As of 2011, 94% of schools across the county reported some level of response-to- intervention (RTI) implementation (Spectrum-K12, 2011). Despite this, much of the existing research on RTI has focused on exploring assessment practices across tiers and the efficacy of specific interventions (e.g., Gresham, 2007; Mastropieri & Scruggs, 2005; VanDerHeyden et al., 2007), providing an overly simplistic view of RTI and overlooking the complexities involved in sustainable school-wide implementation. Numerous scholars have recently called for more research that investigates the complexities of school-wide RTI implementation (e.g., see Fletcher & Vaughn, 2009; Wixson, 2011). This qualitative single case study, informed by a theoretical orientation that situates reform as a co-constructed process, has responded to this call by investigating how staff at one urban K-8 school constructed and implemented the RTI framework as part of a district-level reform effort. The following research questions were addressed:
3. How did the implementation of the school’s RTI model occur?
a. Beginning with the school’s involvement in SAI, what was the sequence of events in the implementation of RTI?
b. What were key decisions regarding implementation and how were they made?
c. What factors hindered/promoted implementation?
4. How have school staff influenced the school’s RTI implementation?
a. How have school staff beliefs about urban students influenced the school’s RTI implementation?
b. How have school staff responded to the implementation?
Table 6.1 presents the major categories of influencers on the construction of RTI and
associated concepts that resulted from the analytic methods described in chapter three. In this final chapter, I integrate and discuss the major findings presented in chapters four and five, offer implications for both practice and research, and describe the study’s limitations. Table 6.1
Findings Presented as Major Categories of Influencers on the Construction of RTI
Major Categories of Influencers on the Construction of RTI
Associated Concepts
Process of implementation Co-construction; exploration; adoption; implementation; decision-making; innovation; drift
Supporting/hindering conditions Co-construction; technical supports and structures; grade-level teams; teachers’ beliefs and practices; school community; leadership
Responses to implementation Co-construction; focus on students; shared ownership; fidelity of implementation; equity; variations in implementation; student outcomes
Data analysis revealed that the implementation of RTI at the Robey occurred in a recursive and complex process and followed a framework described by many other scholars (e.g., see Fixsen et al., 2005; Fullan, 2008; Fullan & Pomfret, 1977), which has established that although there are stages of implementation (e.g., exploration, installation, initial implementation, full implementation, innovation, and sustainability), these stages often overlap and do not occur in a specified order (Fixsen et al., 2005). In the Robey’s
implementation, innovation represented a key feature, and variations in implementation that occurred throughout the grade levels reflected responses to cultural variables and unique grade-level contexts.
The Robey’s RTI implementation was supported by focused school leadership that espoused a “learning by doing” (DuFour et al., 2010) approach and meaningfully engaged staff in decision-making about the model. The intersection of inclusion and RTI generally yielded a sense of shared responsibility for student success and challenges, though special educators were still viewed as having the most expertise about intervention planning. Technical structures and supports played a significant role in how implementation occurred. Time and personnel were intertwined in that participants struggled to use these limited resources to most effectively support students. Further, because of constraints in these resources, teachers and administrators sometimes had to make difficult decisions about to whom and how to deliver support. As a result, some students received high-quality, differentiated instruction and others did not. Finally, a collegial school community and culture of high expectations for students supported RTI implementation. Participants largely saw RTI as a way to improve students’ academic achievement, which was consistent with both the mission of the school and with participants’ beliefs that students could be brought to proficiency with appropriate support.
In section that follows, I use the perspective of co-construction to integrate these findings and discuss the process of RTI implementation at the Robey.
The Process of Implementation through the Lens of Co-Construction
Many improvement schemes, rooted in the rational-structural paradigm of change, concentrate on the diagnosis of current illnesses and the prescription of ideal cures, cures that emphasize positions, policies and procedures rather than people. They pay little attention to the lived realities of the educators who must accomplish change or
to the practical problems of institutional innovation. This blind spot is more than just unfortunate; it is often fatal (Evans, 2001, p. 91).
Like many urban districts across the nation, the Wisteron Public School district has for years struggled to eliminate significant achievement gaps among student groups, address a persistent dropout crisis, and more appropriately identify and instruct students with special education needs (Halle et al., 2011). These ongoing challenges prompted the WPS
superintendent in 2009 to engage senior staff in conversations about developing a systemic and systematic framework for change. With the help of an external team of educational consultants, WPS leadership established SAI, which was intended to establish a multi-tiered system of supports that incorporated collaborative problem solving, progress-monitoring, and data-informed interventions and supports in academics and behavior in all of the 125+ public schools in Wisteron. Formally announced to principals by district leadership in August of 2010, SAI immediately became a framework for school-level staff to implement. However, substantiating Payne’s (2008) observations of the “pathology of bureaucracy” in urban districts (pp. 122-124), Liz noted the district’s culture of frequently adopting and dropping new initiatives, saying, “there’s so many things that have been district-implemented that no longer exist.” Consistent with MacDonald and Shirley’s (2009) observations about
“repetitive change syndrome” (p. 6), this culture contributed to teachers’ cynicism around reform initiatives, as Michelle questioned, “Does anything last in the district?”
The study revealed that although SAI was a district-led effort, school-level implementation at the Robey was, in many ways, a personal process. Data analysis substantiated the view that reform implementation is complex and that what works in one setting, or grade level, may not in another (Berman & McLaughlin, 1978; Datnow et al.,
2002; Honig, 2006; Stein & Coburn, 2008), revealing that the implementation of RTI at the Robey was dynamic, co-constructed by numerous influences, and resulted in varied
responses. Although the school adopted the SAI model that was developed by the district, its implementation at the school, and particularly across grade levels, reflected a co-constructed and evolving approach shaped mainly by the school culture and community, individual teachers’ beliefs and practices, and the variable availability and use of technical
infrastructures.
The process of implementation is always a challenge for local educators, as it asks them to learn and enact new procedures and protocols in addition to their existing
responsibilities (Fixsen et al., 2005). Figure 6.1 presents a way of conceptualizing the co- construction of the RTI implementation at the Robey, where political, cultural and technical influences came together to shape the implementation process (Datnow et al., 2002; Hubbard et al., 2006).
Figure 6.1. Implementing RTI/SAI in the context of a systemic reform effort. Adapted from “Statewide implementation of evidence-based programs” by D. Fixsen, K. Blase, A. Metz and M. Van Dyke, 2013, Exceptional Children, p. 215.
Much scholarship has attended to the change implementation process (e.g., see Fixsen District SAI Design Team
Robey RTI Leadership Team • Principal • Teachers/Facilitators • External Consultant WPS System Change Practice-Policy Communication Loop Policies & Supports to Enable Effective Practice
Student Intervention Teams • Grade-level teachers • Facilitator
Robey RTI Implementation
Technical Structures & Supports to Enable Implementation; Monitoring of Fidelity External Drivers • IDEA 2004
• Federal & State
Accountability Measures External Supports • Training & technical assistance from outside organization Culture Beliefs Community School-level Communication Loop Co-construction Co-construction
Full Inclusion
& RTI
Federal & State Accountability Measures
Collaborative, data- based problem solving & tiered
intervention
Elementary Middle