National Center on Response to Intervention Announces New Tool to Help Educators Select Instructional Support Programs

Washington, D.C. – The National Center on Response to Intervention (RTI), operated by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), announced the release of an Instruction Tools Chart that assists educators and families in becoming informed consumers who can select instructional programs that best meet their individual needs.

Response to Intervention is an instructional framework that integrates assessment and intervention within a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and to reduce behavior problems. With RTI, schools identify students at risk for poor learning outcomes, monitor student progress, provide evidence-based interventions and adjust the intensity and nature of those interventions depending on a student’s responsiveness, and identify students with learning disabilities.

The Center has established a standard process to evaluate the scientific rigor of commercially available tools and interventions that can be used in an RTI context. The reviews are conducted by three Technical Review Committees (TRCs), made up of national experts who have developed rigorous evidence standards to guide the review process. All submissions to the TRC review process were voluntary.

The Instruction Tools Chart displays additional or alternative intervention programs that may be used alongside core school curricula and provides evidence of efficacy for improving academic outcomes for students whose performance is unsatisfactory in the core curriculum. Chart features include:

• The standards by which the TRC reviews each intervention program. Clicking on each standard provides a detailed description of how the rating was defined.
• Program implementation information including the cost of the program, what is needed to implement it, the support provided, how the program is intended to be used, and with whom it should be used. This information may be accessed by clicking on the name of the intervention program in the "Program" column.
• The ratings in the chart can be clicked on to view the specific data submitted by program developers for Participants, Design, Fidelity of Implementation, Measures, and Effect Size.

In addition to this chart, the Center has published two other tool charts that have resulted from TRC reviews. The Progress Monitoring Tools Chart provides the results of the second annual review of research studies of reading and math progress monitoring tools. The Screening Tools Chart reflects the results of the second annual review of research studies of screening tools.

About the National Center on Response to Intervention
Through funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, the American Institutes for Research and researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of Kansas have established the National Center on Response to Intervention. The Center provides technical assistance to states and districts and builds the capacity of states to assist districts in implementing proven response to intervention frameworks. For more information, visit www.rti4success.org.

About AIR
Established in 1946, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., the American Institutes for Research (AIR) is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization that conducts behavioral and social science research and delivers technical assistance both domestically and internationally in the areas of health, education and workforce productivity. For more information, visit www.air.org.

###