Part 1: Is Response to Intervention (RTI) Really the Road to Improvement?

Jim Wright is a national trainer and consultant to schools and organizations on Response to Intervention/Multi-Tier System of Supports and other issues relating to educational change and at-risk learners. He is also a certified school psychologist and school administrator, with over 17 years experience working in public schools in central New York State. Jim is the creator of Intervention Central (www.interventioncentral.org), a popular website featuring free student intervention ideas. Jim has also published several books on RTI/MTSS and best practices in assisting struggling learners in the classroom.

Dr. Douglas Fuchs is Professor and Nicholas Hobbs Chair in Special Education and Human Development and a member of the Vanderbilt-Kennedy Center. Before joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 1985, Fuchs was an assistant first-grade teacher in a private school in Baltimore for children with severe behavior problems; a fourth-grade classroom teacher in a public school outside Philadelphia; and a school psychologist in the Minneapolis Public Schools. At Vanderbilt, he has been the principal investigator of 50 federally-sponsored research grants. They have facilitated the development of models of service delivery (e.g., pre-referral intervention, responsiveness-to-intervention, reintegrating students with disabilities into mainstream classrooms); assessments (e.g., formative measures of student and teacher evaluation, dynamic assessment); and instructional approaches (e.g., peer-mediated learning strategies). Fuchs is the author or co-author of more than 300 articles in peer-review journals and 60 book chapters.