THE ROLE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION TO IMPROVE ELEMENTARY STUDENTS’ READING SKILLS AND ABILITIES

Elementary students at a local elementary school were having reading difficulties and demonstrated a decreased performance on intervention measures, formal and summative assessments. Success in reading is imperative because students must read the content throughout their educational career and students must read the content on state assessments. Students’ success on state assessments determines placement of future intervention groupings in the next grade level, eligibility in extra-curricular activities and ultimately eligibility for high school graduation. The purpose of this evaluation study was to evaluate a pre-existing program to examine whether the implementation and use of Response to Intervention (RTI) was effective in improving students’ reading abilities and skills for elementary students performing below grade level. The research questions addressed teachers training and understanding for RTI as it applied to student’s reading performance in the grade level course. The research design was a mixed- methods design. This evaluation study had two phases. Phase one of the study was the evaluation of the problem of practice. Phase two of the study was the evaluation of an intervention to address the problem of practice. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews and informal observations (not related to teacher evaluation) with ten educators, one instructional specialist, and RTI data. In addition, data were collected from classroom formative assessments, district summative assessments, and state level summative assessments. The data indicate that the evaluation of the problem of practice RTI was not effective in improving students’ reading performance. Additionally, the data indicate from the evaluation of the intervention indicate RTI was effective in improving student’s reading abilities. The implications for change include better initial RTI training, improved RTI implementation coaching, improved fidelity of RTI implementation, improved students’ reading abilities and scores on district and state assessments