Article: Article - Response to Intervention (RTI): What teachers of reading need to know

In this article the authors offer understandable definitions and processes of RTI in the method of identifying and supporting struggling readers. RTI signifies a key change to the Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA) by changing the process of which students are identified as special education and providing early intervention to those students in need of special instruction. This law is designed to encourage school districts to provide additional support for struggling students within general education. This support should be provided as early as possible, for example when students show the earliest signs of difficulty. While schools have attempted many ways to help struggling students, including those with disabilities, the current focus is on an improved, research-based process, Response to Intervention (RTI). In this article the authors discuss RTI's five step process  and then validate how the RTI process is used to

 help a struggling second grade student. This student is given initial intervention, assessed and monitored, then individualized instruction. At the end, the student responded to the individualized plan by meeting the benchmark, reading instructionally at grade level with comprehension, and reading. The RTI process was effective for this student, had the student not received RTI, he would have had to fail before receiving additional support. The beauty of RTI is that it removes that it really doesn’t allow the student to fail because he/she will receive proper instruction problem by providing instruction as soon as a student displays signs of difficulty.