Teacher Skill and Response to Intervention in West Virginia Pilot Schools

As a program evaluation, the West Virginia Department of Education implemented a Response to Intervention (RtI) approach to the identification of students with learning disabilities in the spring of 2005. Eleven pilot schools were used in the West Virginia RtI program evaluation. The purpose of this study was to assess the change that resulted in teacher skills as a consequence of the implementation of the RtI model. It was hypothesized that teachers’ skills will significantly change in a positive direction as result of the implementation. A pre-post survey design was utilized to evaluate the outcome. Significant positive changes were reported in skills and knowledge relevant to reading instruction and teaching the five essential components of reading while no significant change was reported in skills involving using RtI to differentiate instruction, using assessment to guide instruction and designing specific interventions