RTI and SBG Reflections: 6 Lessons Learned

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LESSON 0: All kids can learn. (RTI)

Additionally, I believe different kids learn differently, and that has classroom implications. (RTI)

Struggling learners can achieve mastery of standards.  The students I have that aren't doing well don't see the point of what I have to offer.  Or they don't come prepared to class.  Or they have had repeated illnesses and that has affected their attendance.  What motivates kids is a belief that they can accomplish a task and apply it with the proper supports.(RTI)


I have control over what is important in my classroom.  And because of that I no longer feel the need to travel in a lock-step fashion for each student through each and every unit I teach.  Some kids need more practice than others.  Others need visual cues or mathematical models rather than a lot of text.  This realization has evolved my classroom to the point that standards-based education/competency-based education now makes sense to me.


That wasn't always the case.  I started (Round 1) with an assumption that SBG meant that I had to retest kids again and again, and if they passed the test, they had mastered the content.  Back in the day, that was called,  "O-B-E-ing the test" because the outcomes-based model lacked finesse.  LESSON 1:  Traditional tests do not equal mastery.  I shifted to a project-based model back in 1994, because a kid that missed the project had to redo the project over, and with each successive attempt, my expectations went up. Kids finally realized what I had to offer was steps towards a goal.  Struggling learners need a blueprint. (RTI)

Next, I moved to Understanding by Design and the 5E learning cycle, combining the work of Roger Bybee and Grant Wiggins (Round 2).  This forced me to put away the textbook and focus on the national standards.  Suddenly, there was a lot less busy work and a lot more checking for understanding.  Rick Stiggins and his Toolkit for Assessment introduced me to the difference between summative and formative assessment early on, but Understanding by Design clarified my purpose.   LESSON 2:  Assessment tells me if kids 'get it' and I need to define what the students need to  'get'. This is true for all students, not just those who struggle.

The next model was Mastery (Round 3).  During this round, a new wrinkle for SBG appeared at my district.   The semester grade was not complete until a child had passed all unit assessments.  If a child did not pass assessments, they were given an incomplete for up to a semester.  This was to help the struggling student, but getting together with said students was often difficult.  Here I learned  LESSON 3:  When a student is in my room, I can pull them out and work with them.   LESSON 4:  To do this, however, my classroom must fundamentally evolve.  Lecture became replaced with student-centered reading, hands-on activities and processing to meet the needs of all students.

As I became more and more versed in RTI, I realized that there would be kids who struggled in a unit, but just struggling in one unit did not automatically mean that they would struggle in the next.  Relevance played a great part in what I was doing, so going back to my universal design was critical, and a review of my assessments with an eye to application mattered.  Blended learning, with videos, sample problems, and multiple tools, led me to beef up my website for student-friendliness.   LESSON 5: Content knowledge matters for lesson design; it does not exist to make me a spouting fountain of knowledge.   My student needs to figure out concepts and connections, and it my job to help him or her critically think about that job.


The most current wrinkle in the RTI/curriculum standards universe where I work is the #PLC, which is designed to help teachers collaborate.  Time is a factor.  Personal belief and exposure to current research is a factor.  The role a PLC plays in helping students who struggle is a factor.  I find myself wondering if these district-centered groups are really Communities of Practice.  LESSON 6:  Collaboration works best when people are united by a purpose in which they believe.  Is our purpose for meeting resulting in students who are more engaged in learning?

I had a great discussion on Twitter about standards-based education this weekend with dedicated teachers who are frustrated by poorly executed standards-based education.  And I can't blame them.  The lessons above are a radical paradigm shift from a lecture-centered, rows-of-desks classroom to a constructivist approach that relies on metacognition.  The shift takes time, study, work, buy-in---all of these are necessary before we drop a mandate onto teachers.  How do we plan to equip our teachers with the tools necessary to learn these lessons?

If we don't, this becomes another near-miss in education that forces us back to that factory model with a grade stamp rather than allowing schools to transform.

The Pitfalls of Analyzing RTI Data

Here's a guilty little secret:  I like to know the ending of books ahead of time.   See, it's the one time during life that I can peek at the back page and know whether or not it will all turn out ok.  I don't look for details other than the quick answer of whether the main character lives or dies. And that's the problem with RTI.  We've set this system up, we're working on data, but I don't know how to say for certain that we've succeeded.  It's the worst part of action research for me.

A little background is probably needed.  My District has been part of the Iowa IRIS project, and we've been working on the process of learning and implementing RTI/IDM.  One of the first things we realized was that we needed a wide base of involvement for our teachers.   Over a quarter of our teachers were trained in the model initially, and we've used professional learning communities to help others get on-board, learning together in teacher-focused PD and from one another.  After long discussion, we identified a group of 24 students who we felt were struggling and got ready to pilot our model.  My administrator empowered our BLT to set up the structure of interventions, and another teacher and I set up the process and are running the pilot program.  We've been collecting data for two quarters.

When I first looked at the data, I simply counted up the numbers of D+, D, D-, and F for each grade and put it in a matrix.

	9	10	11	12	TRACKED
D+
D
D-
F

But this way of looking at data is not good enough.   Even though I tried to see patterns, the n(students) is not constant from grade to grade.   This makes comparisons ineffective, although trends may be seen, perhaps, from quarter to quarter.

Next, I tried a comparison of Ds and Fs in graphical form, but I decided that wasn't really the best usage of data for a myriad of reasons.  For one, we use a mastery system, so if a child passes all of the standard assessments, we feel that they have a minimum standard of knowledge in the coursework, even if they get a D-.   Grading scales are another discussion, but just for now, I decided to focus on Fs just for struggling learners, to see if the average number of Fs was decreasing over time.

This showed the data in a different light.   I can see that term 2 is worse than term 1 for most grades.   Perhaps it's because the newness of school has worn off, but it was a relief, I think, to see that term 2 is historically more difficult for kids.  But this was inadequate.  I was only looking at n(struggling students), and those numbers were not consistent from grade to grade.

At this point, my husband interjected a comment (perhaps seeing me tear at my hair was having an effect), suggesting that we take a look at the total population of each group, and then use a pareto study to normalize the numbers to account for the n(students) of each grade.    I'm so glad that his quality background lets him see the value of statistics!  So I ran the numbers.
          
So, in Term 2:

9th:  18/119 kids had a F for a 15% problem

10th: 10/132 kids had a F is a 7.5% problem

11th: 11/134 kids had a F is an 8.2% problem


Hey, that means we have something happening with our pilot kids in 10th grade (it also means we need to act, because our 9th graders need added to the pilot as quickly as possible).   Because of the analysis,  and the data shown to teachers, we have added another forty kids to our tracking procedures.

Finally, I looked at the pareto study. I tracked this year's 9-12 graders for 4 quarters---terms 1 and 2 of last year and terms 1 and 2 for this year.   My data is longitudinal, so the 9th graders for this year have no high school data for two of the four terms.  This is what resulted.

This also prompted some realizations for me.   Last year, even though we identified this year's 10th graders because we wanted three years of data, we really should have identified lots of this year's 11th graders.  And this year's data tells us, loudly, that the 9th graders need some help.   This is powerful information to share with our teachers, and by doing so, we continue to reform the way we do business

To summarize:

• Data-driven education is not just for administrators--it's for teachers, teacher-leaders, and for the effectiveness of students.  While I've done this for assessments, this is the first time I've applied statistics to the needs of a class.
• This is action research, and it's in-process.   I'll be taking the time to look at more data before I am confident with the patterns. I'll continue to look at the data in different ways
• Data doesn't always follow a perfect trend line.  In that case:  collect more data to get your answer.
• In the past, we've just noticed kids were struggling, but we weren't systematic in addressing the weaknesses. This data shows us exactly where we are headed, and who we need to target for intervention next.
• Teachers can use data to make decisions, and schools will benefit as a result.   That is what we hope to accomplish with RTI...a way to use data to make decisions.

I would be interested in your thoughts on what other data I should be collecting.  My husband, the quality guy, suggested a capability study, because it will tell us if our RTI program is having an effect on all students, pushing up the number of students with As or Bs over time (which would appear to be an indicator of being intrinsically motivated).

I'll talk about exactly WHAT we are doing for struggling learners in my next post.