MDRC has posted a free webinar on the implications of its recent study of Response to Intervention (RtI) practices for elementary school reading. The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, was conducted in cooperation with SRI, and included more than 140 schools in 45 districts in 13 states. The presenters in the webinar were Fred Doolittle and Rekha Balu from MDRC, Ellen Schiller from SRI, Russell Gersten from the Instructional Research Group, and Carol Connor from Arizona State University.

RtI is a data-driven framework designed to help students learn to read in elementary school. It incorporates a range of assessment, instruction, and intervention principles, including (1) offering multiple tiers of support for students, depending on the level of reading difficulty they may be experiencing; (2) allocating staff members to provide that tiered support to students; and (3) collecting and using data to make instructional and intervention decisions for students throughout the school year.

This study provides new information on the prevalence of RtI practices in elementary schools, illustrates schools’ implementation of RtI practices for groups of students at different reading levels, and provides evidence on the effects of one central element of RtI: assigning students to receive reading intervention services.