Within the tiered continuum of instruction and interventions, decision rules are necessary for moving students back and forth across tiers as educators address their needs for academic or behavioral intervention. These decision rules must be a flexible and fluid process that relies on relevant student assessment data. Student intervention outcomes drive decision-making at every tier of the model. A systematic method is used to decide interventions and implementation strategies for each student.
At each step of the process, good decision rules ensure effective, equitable, and fair treatment among students. According to the National Research Center for Learning Disabilities (NRCLD), school staff will have a basis for guiding their decisions by having a public, objective and normative framework of "responsiveness," "unresponsiveness" and "at-risk.”
¨ Establish expectations for implementation:
¨ Establish a school implementation team
¨ Review master schedule
¨ Allocate time to provide intervention
¨ Schedule time for on-going intervention team meetings.
¨ Develop team meeting procedures (i.e. agendas, member roles, decision making process).
¨ Establish rules for students who need interventions in addition to the core instruction in tier 1:
¨ Use cut scores for initial consideration in determining risk or advanced status
¨ Schools will need to identify the scores (based on universal screening) that determine whether a student should be considered for Tier 2 interventions.
¨ Consider additional information (diagnostic assessment data, EPAS assessments, teacher recommendation, grades, etc) when determining formal risk or advanced status
¨ Establish the frequency and duration of progress monitoring:
¨ Identify the frequency with which data will be collected (e.g., once or twice a week).
¨ Identify the length of the data collection period during intervention. The length of time should allow for repeated data collection.
¨ Establish criteria for determining a student’s responsiveness to intervention:
¨ Evaluate growth of performance level.
¨ Evaluate rate of growth for each phase of intervention.
¨ Identify/Develop criteria for the strength of intervention within each intervention phase (i.e., number of sessions, consistency or fidelity of intervention, length of sessions and type of intervention procedures).
¨ Consider modifying a student’s intervention at the same tier level or moving the student to a different tier.
¨ Establish rules for moving between tiers:
¨ Analyze performance level.
¨ Analyze rate of growth.
¨ Analyze the strength of the intervention and make necessary decisions based on student data.