WEBVTT

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I'm Dave Tilly, and I'm
the Director of Innovation

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and Accountability at
Heartland Area Education Agency

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in Johnston, Iowa.

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We provide services in
lots of different areas

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of education to our schools.

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Heartland's role in
the evolution of RtI,

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I guess I would say,
is we began looking

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at ways we can improve our
system in the late 80s.

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The beginning of RtI was
really, and continues to be,

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just a simple quest of, "How can
we do better for our students,

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and how can we work
more effectively

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to get better results
for all of our kids?"

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Over time, it transitioned
from just being, for us,

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a special education idea
to an every education idea.

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We realized that a lot of
the challenges that students

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in special education
face weren't created

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in special education.

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There were other
factors, and we realized

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that while we could
have a reactive system,

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many of the general
principles that we were working

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with in special education also
applied to all of education.

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So, one of the questions that
we get asked a lot is, "So,

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how does special
education look different?

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What impact has all of this
had on special education?"

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It's had a number of
different impacts.

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One, the way that we go
about evaluating students

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with disabilities has gone
through a significant change.

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In the past, when I started
practice back in the late 80s,

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our approach to evaluating
students

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with disabilities was a
pretty standard approach.

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We had what we called
our standard battery

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of assessments we did for
pretty much any problem.

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We had the standard nine
things that we measured.

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And it didn't really
matter what the problem was;

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we measured those
same nine things,

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And then our purpose
really was to identify,

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"Does the student
have a disability?

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Which disability do they
have, and what are their needs

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for specially designed
instructions?"

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So it was very much
focused on child find.

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What we realized was that a lot
of the processes and practices

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that we were using,
while they were useful

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for finding students, didn't
really contribute a lot

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of information to,
"So what are we going

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to do with them next week?"

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I like to say that, in my
mind, RtI doesn't really stand

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for Response to Intervention;

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it stands for Really
Terrific Instruction.

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And that's what its focus is.

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Because if we don't change,
if we are not able to support

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and improve instruction
in the classroom,

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the rest of it doesn't matter.

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That's where it needs to start,

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and that's where
it needs to live.

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We had the ability
to start moving away

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from a normative
comparison to more

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of a benchmark comparison of,

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"We know that a second
grade student at this point

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in the year ought to be
reading about this well,

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and here are the kinds
of reading performances

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that they ought to do."

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And we moved to a diagnostic
approach that wasn't diagnostic

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at the level of which diagnosis
do we give the student in terms

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of their disability, but which
skills does the student have.

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Which of the foundational
reading skills does the student

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have that they are
supposed to have,

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and which of them
are they missing?

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And if they're missing
these skills,

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what is it that we should do?

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What instructional strategies
can we match up specifically

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with the kinds of skills that
the student's struggling with?

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And that gives us a much richer
basis and a much richer body

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of information upon which
we can make decisions.

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So from that information, not
only can we make decisions

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about does the student
have a disability

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and need special education,
we can also make decisions

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about what should that
special education look like.

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Another change is we moved away

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from using specific
disability labels

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in identifying students
with disabilities.

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We found that often times those
disability labels themselves

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created false expectations and
low expectations for students.

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And we realized that, you
know, the expectations we have

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for students are very important,

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and we need to have high
expectations for all students.

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And we moved

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to a non-categorical
service delivery model.

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So basically, students
in Iowa who are eligible

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for special education
are eligible individuals.

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That's the designation
that they're provided,

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and then they get all

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of the specially designed
instruction-related services

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that they need in
order to be successful.

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So we moved away from
using disability labels.

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We've realized early on
that just placing a student

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in special education
doesn't guarantee success,

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and often students

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with disabilities are
tough-to-teach kids.

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And we realized that we
can't predict with certainty

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that just placing a student
in special education is going

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to result predictably in better
outcomes for that student.

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And so we knew that we needed

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to have better measurement
technologies

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to give us feedback, to
give the system feedback,

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on is what we are
doing effective

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because these students
are already behind.

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We can't wait six months or nine
months to do the post-testing

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to find out how well did
our instruction work.

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We have to be able to ask within
a six- to eight-week period,

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"Is our instruction working?"

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And to do that, it takes a very
different kind of measurement.

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When we make adjustments
to our instruction based

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on the data we collect
on student performance,

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student performance improves.

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When kids can see the target
and it stands still for them,

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kids are capable
of almost anything.

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Schools that are
effective do three things,

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and they do them
very, very well.

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They identify what they
want their students to know

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and be able to do, they align
their curriculum instruction

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to teach their kids those
things, and they keep score.

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That's what this
process helps them to do.