RTI Program Evaluation

I think I've said this before, but one of my favorite parts of the world of school psychology is the diversity of it. You get to play counselor, mediator, assessor, writer, and problem solver. I've got to say, I love all the hats I get to wear in the profession. Your day is never filled with just one thing, well... most of the time that is. Yesterday was a day that lacked diversity. I did program evaluation of 9 students who participated in a Tier 3 reading intervention. You'd think, it's only 9 students, that's not very many so it won't take to long. Man I wish that had been the case. I seriously worked on that stuff for about 6 hours. This was mostly because I was creating the form and then making revision after revision after revision. It was a long day and I came home with some knots in my back from staring at the computer, BUT I think I finally got it. My end product looked nice and I understood all the components of it. Basically, we looked at the students participation using a dual discrepancy mind set. First we compared the students to their peers on grade level fluency passages, and how much their fluency had improved on grade level work. Then we looked at their rate of improvement and how it compared to other students at that instructional level (not grade level). In the end I wrote up a short paragraph that summarized everything and provided our recommendation. 2 of the 9 Kiddos are being referred for special education testing, two are being moved to a Tier 2 intervention, and the other five are staying put in Tier 3 for another round. It was an interesting process, I'm glad I got to see it.

We also went over a new way to do the dual discrepancy model that my supervisor is considering going to when looking at rate of improvement. He is running the stats on the grade level screenings to determine the standard deviation, that way he can show if a child's fluency rate of improvement is at least 1 standard deviation from the mean. I don't think it is a mandatory move or anything, but it does give a concrete guideline, which is nice.