Austin Buffum
In our books, It’s About Time: Planning Interventions and Extensions in Elementary/Secondary School (Buffum & Mattos, 2015) we solicited chapters from twenty-four schools that had successfully found time to give students what we call “Core and More.” In these schools, ALL students had access to essential grade-level standards, as well as access to Tier 2 supports with these essential standards. In addition, some students in these schools also received intensive Tier 3 interventions to remediate skills and knowledge that should have been acquired in previous years. In this particular post, I’d like to expand on the importance of Tier 3 interventions. Read more
Austin Buffum
Austin Buffum, EdD, has 38 years of experience in public schools. His many roles include serving as former senior deputy superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District in California.
Want the Right Kind of Thinking About RTI? Ask the Right Questions!
Categories: Authors, PLC, RTI
A few years ago, we wrote an article that appeared in Educational Leadership called “The Why Behind RTI.” In this article, we asserted that many schools were struggling with RTI because they had asked the wrong questions to guide and shape their thinking. Questions like “How do we raise our test scores?” which all too often leads to a singular focus on the “bubble kids”; “How do we implement RTI?” which reduces this life-saving process to a checklist of actions to accomplish; and “How do we stay legal?” which often leads to byzantine paperwork and mere compliance.