Paula Rogers is an educational speaker who supports schools in the implementation of PLC and RTI. Paula retired in 2015 after a career in public education as the deputy superintendent for instruction, accountability, and human resources for Hallsville ISD, a midsize district in East Texas with five Title 1 campuses.
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Based on Best Practices at Tier 3, Elementary
“Can you help us? We have been to a lot of training sessions, and we think we know what needs to be done to implement RTI, but we’re not sure what the leadership and the intervention teams are supposed to do and who should be on these teams. Are they sounding boards, or do they actually make decisions?” Read more
This entry by W. Richard Smith and Paula Rogers is the first of a two-part series exploring collective staff responsibility, commitments in team work, and the organizational structures of leadership and intervention teams.
In writing our recently published book, Best Practices at Tier 3, Elementary, we explored and worked to provide practical steps in the implementation of Tier 3 of response to intervention (RTI) at the elementary level.
As we conducted our research and began to formulate the book, we repeatedly saw the absolute need for school staff to move from “buy-in” to establishing collective commitments. Commitment from a staff was evidenced over and over as a critical element to the successful implementation and sustaining of both a professional learning community (PLC) and all tiers of RTI. Read more
The first time I was asked the question conveyed in the title – it was by a campus principal that I have great respect for, and it stopped me in my tracks. I quickly realized that the question was asked because as a professional learning community with collective responsibility for all students we now have systematic practices beginning at Tier 1 that were previously reserved for only a few students. I recognized that we had many reasons to celebrate – but we also had more work to do. The question prompted a great collaborative team meeting which resulted in improved data monitoring for students needing intensive intervention. My experience answering this question is becoming the norm across the nation. With the increased focus on creating multi-tiered systems of support for at-risk students, schools are beginning to re-examine and re-imagine the role of special education.
It has been an honor to lead a team in planning and opening a public virtual high school available to any student in our state. Our commitment is to offer an education to our virtual students commensurate to that offered at our highly successful brick-and-mortar high school.
Paula Rogers
