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Response to Intervention:
A Rural High School’s Attempt to Improve Reading Achievement

By Michael E. Rozalski

Reading ability is a primary area of concern in today’s schools. The National Assessment of Educational Progress Report verifies that there has been little progress in reading scores since 2002. In fact in a 2005 study, 60 percent of participating seniors scored below proficiency level and 25 percent of those scored below basic level. This concern is not limited to high school students – researchers have found that 37 percent of fourth-grade school children cannot read well enough to effectively accomplish grade-level work.

This three-tiered Response to Intervention/Reading Project was a rural high school’s initial attempt to help its students become proficient readers, thus avoiding a lifetime of reading difficulties. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004 provides school districts with the opportunity to develop research-based multi-tiered instruction.

About the Project

This project took place at Berkeley Springs High School in Berkeley Springs, W.Va. The high school has an enrollment of approximately 750 students, 33 percent of whom are classified as low socioeconomic status. The school population is 97 percent white and 1 percent African American, with the remaining 2 percent of students being a combination of Asian, Hispanic, and American Indian heritage. Eleven percent of the school population receive individualized education program (IEP) Services.

Currently, middle and high schools in West Virginia are not required to use RTI until 2010. The state is in the process of developing RTI models for middle schools and high schools as well as providing professional development support. Therefore, the staff at Berkeley Springs High School was pleased to have the chance to test interventions that will be eventually incorporated into the state curriculum.

The school’s principal, George Ward, staffed the project with his own faculty. He arranged the schedules of the teachers involved in the project so that they would have a common planning period. This allowed the team to address issues of instruction, class environment, assessments, which interventions were to be utilized, and at which tiers they were to be implemented. The planning periods also provided time to address staff development concerns. Several team members were trained specifically for the reading program utilized in this Project, the McGraw-Hill/SRA Corrective Reading Program. The Morgan County Board of Education provided funding to cover the cost of materials.

“At first I was unsure of just how effective a reading program would be at the high school level,” admits English teacher Jennifer Unger. “But after teaching the SRA Corrective Reading Program for a year, I was impressed with the achievements made by our nonreaders at BSHS.”

Selecting Students for the Project

All general education and special education teachers in the school were asked to refer any students who had demonstrated reading difficulties in their respective classes. A total of 67 students in grades 9 through 11 were then assessed with the Woodcock Johnson III Reading Fluency Test, informal reading inventory for word recognition and reading comprehension, and the SRA Corrective Reading and Comprehension Assessments.

Thirty students were then selected from the assessed group to participate in the RTI/Reading Project for a full school year. Of these 30 students, 25 were receiving special education services and 5 were classified as at-risk. The selected students had various reading levels and some were classified as having learning disabilities.

Structuring the Project

The project was devised to provide three levels of services, each delivered to a group of ten students. The project started with small study groups so students could be closely monitored during the study -- a key ingredient for successful implementation of RTI.

The students in Group One (Tier I Interventions) would receive traditional reading instruction embedded into the content area curriculum and instruction. This is the general education curriculum offered to all students. The ten students in Group Two (Tier II Interventions) would receive the traditional reading instruction embedded into the curriculum and instruction plus in-class resource assistance. Group Three (Tier III Interventions) students would receive Tier I and Tier II interventions as well as direct reading instruction through a formalized reading program and supplemental interventions. Tier III interventions would serve as the most intense level of services.

All students in this project had access to and participated in the general education curriculum. The specific reading strategies were developed to be delivered in addition to the general education curriculum.

Interventions, Services, and Accommodations Used

All of the instructional methods and interventions used for this project were evidence-based. They included best practices from the State of West Virginia as well as interventions and methods collected from several professional journals and publications.

Tier I received the grade-appropriate core instruction that is given to all students. The teachers in these classes monitored progress several times during the school year. All students were able to seek assistance from the teachers either before school or after school. If a student’s progress continued on pace with that of the entire class, then no further action was taken. If a student’s progress did not keep with the preset parameters of the class, he or she would be moved to Tier II.

In addition to receiving grade-appropriate core instruction, Tier II students had the opportunity to attend help sessions and were given benchmark assessments throughout the school year. Students in Tier II could move toward either Tier I or Tier III interventions based on their individual progress in the classes. The interventions added at this tier included co-taught classes and resource assistance made available to students in either small-group or individualized settings within the classroom.

The students in Tier III, the most intense level of interventions, started with the same services offered at Tier II. In addition, these students received direct reading instruction. Tier III also added additional time to the reading instruction given daily.

The SRA Corrective Reading Program was used in this project. It was supplemented by Odyssey, a computerized program aligned with West Virginia state content standards. In addition, students were trained to finger trace and to use highlighter strips to help them maintain their place when reading.

The Results

Improvements were noted in all three tiers. An unanticipated outcome was that Tier 1 students (general education curriculum) demonstrated the lowest rate of improvement. Baseline data for Tier 1 students were a grade equivalency fluency rate of 9.9, comprehension equivalency of 8.6, and word identification of 9.0. The overall fluency growth was .1 grade level (to 10.0); the word identification rate improved by .4 of a grade level to 9.4. However, the comprehension level stayed stagnant at 8.6.

The Berkeley Springs staff was pleased with the results demonstrated by the students in Tier II and Tier III. Tier II (general education curriculum with interventions) improved its fluency rate from grade equivalency 6.8 to 7.2, its word identification skills from 6.0 to 6.5, and its reading comprehension skills from 6.1 to a 7.2.

Tier III students (general education curriculum with more specific interventions and increased instructional time) demonstrated the greatest patterns of improvement. These students’ fluency, comprehension, and word-identification rates jumped by approximately two full grade levels. Fluency improved from 4.7 to 6.6, comprehension from 3.5 to 5.4, and word identification from 3.8 to 5.9.                                                                                        

“I was shocked at the results when I helped with the grade-level assessment testing,” says Susan McBee, a special education co-teacher in science. “I quickly realized we were on the right track implementing a reading program at the high school level. The reading program and co-teaching efforts were quite beneficial to our students.”

Overall, the team was pleased with the results of this first attempt at implementing a RTI framework at Berkeley Springs High School. The project accomplished three of its intended goals. First, a system of assessments was designed to chart the students’ reading skills progress at periodical intervals. Second, collected data showed a narrowing of the achievement gap among the school’s low-performing students. A third accomplishment of this project was the improvement of the reading comprehension skills noted in Tiers II and III. As noted above, one of the major premises of this project is the fact that reading comprehension skills are vital for success at the secondary level and beyond.

Next Steps

Berkeley Springs High School plans to expand the number of students served by RTI in the future. Along with the expansion of interventions comes the additional responsibility to train additional staff. The team noted that differentiated instruction was utilized more in Tiers II and III due to joint responsibilities and co-planning by both general educators and special educators. Again, additional professional development is needed in the area of differentiated instruction.

The team is adjusting and refining the RTI framework to be more efficient in terms of time, instruction, and interventions and to better serve the students. Reorganization plans at this time include moving some strategies and interventions to different tiers; one example is to utilize the Odyssey program at an earlier tier level. The staff will continue to use the SRA Corrective Reading Program and will add more specific instruction for reading comprehension skills at all tier levels. Berkeley Springs High School awaits the state’s final recommendations on appropriate interventions and RTI models.

Michael Rozalski is a teacher and transition coordinator at Berkeley Springs High School in West Virginia. He served as the leader for the RTI/Reading Project under the supervision of Principal George Ward. Rozalski is a member of West Virginia CEC.

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