quarter of Iowa's student enrollment. His article about this impressive effort is similar to a program evaluation report one might see for any large scale project implementation. It includes large sample sizes for students and schools, and a considerable professional development component for over 130 schools. I think both approaches to research and evaluation are to be applauded and can be used to address the question, "How many tiers are needed within RTI to achieve acceptable prevention outcomes and to achieve acceptable patterns of LD identification?"
Let's first review the RTI models and the research/evaluation designs described in these papers.
"How Many Tiers Are Needed for Response to Intervention to Achieve Acceptable Prevention Outcomes" by Sharon Vaughn
Sharon Vaughn describes a three tier Response to Intervention approach to helping kindergarten through 3rd grade students in the area of literacy. Tier I is mostly core reading instruction provided by the classroom teacher to all general education students for approximately 90 minutes per day. The reading interventions are strongly tied to research-based practice in phonemic awareness, alphabetic understanding, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Monitoring of student performance is critical in Tier I and occurs three times per year. There is maximum effort to provide an ongoing, scientifically based professional development program to participating school staff.
Tier II for Vaughn's studies is supplemental to the core reading program. These sessions last about 30 minutes daily and progress is monitored twice per month. Recipients of this instruction are those students who have not responded to Tier I instruction and is determined by falling below documented early literacy benchmarks appropriate the student's grade level. The intervention is provided by general education, special education or project staff and lasts approximately 10-20 weeks. Students were randomly assigned to these intervention groups.
Tier III is for those students not responding to Tier II interventions and is more "intensive" and "strategic." Whereas Tier II interventions occurred in small groups, Tier III is provided typically in 1:3 groups by an intervention specialist from the school or project staff. These custom built sessions are implemented in two 30 minute sessions per day. Monitoring of student performance continues to occur twice per month. Length of Tier III interventions can be significantly longer than the 10 to 20 week Tier II interventions.
"Tiers of Intervention in Kindergarten Through Third Grade" by Rollanda E. O'Connor
Randi O'Connor's study, which in many ways is similar to Vaughn's, also provides a strong experimental research design. She outlines a three tier approach for students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Core reading instruction for all students is the centerpiece of Tier I. Again, there is a strong commitment to ongoing professional development that builds upon scientifically-based reading interventions related to the five major elements also described in the Vaughn article. Student improvement is measured three times per year with literacy indicators.
O'Connor's Tier II intervention is provided in small group (typically 1:4) and is conducted three days per week at 15 minutes for kindergarten students and 20-25 minutes for older students. The project researcher provides the instruction to students who did not make literacy benchmarks during core reading instruction during Tier I. The intervention is designed specifically for the struggling student. O'Connor notes her studies differ from Vaughn's in two important ways, (1) the O'Connor Tier II interventions focus on student weaknesses, and (2) Tier II interventions can vary in length from 8 weeks to several years.
The Tier III interventions in O'Connor's study are provided daily by a project researcher in 1:1 or 1:2 settings. These interventions are for those students who did not make good reading progress, which was defined as "progress commensurate with the growth of average readers."
"How Many Tiers Are Needed for Successful Prevention and Early Intervention?: Heartland Area Education Agency's Evolution from Four to Three Tiers" by W. David Tilly III
As mentioned earlier, Tilly reports on a project of considerable magnitude, the implementation of the Problem Solving Model in the state of Iowa. He notes that Heartland AEA, where the study was conducted, serves almost 25% of the state student population. His paper provided data from 136 schools.
In his paper the author describes how Heartland AEA, over a ten year period, has evolved from a four tier Problem Solving process to a three tier system. It is the three tier system, which is central to the Heartland Early Literacy Project (HELP), which provides the data for his article. While the Tilly project lacks the experimental design of the Vaughn and O'Connor studies, it compensates with large sample sizes, many schools implementing the model, and evidence of bringing RTI to scale.
Project HELP grew from 36 schools in 1999 to 121 schools by the 2003-4 school year. In Level 1 (or Tier I) all students are involved in the Core Instructional Curriculum. Level 2 or (or Tier II) is known as Core Instruction and Supplemental Instructional Resources. Level 3 (or Tier III) is called Core Instruction and Intensive Resources. Tilly makes clear that two important assumptions operate at each level: applied scientific method known as Problem Solving and use of scientific-based practices during intervention.
In the area of Problem Solving the practitioner must answer four interrelated questions: (1) what is the problem, (2) why is it happening, (3) what do we do about it, and (4) is the intervention working? Some of the scientific-based practices provided in Project HELP include: Curriculum-based Measurement, Curriculum-based Evaluation, Functional Analysis of Behavior and Positive Behavioral Supports, Direct Instruction, Peer Assisted Learning Strategies, Learning Strategy Instruction, and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills.
Paramount to implementation of the three levels is a large scale screening of all students. Through each of the three levels there is a strong professional development component outlining instructional strategies to be used with struggling students. Monitoring of student performance of two to three times per year is also required. Early literacy indicators focused on phoneme segmentation, nonsense word fluency, and oral reading fluency. The duration of individual sessions or the number of sessions was not specified for each level. In addition, the size of instructional groupings was not described. It appears instruction was provided "in different ways by different constellations of teachers in each building."
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