A New Way of Thinking
All Students
Identified Students
Individual Students
Figure 1.2: The inverted RTI pyramid.
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Working with schools throughout North America, we have found that this graphic has been both a blessing and a curse. When used properly, it is both a powerful visual representation of the RTI process and a useful structure to assist in organizing a school’s core instruction and support resources. The pyramid shape is wide at the bottom to represent the basic instruction that all students receive. As students demonstrate the need for additional support, they move up the pyramid, receiving increasingly more targeted and intensive help. Fewer students should need the services offered at the upper levels, thus creating the tapered shape of a pyramid. The pyramid is also traditionally separated into tiers, with Tier 1 representing grade-level core instruction, Tier 2 supplemental interventions, and Tier 3 intensive student support. When used as a visual model to capture these guiding ideas, the pyramid has proven to be a helpful tool for schools implementing RTI. Unfortunately, far too often we have seen schools and districts misinterpret and misapply the pyramid structure. Rather than create an intervention system that is fluid, flexible, and sensitive to the needs of each child, schools and districts implement the pyramid as a rigid, protocol-driven program. Student identification, placement, and duration in each tier are predetermined based upon screening assessments, cut scores, and program decision protocols. Often, the upper tiers are disjointed and misaligned to the school’s core instruction. School resources and responsibilities are frequently divided, with Tiers 1 and 2 designated for general education and Tier 3 for special education. Considering these concerns, we have carefully re-examined the RTI pyramid. We still believe there is tremendous power in using a pyramid as a visual representation of the way in which we should think about RTI, but we believe a more accurate way to capture the right thinking is by inverting the pyramid, as in figure 1.2.
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