In 2010, the Institute of Education Sciences commissioned a much-needed national evaluation of response to intervention (RTI). The evaluators defined their task very narrowly, asking "Does the use of universal screening, including a cut-point for designating students for more intensive Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions, increase children's…

Responsiveness-to-intervention (RTI) is a method for both preventing and helping to identify learning disabilities. An important feature is its multi-tier structure: "primary intervention" (tier 1) refers to classroom instruction; "secondary intervention" (tier 2) usually involves more intensive pullout, small-group…

The Mainstream Assistance Team (MAT) project is a 3-year research program designed to develop, implement, and validate a prereferral intervention model. The model is a least-restrictive, preventative, ecologically-based, problem-solving approach, using a multidisciplinary team composed of a school psychologist, special educator, and general…

Prereferral intervention is designed to reduce referrals for special education placement, by modifying teacher instruction or management of difficult-to-teach (DTT) pupils prior to formal referral. A 3-year project is described in which Mainstream Assistance Teams offer consultation services to teachers in elementary and middle schools. The…

Twenty special educators who taught pupils with mild and moderate disabilities implemented curriculum-based measurement and were periodically assessed for accuracy and given corrective feedback. Analyses indicated that systematic observation and feedback were associated with improvement in accuracy, especially on more difficult aspects of…