How Educators Are Leveraging RTI to Close the Achievement Gap

Discover how innovative educators are closing the achievement gap by rethinking existing protocols like RTI. Recently, we sat down with Dr. Corey Smith to discuss his dissertation featuring a novel use of Response to Intervention (RTI) for closing the achievement gap. His research proved effective during the particularly challenging COVID-19 period, adding to its potential for success during less trying times.

About Dr. Corey Smith

Dr. Smith began his career as a middle school math teacher. He left education for a decade to work as a COO and CFO at a mortgage bank before eventually deciding to return to education. Upon his return, he focused on project-based learning and engineering in mathematics. Eventually, he migrated to the administration side, applying the work from his master’s and doctoral degrees directly into his educational approach.

Overlapping Skills Learned from the Business World

Dr. Corey Smith: I think a big thing that I've noticed is the speed of change in business versus the speed of change in education. The speed of educational change is extremely slow compared to the speed of change in the business world. The other thing is adaptability: in the business world, you're looking at data and adjusting daily. That translates perfectly into the education world.

We need to take something from the business world into the education world to make sure we are utilizing data at every avenue that we possibly can.

We need to take something from the business world into the education world to make sure we are utilizing data at every avenue that we possibly can. Those are 2 big takeaways that I had from the business world into coming into the education side of things.

Overview of Dr. Smith’s Dissertation

Dr. Corey Smith: At a 30,000-foot view, I was in a district that had a high level of poverty. And we were looking at several different things. We did the project-based learning route. We looked at some other initiatives throughout the district. When I arrived at the elementary school, I knew we had to do something very creative to really get our scores up because they were really struggling when I took over that school in that role.

So, we started looking and saw this huge academic achievement gap between those that are in poverty and those that were not. And we're like, how can we help shrink that gap without leaving those that are not in poverty behind? We also need to make sure they're getting their education as well and not just focus all our efforts on those who are socially and economically disadvantaged.

Identifying the Root Cause and Focusing on the Sphere of Influence

Dr. Corey Smith: We are looking at the root cause of all of this. But that's a big door to open, a Pandora's box. There are a lot of problems that kids come to us with every day, so we decided to focus on specifically what we could do with the kids while we had them.

We're not going to change their home life. The only thing we can do is control while we can control. And that was basically controlling the time while they were at school. The schedule, the content we were teaching, and the processes we used to educate them while at school. That's the only thing we can control. And so, once we got to that point, we said, where are we going to start?

Starting with PLCs, Research, and Collaboration

Dr. Corey Smith: We started doing a lot of things. We just started developing PLCs and from then started to work together collectively. We began looking at research for what we could do to help shrink the achievement gap.

We started looking at John Hattie’s research. Looking at his data, we found that the collective teacher efficacy was huge. So, if teachers believe they can make a change, they can work with the kids to make a difference not just independently, but collectively.

That was number one, but we also saw in the top 5, and I believe it was number 4 was response to intervention. It had a very positive effect on student achievement. So, we started digging into that a little bit, and through some experiences we had at PLC conferences, we learned some things about the RTI process, and how we could put it on steroids and look at data differently than what we were looking at before.

Reimagining RTI: RTI on Steroids

Dr. Corey Smith: A lot of times in RTI we look at the summative test and the state type test and see what we can do to affect groupings in RTI. But we wanted to take that to a little bit smaller grouping. So, instead, we looked at what we could do within each classroom by looking at the data, and then taking it down to the standard itself.

The very aggressive part is the 3-week chunk. So, if we have a 3-week unit, we will do an assessment. And let's see what we can do as far as working with the kids and an intervention after 3 weeks using that data. And so that's what we did.

Immediate Assessment and Feedback

Dr. Corey Smith: The end of the year tests and state tests are more like autopsies. It's like what happened at the end of the year when the student wasn't achieving, and then we found out they weren't achieving because we have that data. That's the autopsy report.

But what we wanted to do is create actionable data that we could immediately address so that, hopefully, a student doesn’t get a year behind before we figure out there's a problem. We wanted to keep them on track as close as we possibly could. We consider this intervention a tier 2 model where we're addressing what happened in the classroom, in just the last unit.

Tier 2 RTI Last Unit Intervention

Dr. Corey Smith: So, what the students didn't get in the last unit we're going to intervene in the next 3 weeks while we continue to move forward. So that's the other part of this.  Interventions are about catching kids up, and as fast as we possibly can catch them up.

Ask any teacher, “When would you like your kid to know this? Do you want them to know about it next year? Or do you want to know it sooner?”

So that's why we decided on the 3 weeks. But if we make that data actionable, we can take those interventions immediately and then hopefully get that kid caught up now, because waiting a year just wasn’t going to work.

COVID Research Results

Dr. Corey Smith: We had a pre group, and a post group, and right in the middle of the research was COVID. I knew this was going to affect our results, but I didn’t know how, so we just continued to let it play out.

Our pre-kids took it in 2018 and our post groups took it in 2021. During that time is when we did these 3-week interventions. What we found was that the non-poverty students had an acceleration of learning.

During COVID, pretty much all groups seem to have trended like a hockey stick approach on a download trend. Well, what we found in the non-poverty students is they increased learning.

Extended Learning for Students Who Master the Unit Standards

Dr. Corey Smith: We really didn't get into a part of that intervention process, but while some students were catching up, we added extension activities for those that mastered the standards of that unit. We expanded their possibilities, and they increased their depth of knowledge. So, the data reflects the fact that those students accelerated their learning and did better than the pre-group.

What we found for the socioeconomically disadvantaged students was they did go down slightly. But I want to emphasize slightly. And so, what you saw during COVID was socially disadvantaged students with dramatically dropped off huge hockey sticks, right? Ours were very level, very minute, but they did drop.

So, in my study, it basically says we did not decrease the gap that we were trying to do. However, when you look at it from the context of COVID, we diminished its impact and allowed them to stay even, pre- and post-COVID.

Repeating the Process in a New District

Dr. Corey Smith: I'm new to this district, having joined as the superintendent 2 and a half years ago. All these processes that we did before took us a couple of years to get in place. Now I'm coming into a district that didn't have these experiences before. They didn't have PLCs. So, first, we must build that capacity.

We also must consider all the aspects that have to do with scheduling, transportation, food services, and all that alignment must be in place when you set that 30 minutes aside. That's what we set aside is 30 minutes of intervention every day, to make sure we're hitting this Tier 2 intervention.

Finding 30 Minutes Per Day

Dr. Corey Smith: We did not have to add on to our school day. We were very creative and were able to find that time within the day because everyone worked together. We have teacher committees and administrators working on this to figure out where there is time in the day that we could sacrifice to make sure that we're focusing our efforts on doing everything we possibly can to focus on student learning.

Encouraging Teacher Buy In

Dr. Corey Smith: Buy-in was the big piece when I met everyone in the district and our day one topic on the board. I said this is where we're going. We’ve been reiterating that throughout the years. I call it incremental change and ratcheted change.

And obviously, you must support the teachers as well. You can't tell them we’re going to do this and then not provide the support and the foundational work to get there. You can't rely on someone just to do that on their own. You must support the process and finance the process. It's all a big package.

There are a lot of things that go into this. It's not for the faint of heart to attack something like this. It is something you're intentional with and must build the capacity daily, and over time.

How to Get Started

Dr. Corey Smith: One thing you must do is have your curriculum mapped to know where you're going to put in these assessments and then use a common form of assessments, so that we know what our assessments are. So, we then know what the data is coming out of it, because we own those assessments. It's a very important piece that the teachers own the questions. So that process is part of that capacity building.

Key Takeaways

Dr. Corey Smith: There's not a one size fits all. It's by school because each school is going to be unique. You must make it your own. You can't just cookie cutter this. It's something you must look at and have the teachers own and make it what they want it to be.

This is not replacing what you have. It is taking the timelines and speeding them up. The difference is making sure you have actionable data in a 3-week period of time.

By the time we’re ready, we will be 3 years in before we officially launch here. So, taking the time needed to build that capacity is the number one takeaway as you're building all these pieces.

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