Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles (an RTI Book for Professional Learning Communities) (What Principals Need to Know)

The sequel to Pyramid Response to Intervention advocates that a successful RTI model begins by asking the right questions to create a fundamentally effective learning environment for every student. RTI is not a series of implementation steps, but rather a way of thinking. Understand why bureaucratic, paperwork-heavy, compliance-oriented, test-score-driven approaches fail. Then, learn how to create a focused RTI model that works.

Benefits:

• Use the four guiding principles to guide thinking and implementation.
• Shift to a culture of collective responsibility, and build team structures for collaboration.
• Define essential learnings in a program of concentrated instruction.
• Develop a system of convergent assessment to identify students for intervention, determine their unique needs, monitor their progress, and revise or extend learning based on their progress.

Contents:
Preface: A Sense of Urgency
Chapter 1: A New Way of Thinking
Chapter 2: Collective Responsibility: Why Are We Here?
Chapter 3: Building Structures for Collaboration
Chapter 4: Concentrated Instruction: Where Do We Need to Go?
Chapter 5: Convergent Assessment: Where Are We Now?
Chapter 6: Creating a System of Interventions
Chapter 7: Certain Access: How Do We Get Every Child There?
Epilogue: A New Vision of Special Education

Austin Buffum, EdD, is former senior deputy superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District, which enrolls more than fifty thousand students in South Orange County, California. Dr. Buffum attended the Principals Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he was greatly inspired by the work of its founder, Roland Barth. He later led Capistrano's K-12 instructional program on an increasingly collaborative path toward operating as a professional learning community (PLC). During this process, thirty-seven of the district's schools were designated California Distinguished Schools, and eleven received National Blue Ribbon recognition. Dr. Buffum is coauthor of Pyramid Response to Intervention and Generations at School. He also contributed to the anthology The Collaborative Administrator.

Mike Mattos is recognized throughout North America for his work in the areas of response to intervention and professional learning communities. He is coauthor of Pyramid Response to Intervention, which was a 2009 finalist for the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers. He also contributed to the anthology The Collaborative Administrator.

Mike is former principal of both Marjorie Veeh Elementary School and Pioneer Middle School in Tustin, California. In 2004, Marjorie Veeh Elementary, a school with a large population of at-risk youth, won the California Distinguished School and National Title I Achieving School awards. A National Blue Ribbon School, Pioneer is one of only thirteen schools in the nation selected by the GE Foundation as a Best-Practice Partner. Based on standardized test scores, Pioneer ranks among the top 1 percent of California middle schools and in 2009 and 2011 was named Orange County's top middle school. For his leadership, Mike was named the Orange County Middle School Administrator of the Year by the Association of California School Administrators.

Chris Weber, EdD, is a consultant and administrative coach for Chicago Public Schools and the Oakland (California) Unified School District. As principal of R. H. Dana Elementary School in the Capistrano Unified School District (CUSD) in California, together with his staff, Dr. Weber lifted the school to remarkable levels of success. Designated schoolwide Title I, with over 60 percent of all students English learners and Latino and over 75 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged, R. H. Dana consistently exceeded adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals. The school's gains over four years were among the top 1 percent in the state, and it was the first school in the decades-long history of the CUSD to win the State of California's Title I Academic Achievement Award. Under Dr. Weber's leadership, R. H. Dana earned the first California Distinguished School Award in the school's history. After the percentage of students meeting AYP in English and math tripled in four years, the school was named a National Blue Ribbon School.

Dr. Weber has taught grades K-12 and served as a site administrator for elementary and secondary schools. He was director of instruction for the Garden Grove Unified School District in California, which was the 2004 winner of the prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Education. During this time, all groups of students in the district's forty-seven K-6 schools achieved double-digit AYP gains in mathematics and English language arts.

Dr. Weber is a coauthor of Pyramid Response to Intervention and Pyramid of Behavior Interventions: Seven Keys to a Positive Learning Environment.