Simplifying Response to Intervention Quotes

“Beyond simply rewording the standard into teacher-friendly, student-friendly language, teachers need to tightly align these standards with their curriculum, instruction, and assessment.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Research has made it abundantly clear that putting the least capable and least motivated students together in a class with a curriculum that is less challenging and moves at a slower pace increases the achievement gap and is detrimental to students” (DuFour, 2010, p. 23).”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“When teachers use formative assessment in this way, students can learn in six to seven months what will normally take an entire school year to learn (Leahy, Lyon, Thompson, & Wiliam, 2005). Using”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Once a standard has been unwrapped into a number of learning targets, teachers can build their assessments at the target level, rather than attempting to assess an entire standard. A general guideline to increase the reliability of such assessments is to use three to five questions or “prompts” per learning target (Prometric Services, 2011).”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“One common mistake that schools make when implementing a tiered intervention program is that they pull students from essential core instruction to provide remediation of prior skills—that is, Tier 2 interventions replace student access to Tier 1 core instruction. When students miss essential core instruction for interventions, they never catch up. This is because while the targeted student is receiving interventions to learn a prior skill, they are missing instruction on a new essential standard. Ask classroom teachers why they don’t like students “pulled out” of their class for interventions, and they will tell you: “Because the student misses what I am teaching now.” For these students, it is one step forward, two steps back.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Tier 1 and Tier 2 are not the responsibility of either teacher teams or school-wide teams—it takes classroom teachers and schoolwide resources. • When everyone is responsible for interventions, nobody is. For this reason, final responsibility to lead certain interventions must be clearly defined. • When determining who should be responsible for a particular intervention, the school should ask, Who is best trained in this area of need? Look beyond job titles. What does the child need, and who has the skills to address those needs? Do the individuals asked to lead a particular intervention have the time and resources necessary to succeed? Is the intervention fair and reasonable to all involved?”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Effective teachers: + Model positive behaviors + Treat students respectfully + Create positive, productive learning environments with clear procedures + Establish positive relationships with all students”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Behavior. Anyone who has ever taught knows that students cannot learn until they can demonstrate the positive behaviors necessary to succeed in class. For students weak in self-control and social skills, learning becomes collateral damage.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“absences by a student are a symptom, not a cause.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Attendance. Chronic absenteeism is one of the most reliable predictors of at-risk youth behavior, such as drug abuse, dropping out of school, and future incarceration.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“No matter what explains a student’s lack of learning, schools can and must commit to a collective responsibility to providing supports.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“lack of effort is a symptom, not a cause.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“The problem many schools face is that they are grouping failed learners and students with motivational issues in the same intervention. This happens when schools target students for interventions based on grades or test scores.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Motivation. Collective responsibility must mean that schools take responsibility for academic learning and for more “behavioral” aspects of a student’s development.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“When it comes to students learning essential standards for a particular subject and/or grade level, the teachers who teach that content should be both empowered to design Tier 1 core instruction and lead the school’s response when students require additional support.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Collaborative teacher teams should take the lead in determining interventions for students who have not learned essential core standards and English language.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“many districts have developed a second approach to determining Tier 2 interventions, in which classroom teachers or teacher teams cannot refer students for schoolwide interventions until they can document the interventions that have been tried in their classroom. This approach places responsibility for the initial response of Tier 2 interventions with classroom teachers.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“We recommend that teacher input be solicited at least every three to four weeks. Participation from all site educators must be required. If even one teacher is permitted to be excused from the process, then the students who are assigned to this teacher are much less likely to receive additional time and support. Consequently, a school would not be able to tell parents that it does not matter which teacher their child has—because it would matter.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Beyond objective assessment data, there is subjective information that best comes from the school professionals who work with the students every day. These observational data are vital to identifying students for additional help and determining why each student is struggling. For this reason, the third way a school should identify students for additional support is to create a systematic and timely process for staff to recommend and discuss students who need help.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Of the five steps that comprise certain access, there is one step that a school must get right every time: identify. The school may not initially determine the best intervention for a student, but the school will realize the mistake as it monitors the student’s progress and will subsequently revise the program as needed.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Only when schools create a tiered, systematic intervention program can the promise of certain access be realized. A systematic response begins with the school’s ability to identify students who need help. After students are identified, the school must determine the right intervention to meet the child’s learning needs, and then monitor each student’s progress to know if the intervention is working. If the evidence demonstrates that the intervention is not meeting the intended outcome for a specific student, the school must revise the student’s support by providing more intensive and targeted assistance; alternatively, if students reach grade-level expectations, the same flexible time and resources are used to extend students to even higher levels of achievement.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“A school that has a truly systematic process for meeting the needs of every child can confidently tell any parent whose child attends the school, “It does not matter what teacher your child has; we guarantee that your child will receive the time and support needed to learn at high levels.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Asking the Right Questions”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Certain access. A systematic process that guarantees every student will receive the time and support needed to learn at high levels. Thinking is guided by the question, How do we get every child there?”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Convergent assessment. An ongoing process of collectively analyzing targeted evidence to determine the specific learning needs of each child and the effectiveness of the instruction the child receives in meeting these needs. Thinking is guided by the question, Where are we now?”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Concentrated instruction. A systematic process of identifying essential knowledge and skills that all students must master to learn at high levels, and determining the specific learning needs for each child to get there. Thinking is guided by the question, Where do we need to go?”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Collective responsibility. A shared belief that the primary responsibility of each member of the organization is to ensure high levels of learning for every child. Thinking is guided by the question, Why are we here?”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Understanding the Four Cs of RTI”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“If the primary goal of the school is to raise test scores, the bubble-kid approach, although morally bankrupt, makes some sense because the lowest-achieving learners are so far behind that providing them intensive resources will likely not show immediate gains in the school’s state assessment scores. But if the goal is to help all students learn at high levels, this approach will do nothing for the students most in need.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Response to intervention is built on a polar-opposite philosophy from traditional special education. When a student struggles, rather than assume there is something wrong with the student, we first assume that we are not teaching the child correctly.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles