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Last fall, Laura Kelley, a 5th grade teacher at Fulton Elementary in Aurora, Colo., accepted a newly created volunteer position as the response to intervention coordinator at her school. Kelley, who has been in the classroom for 10 years, knew the position would be a big job when she accepted it. And, in fact, in just the first few months, she clocked some 800 hours in unpaid overtime.

If she was unnerved by the amount of time she had to spend managing her new responsibilities and learning about RTI, though, Kelley never lost her enthusiasm for the RTI process. 鈥淪tudent achievement is growing because we are able to plan together to meet the needs of our learners,鈥� she says.

Kelley鈥檚 stalwart efforts to find her way in RTI are somewhat representative of what is happening in her district as a whole.

Midway through their first year of district-wide implementation, Aurora district officials see early signs of success with their RTI model, but admit to some growing pains, including the familiar complaints about excessive paperwork and time demands.

Located on the east boundary of Denver, Aurora is Colorado鈥檚 third largest city. It has a student population of 34,000 and operates 54 schools. Aurora faces the challenges of many urban districts: Sixty-four percent of its students receive free or reduced lunch and 34 percent are English-language learners who, all told, speak 95 different languages.

Since RTI is mandated by Colorado, using the framework was not a choice for Aurora. But district instructional leader Charlotte Butler believes that the 10 or more years the district has spent emphasizing 鈥済ood first instruction鈥濃�攊nformed, reflective instruction that is often synonymous with Tier 1 best practice鈥攁nd student progress monitoring has helped to smooth the K-12 transition to RTI. 鈥淲e鈥檙e already far along the road, in terms of what we already have in place to support all students as learners,鈥� she explains.

Classroom Support

To support the disparate learning needs of its students, APS took the state鈥檚 three-tiered RTI model and tweaked it鈥攎ostly noticeably, by adding a fourth tier, between the conventional Tiers 1 and 2. Lisa Escarcega, chief accountability and research officer, describes the insertion of a 鈥淭ier 1a,鈥� which is intended to prevent or delay Tier 2 placement for at-risk students, as a path to 鈥渆ncourage success.鈥� Tier 1a includes providing classroom teachers with coaching support on intervention strategies.鈥淚t keeps the focus back on good instruction at that first tier level until our achievement improves,鈥� Escarcega explains.

Get materials on Aurora public schools鈥� , including the district manual, flowchart, assessment tools, and parent resources.

As part of that focus on instruction, each school in Aurora has its own RTI coordinator. At Fulton Elementary, Kelley now spends a more reasonable 30 hours a month in her role, having 鈥渓earned to manage the team and resources鈥� in her building.

Because Kelley is both a classroom teacher and the school RTI coordinator, she serves a double role. In addition to teaching and monitoring her own students, she delivers professional development to teachers using videos, podcasts, and articles about RTI. She also runs the school鈥檚 Instruction Support Team weekly meetings. 鈥淚t鈥檚 where we look over what鈥檚 been tried to see if we missed something, to figure out if there鈥檚 something else we can do,鈥� says Kelley.

Before intervention strategies reach the IST, however, teachers must monitor students鈥攄ocumenting both behavior and academic performance鈥攊n order to identify what kinds of problems students are having in the classroom. 鈥淚f math homework is not getting done, is it an academic problem or is it an organizational problem? Is it affecting how the student is performing in math?鈥� Kelley says.

If the teacher can isolate the problem, she explains, it鈥檚 that much easier to identify what intervention strategy will be most effective. To work through their intervention strategies, teachers at Fulton discuss their concerns at their weekly grade-level meetings and with literacy and math coaches. Once all school resources have been exhausted, the IST steps in.

A Customized Approach

As a school-based RTI coordinator, Kelley can take advantage of special professional development opportunities, which run from inquiry-based problem solving to training on the district鈥檚 new tracking software, even as its bugs are being worked out. She also has the ear of one of the district鈥檚 three RTI coordinators, Kim Patten.

Patten, who meets regularly with each school-based RTI coordinator in one of the district鈥檚 three 鈥渟tudent achievement zones,鈥� is generally pleased with the district鈥檚 progress with RTI, and notes that the customized approach the district is taking to implement the framework is a plus. 鈥淲hat I鈥檓 really happy with is that we have a structure and foundation in place,鈥� she says. 鈥淏uildings can tailor what it looks like based on the needs of their students. Teachers are having a chance to look at what their practice looks like and they can help each other. [Teaching] is no longer happening behind the closed door. We鈥檙e sharing the successes, the challenges, and the support.鈥�

But even with a hefty RTI manual, a handsome flowchart that outlines the intervention delivery process, and the new Web-based tracking system, Patten sees the district still has work to do. 鈥淲e are in our first year of implementation, so we will continue to learn and grow in our knowledge and expertise as we go,鈥� she says.

One area the district has yet to conquer is one that many schools have struggled with: assessing reading in older students within an RTI framework.

To remedy this, Charlotte Butler and a district secondary literacy coach plan to meet with literacy gurus Yetta Goodman, Ken Goodman, Debra Goodman, and Alan Flurkey to study the use of retrospective-miscue analysis, an instructional tool that helps struggling readers to better understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

鈥淲e know that as students get older the ability to assess their reading is more complex. And, in fact, there are no effective standardized assessments that work for secondary readers,鈥� explains Butler. 鈥淭he nature of the work we鈥檙e about to embark on with Debbie and Alan and Ken and Yetta is very exciting. If we can develop something specifically for secondary students, it could be groundbreaking.鈥�