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Limitations of the study included the RTI identification process which focuses on the lowest performing students within a classroom or grade level; does not address gifted students or other students who are not working to their full capacity. In addition, another limitation consisted of a need for more information on how to implement with fidelity research-based practices into clear, concrete, and achievable practices. Additional

information should be gathered on the fidelity of the intervention in relation to the student to teacher ratio, length, frequency, and the duration the intervention should be

implemented. Essential to RTI intervention is that staff must be knowledgeable of the learning goals and the instructional practices being implemented. The challenge is not just figuring out which intervention to use, but also finding out how to integrate

assessment and progress monitoring into the instructional practices. The inconsistency of implementing the intervention with fidelity may limit educators’ ability to provide the appropriate intervention to students.

Reaching literature saturation for this study concerning fidelity of Tier 2 interventions, progress monitoring in the RTI process, and professional development

training consisted of a sequence of steps. As a novice researcher, I first studied various professional journals from Walden’s library. The next step reviews various meta-analysis on RTI and Tier 2 interventions. Keywords used throughout the review of the literature were Tier 2 interventions, fidelity of instruction, response to intervention, the fidelity of implementation, and lastly STAR assessment. I used the Walden University databases to search for peer-reviewed journal articles and project studies through ProQuest Central related to Tier 2 interventions and fidelity of RTI interventions.

These databases included Education Research Complete, SAGE Premier, and EBSCO, which I used to find the most research on the response to intervention and the fidelity of Tier 2 interventions. Scholarly resources utilized for this study consist of specific reference materials, books, and peer-reviewed articles. The authors of these sources are specialists in their fields of study. I used a copious number of scholarly peer review articles under the education title in the Walden library, and the reference pages from selected articles for my study provided a lot of additional research that addressed my topic.

Implications

This study focused on staff perceptions of the fidelity of Tier 2 interventions in assessment, progress monitoring, and professional development training. A possible project direction is professional development training through the professional learning community (PLC) environment. The data gathered from the study addressed existing strengths and weakness of professional development training. The professional development training provides opportunities for educators to identify areas that are

impacting the implementation of Tier 2 interventions with fidelity and other issues or concerns that have not been addressed, but that are impacting the fidelity of the RTI framework and the Tier 2 process.

DuFour and Fullan (2013) indicated that PLCs are helpful in developing student performance for several reasons. First, PLCs ease the use of assessment data to direct improvement measures. Second, PLCs help staff produce instructional verbal and academic feedback to student learning needs. Third, PLCs changed the working culture for teachers so that they all experienced shared accountability and efficacy. The RTI framework is about a team of educators coming together to share data and information on a student’s educational challenges and through collaboration and input from all members of the team a collective decision is made on how to address student’s needs. The PLC process, like the RTI process, creates a culture or climate in which teachers are willing to share their experiences, questions, and instructional knowledge with each other. This process builds a conducive learning environment where all team members are working towards the common goal of students’ success (DuFour & Fullan, 2013; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012).

The PLC process and professional development training allows educators to reflect and collaborate with peers on their practices and creates numerous opportunities to develop the knowledge and understanding required to implement interventions with fidelity (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 2011). For an evaluation, a formative and summative evaluation will be conducted of the professional development training. The district administrators will decide the educational factors that can impact the existing

practices and the fidelity of the Tier 2 interventions (Creswell, 2014). In summary, the study addressed staff perceptions of their experiences and training.

Summary

Schools utilize RTI to address the problems of students not meeting grade level expectations based on benchmark assessments. RTI is a three-tiered framework that places students in groups based on their particular needs. Student’s needs are addressed through research-based instruction, and continuous progress monitoring and assessment are conducted to provide feedback to staff. This study collected staff perspectives of their experiences on the implementation of the fidelity of Tier 2 interventions and the components (training, progress monitoring, and assessment) that are essential to the effectiveness of the framework. The key to the fidelity of Tier 2 implementation will be the interpretation of the data as well as transferring the data into information concerning the next level of work to meet students’ academic needs (Clarke et al., 2014; Fuchs, Fuchs & Vaughn, 2014; Sgouros, & Walsh, 2012).

RTI requires the practice of data-driven instruction an educational practice that allows teachers to use results of formative and summative assessments to evaluate students’ understanding of the content and students’ ability to transfer the content to the next level of work. The progress-monitoring tool is imperative because assessments provide basic information but do not reveal students’ progress in response to the interventions (Ysseldyke, Burns, Scholin, & Parker, 2010). Educators should have numerous opportunities to address concerns about students’ development with the RTI team as well as during the PLC time allocated at the campus (Ysseldyke et al., 2010). The

dialogue and discourse shared during the RTI process, and PLCs cannot be applied in one selected classroom. Rather, the data gathered from staff members’ experiences and understanding of the RTI process may provide relevant information for the campus and district to increase students’ acquisition of new academic concepts and students’ abilities across curriculum areas (Ehren, 2013; Fuchs et al., 2014; Ritchey et al., 2012; Yong & Cheney, 2013).

Section I includes a summary of the research literature related to Tier 2

interventions in the RTI framework. The conceptual framework and the problem address that students in Grade 3, Grade 4, and Grade 5 have shown a decrease in achievement in reading and math. The purpose of the study was to gather teachers’ perceptions of the fidelity of Tier 2 interventions at Elementary School E. The remaining four sections of the study included collecting data on staff perceptions of the fidelity of Tier 2

interventions, assessments, progress monitoring, and teacher training and the impact on student achievement. Section 2 will review the description and justification of the

research method, participant selection, and data collection procedures. Section 2 will also provide the results of the study, and section 3 will offer a summary of the findings, implications, and impact on social change as well as recommendations for future research.

Section 2: The Methodology

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