Embracing ‘Response to Intervention’

The Heartland Area Education Agency in Iowa is helping school districts adopt the framework as good instructional practice.

Sully, Iowa

Identifying struggling students wasn’t an issue for teachers at Lynnville-Sully Elementary School, tucked away in this town of 900, an hour’s drive east of Des Moines. Knowing what to do next was the hard part.

Even in an elementary school with just 188 pupils, it was hard for teachers to offer intensive instruction to children who needed extra help while juggling the needs of the rest of their students. The school’s reading-support staff created lesson plans that didn’t always relate to regular classroom work. And teachers felt they had to wait too long to get extra resources to help the students who needed it.

“You know what they need, and yet you had to prove it,” said Cindy Gibbs, a 2nd grade teacher. “Sometimes you’d miss half a year before you’d get them in the resource...