When a student has difficulty learning, especially if that student is part of an economically disadvantaged community, it is often assumed that some innate disorder is to blame. This assumption does not take into account other variables that may be hindering the child’s academic progress, such as a lack of language proficiency, interruptions in school attendance, cultural differences, or an unconventional learning style.

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a systematic educational approach based on a collaborative effort among general education and special education educators as well as parents that provides supplementary aid to struggling students. The RTI model calls for accurately screening and diagnosing learning problems, then prescribing proven instructional interventions at different levels of intensity that address each individual’s particular needs, and that can be monitored and adjusted over time.

Raising Expectations for All Children

In December 2007 the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that people with learning disabilities have every opportunity to succeed in school and life, launched a new initiative called the Response To Intervention Action Network with the support of more than $2.2 million in grants from the Cisco Foundation and $400,000 worth of donated Cisco equipment over a two-year period. A multiyear effort aimed at facilitating and supporting the development, replication, scalability, and sustainability of the RTI model, the RTI Action Network promises to help transform public education in the United States by improving outcomes for all students—including those who are at risk of falling by the wayside because of unaddressed learning deficiencies that could be remedied by timely instructional interventions.

The RTI Action Network takes advantage of cross-disciplinary partnerships with leading national organizations and stakeholders that include principals, classroom teachers, special education teachers, school psychologists, speech therapists, reading specialists, and parents. A key component of the RTI Action Network is an interactive website that gives front-line educators and families access to the resources they need to implement the essential components of RTI, and offers opportunities to network with peers and with the nation’s leading RTI experts.

Progress So Far

To date, more than 53,000 teachers and families have visited the RTI Action Network website since it went live in April 2008. In June approximately 1380 stakeholders attended the first RTI Action Network online forum to discuss “Are You Ready for RTI? What Do You Need to Know, and What Do You Need to Do?”