Simplifying Response to Intervention Quotes

“the primary responsibilities of the site intervention team are to: • Determine the specific learning needs of each student in need of intensive support • Diagnose the cause(s) of the student’s struggles in Tier 1 and Tier 2 • Determine the most appropriate intervention(s) to address the student’s needs • Frequently monitor the student’s progress to see if interventions are achieving the desired outcomes • Revise the student’s intervention(s) when they are not achieving the desired outcomes • Determine when special education identification is appropriate”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“the school leadership team should specifically: • Build consensus for the school’s mission of collective responsibility • Create a master schedule that provides sufficient time for team collaboration, core instruction, supplemental interventions, and intensive interventions • Coordinate schoolwide human resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including the site counselor, psychologist, speech and language pathologist, special education teacher, librarian, health services, subject specialists, instructional aides, and other classified staff • Allocate the school’s fiscal resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including school categorical funding • Assist with articulating essential learning outcomes across grade levels and subjects • Lead the school’s universal screening efforts to identify students in need of Tier 3 intensive interventions before they fail • Lead the school’s efforts at Tier 1 for schoolwide behavior expectations, including attendance policies and awards and recognitions (the team may create a separate behavior team to oversee these behavioral policies) • Ensure that all students have access to grade-level core instruction • Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 2 interventions for students in need of supplemental support in motivation, attendance, and behavior • Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 3 interventions for students in need of intensive support in the universal skills of reading, writing, number sense, English language, motivation, attendance, and behavior • Continually monitor schoolwide evidence of student learning”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“The responsibilities of each teacher team in the RTI process are as follows: • Clearly define essential student learning outcomes • Provide effective Tier 1 core instruction • Assess student learning and the effectiveness of instruction • Identify students in need of additional time and support • Take primary responsibility for Tier 2 supplemental interventions for students who have failed to master the team’s identified essential standards”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“There is no way an individual teacher has all the time, all the skills, and all the knowledge necessary to meet the individual needs of every child. Applying the formula for learning as an individual is nearly impossible. But collectively, the combined knowledge and skills of an entire staff can meet the learning needs of every child. Teachers must move beyond viewing students as “my kids” and “your kids” and instead regard all the students as “our kids.” This need for a collective effort is why we believe that RTI must be built upon professional learning community practices; the only way a school staff can achieve the mission of learning for all students is by working together (DuFour et al., 2010).”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“A culture of collective responsibility is based on two fundamental beliefs: 1. The first assumption is that we, as educators, must accept responsibility to ensure high levels of learning for every child. While parental, societal, and economic forces impact student learning, the actions of the educators will ultimately determine each child’s success in school. 2. The second assumption is that all students can learn at high levels. We define “high” levels of learning as “high school plus,” meaning every child will graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge required to continue to learn.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“de-emphasize state accountability reports and instead consistently promote (1) using common formative assessments to measure student performance on key targets and (2) designing and then using interventions when students struggle.”
― 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

“There are five characteristics that can define an intervention as more intensive: Frequency. The more often a child receives a particular support, the more intensive the intervention. Duration. The more time a student spends receiving a particular support, the more intensive the intervention. Ratio. The smaller the teacher-to-student ratio, the more intensive the intervention. Targeting. The more aligned a particular support is with the individual needs of a specific student, the more intensive the intervention. Training. The more highly trained the staff member is in the student’s area of need, the more intensive the intervention.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“A teaching-focused school believes that its responsibility for student learning ends once the child has been given the opportunity to learn the first time. But a learning-focused school understands that the school was not built so that teachers have a place to teach; it was built so that the children of the community have a place to learn. Learning-focused schools embrace RTI, as it is a proven process to help them achieve their mission.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“A culture of collective responsibility is guided by a shared belief that the primary responsibility of every member of the organization is to ensure high levels of learning for every child.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Collaborative teacher teams are teams of educators whose classes share essential student learning outcomes; these teachers work collaboratively to ensure that their students master these critical standards. The structure for teacher teams could include grade-level, subject/course-specific, vertical, and/or interdisciplinary teams.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“the four Cs of RTI. They are: 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? 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? 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? 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

“changing our schools must start by building a culture of commitment, empowerment, and site ownership.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“the purpose of RTI: to systematically provide every child with the additional time and support needed to learn at high levels.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Targeted Instruction + Time = Learning”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“What Must We Do to Make Success the Reality for Every Child? Once we have embraced the belief that the fundamental purpose of our schools is to ensure that every student learns what he or she needs to know to become a successful adult, and we clearly understand the skills and knowledge that our students will need to be competitive in the world they will inherit, then our final question would be, what must we do to make this a reality for every child?”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“the bell curve serves as both a model and a fitting symbol of an archaic public education system. It describes a broad swath of mediocrity flanked by a sliver of excellence and a ribbon of failure” (Wallace & Graves, 1995, p. 24).”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“How Effectively Are We Preparing Students for These Future Challenges? Because our traditional educational system was designed to prepare students for an economy driven by farms and factories, it was assumed that only a small percentage of students would learn beyond high school. Consequently, schools did not expect all students to learn at high levels, but instead ranked and sorted kids along a bell-shaped curve, identifying those few expected to reach higher education.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Alvin Toffler (Toffler & Toffler, 1999) says the definition of literacy in the 21st century will not center on whether a person can read and write, but rather on whether a person can learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“What Knowledge and Skills Will Our Children Need to Be Successful Adults? If the fundamental purpose of school is to prepare our children to be successful adults and citizens, this is logically the next question we should ask. To be sure, the world for which we are preparing our students today is not the world most educators entered when we transitioned from childhood to adulthood.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Why Are We Here? As Judith Bardwick recommends, “the most important question in any organization has to be ‘‘what is the business of our business?’ Answering this question is the first step in setting priorities” (Bardwick, 1996, p. 134). If this is the case, educators must begin by asking, why are we here?”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“The purpose of RTI is to ensure high levels of learning for every child, and our actions must be guided by that purpose.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Unless a school has clearly identified the essential standards that every student must master, as well as unwrapped the standards into specific student learning targets, it would be nearly impossible to have the curricular focus and targeted assessment data necessary to target interventions to this level.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“a school must target interventions by the student, by the standard, and by the learning target. In other words, what specific essential skill or knowledge is the child lacking?”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“Douglas Reeves’ research (2009) shows that one of a school’s most effective learning strategies is to have highly trained teachers work with the students most at risk.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles

“A school will get much better results if it spends less time searching for the Holy Grail and more time working in collaborative teacher teams to find the most effective teaching practices for its students.”
― Austin Buffum, Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles