State Response to Intervention Initiatives

The report documents the results of a search of state education agency web sites in the nine jurisdictions for publicly available information related to RTI (response to intervention).

It finds that seven jurisdictions have developed state documents on RTI that address core features of RTI identified by the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities: high quality classroom instruction, research-based instruction, classroom performance, universal screening, continuous progress monitoring, research-based interventions, progress monitoring during interventions, and fidelity measures.

Six of these jurisdictions had documents addressing all eight core features (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont), and one (Rhode Island) had documents addressing seven.

Documents are also categorized by theme: whether the state education agency required RTI as a component of the special education eligibility process, whether the state education agency used or encouraged a three-tiered RTI model, whether a self-assessment or local plan was required before implementing RTI at the local level, and whether the state education agency supported or funded RTI pilot sites.

The seven jurisdictions used or promoted RTI as an approach to supporting struggling students in general education or for determining eligibility for special education at the local level. The most commonly found document types were nonregulatory guidance (six states), followed by regulations (four states). The document review could not shed light on the extent of RTI use at the local level. While there was no evidence of RTI policies or procedures on the public state education agency web sites for two jurisdictions (Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands), that cannot be taken as evidence that the two jurisdictions do not allow RTI.