An Evaluation of the Efficacy of the Response to Intervention Program at iSucceed Virtual High...

8/12/2019 An Evaluation of the Efficacy of the Response to Intervention Program at iSucceed Virtual High School

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An Evaluation of the Efficacy of the Response to Intervention

Program at iSucceed Virtual High School

An Evaluation Submitted to the iSucceed VHS Administrative TeamBy

Tyson Chaplin



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Summary

iSucceed Virtual High School began a new Response to Intervention (RTI) programduring the spring semester of 2013. Since its inception, students who have been identifiedas at-risk have been funneled into this program in an attempt to provide academic

interventions. The goal is that these interventions will help them to be successful withoutthe need of the student being referred to Special Education. The referral process forSpecial Education can be lengthy and the RTI program is intended to act in a faster moretargeted way to determine whether a student really needs specialized services or whethersome small accommodations can be made in order to help the student be successful. Thissaves the school time and money and helps to ensure we are not over or under identifyingstudents to be placed in Special Education.

The Response to Intervention process begins for a student when they are identified by their subject area teachers as having difficulties in their classes despite goodattendance. Since iSucceed Virtual High School is an online high school, attendance plays a crucial role in determining at-risk students. Some students enroll with the school

and then do very little work and do not log into their classes frequently. School staffcannot determine whether these students are not being successful due to their lack ofattendance or genuine academic struggles. For this reason, the school only focuses theRTI program on students who have good attendance but are still struggling in theirclasses.

Once a teacher has identified a student, they are referred to an RTI team. The RTIteam consists of the academic counselor, special education staff, general educationteachers, and school administrators. The team meets twice a month to discuss studentsand possible interventions for those students. Once the team has determined adequateinterventions for the student, those strategies are passed along to that student’s teachersfor them to enact in their classrooms. The student’s parents are also notified. The

student’s progress is then monitored and the RTI team decides whether more intensiveinterventions need to be enacted or whether the student is demonstrating success with theinterventions that are already in place. If a student is not successful after several attemptsto intervene, the student is then passed on to the Special Education department to beginthe formal referral process to enter Special Education.

The evaluation detailed in this report was meant to assess the efficacy of the RTI program in its current state and provide feedback and insight as to how the program may be improved upon. The evaluation was conducted from October to December of 2013.Students, their parents, and school staff were surveyed and interviewed as part of thisevaluation process. Student achievement and attendance data was also tracked throughoutthe evaluative process to measure the effect of the interventions on individual students.

The evaluation found that the process for identifying students who might be potential candidates for the RTI program was solid and worked mostly as planned. Theinterventions that were put in place for each student had varying effect but were generallyfound to be helpful. All stakeholders in the program were invested in its success and weremostly positive in their feedback about the program itself. The evaluation team gaveinput on how the identification process could be streamlined further and how themonitoring of student progress could be improved.



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Description of the Program Evaluated

The Response to Intervention (RTI) program started at iSucceed in May of 2013 andcontinues today. The program consists of a team who identifies students who are at-riskacademically and puts measures in place to help them be more successful. Current RTI

team members include Crystal Sistoni, the academic counselor; Aaron Ritter, the principal; Tyson Chaplin, the Special Education coordinator; Joe Rollins, AmericanHistory teacher; Holly Mortimer, English teacher. The team meets twice a month and theaverage meeting lasts roughly thirty minutes. Students that are funneled into the programare identified by their subject area teachers and then referred to the RTI team via an RTIreferral form (see Appendix A). During the course of this evaluation there were 17students in the RTI program.

Students in the RTI program are given special accommodations to help them bemore successful in their classes. The accommodations may include things like graphicorganizers to help scaffold writing projects, audio books in place of paperback books, etc.When the student is referred to the RTI team, the student’s parents are notified and

invited to participate in the process and give input. The team then monitors student progress and further interventions may be given as needed. If students fail to thrive aftertwo rounds of interventions are enacted, a final meeting is held to consider beginning thereferral process for Special Education. The purpose of the RTI program is ensure thatstudents are not over or under identified for Special Education. This saves the schoolmoney and saves the Special Education staff time.

Program Objectives

The objectives of the RTI program are two fold. First, the school has a desire to helpstudents be the most successful they can be with the fewest accommodations possible.

Secondly, the program is intended to save school staff the effort and time of goingthrough the Special Education referral process with a student who is found not to needSpecial Education. This saves the school resources, time, and ultimately, money. Specific program objectives are listed below:

• Decrease the number of false Special Education referrals by at least half. A falsereferral is a student who is referred to Special Education and is ultimately foundto either not need or not qualify for specialized services. The number of falsereferrals to the Special Education program prior to the RTI program was about10 a semester.

• Increase academic achievement of students identified to be “at-risk” by at least

20% in their core English, math, and science classes.• Train teachers in the utilization of simple accommodations that can help

students and increase achievement.

• Increase the engagement of at-risk students as measured by an increase in classattendance by at least 25%.



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Program Components

iSucceed’s RTI program consists of several components. The first aspect of the program consists of the subject area teachers identifying students who may be struggling but have a good attendance record. This is done by interacting with the students in live

class sessions, looking at the quality of work they are turning in, and then comparing thatto the attendance report for each student. If the teacher identifies a need, they fill out anRTI referral form and submit that to Tyson Chaplin.

Mr. Chaplin is spearheading the RTI program and is in charge of maintaining the listof students in the program and chairing the bi-monthly team meetings. Once the RTIteam meets and discusses a student, that student’s parents are then notified and also askedfor input. The team also selects several small interventions that they feel may help thestudent in their classes and communicates those interventions to the student’s subject areateachers. The RTI team then monitors student progress by collecting data from classworkand the student’s attendance. If reading or math skills are a concern to the RTI team, thestudent will then be placed on a weekly monitoring cycle in which the student will be

administered brief checks of reading or math skills.Each meeting, the team analyzes the data generated by the student and makes

decisions as to whether or not new or different interventions should be put in to place tohelp the student. If the student is making adequate progress, no further interventions will be enacted and the team will continue to monitor the student’s progress. If the studentrequires more intensive interventions, those are put into place when deemed appropriate.

At this point, if a student is successful with interventions the RTI team will continuemonitoring the student but no further action will taken. However, if the student continuesto struggle, the RTI team will then refer the student to the Special Education departmentto begin formal Special Education referral process with student and parent consent. Alldata collected on the student by the RTI team will be passed on to the Special Education

department at that point.

Evaluation Method

Participants

Due to the size of the school and the RTI program, all participants in the programwere asked for input during this evaluation; no samples were used. School staff that wereselected to provide data for this evaluation were the two subject area teachers on the RTIteam, the school principal, and the academic counselor. Other subject area teachers wealso asked for their input regarding the interventions the RTI team had instructed and

trained them to use on the students and their overall impressions on the program. Parentsof students in the program and the students themselves were also asked to give theirimpressions and feedback. For privacy reasons, the names of the students and their parents have been changed for the purposes of this report.



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Procedures

During the evaluation period surveys were generated via SurveyMonkey and sentvia email to parents, students, and school staff (See appendices B, C, and D). All survey participants had about three weeks to complete the surveys and the final deadline for

survey completion was 12/01/2013. After this time, some teachers and the school’sadministrator were interviewed as a follow-up to some of their survey responses and thatdata was included in the narratives of the teachers’ answers to the survey questions. Sincethe evaluator is also the RTI program’s coordinator, he chose to abstain from participation in the survey.

Student attendance and achievement data was also collected on the student’s whowere enrolled in the RTI program during the evaluation period. Achievement data isdefined by scores on routine classroom assignments and quizzes. The purpose forcollecting this data was to track student progress to observe any changes in their gradesand engagement with the school that may have stemmed from their enrollment in the RTI program.

The RTI program ran normally during the entire length of the evaluation and all program participants operated normally within the confines of their job and tasks. Noabnormalities were observed in student or teacher behavior that would lead the evaluationteam to question the validity of the data collected.

Data Sources

As stated above, attendance and achievement data were collected on all students participating in the program. This data came from the attendance logs kept by the schooland the grade books kept by the school. Seventeen students were enrolled during theevaluation period. Sixteen of them participated in the survey. Sixteen sets of parents also

participated in the survey. The school consists of twenty teachers but only fifteen of thoseteachers had students in their classes who were in the RTI program. Those fifteenteachers plus the academic counselor and the principal were given the survey. Allteachers given the survey completed it by the deadline. SurveyMonkey was the site usedto distribute and collect the surveys. Surveys were sent out to staff email addresses andthe student and parent email addresses the school has on file.

Results

Student Survey Results:

Question 1: (1) NotHelpful

At All

(2) SomewhatHelpful

(3) Helpful (4) VeryHelpful

How would you

rate your overall

experience with

the RTI program?

0 1 10 5



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Question 2 Answer Narrative:What interventions have been put in place for you that have been most helpful, why?

Many of the students reported that graphic organizers to help them create writtenworks had been given to them and they had been trained in how to use them. The studentssaid that was helpful. One student said, “It helps me because I can see what I am going to

write before I start.” All students reported that they were being given either weeklyreading or math quizzes to chart their progress. Three students reported that they did notlike the math quizzes but they were getting more practice and that was beneficial to them.One student’s favorite intervention was the use of audio books in place of paper books.She said that the difference is “awesome”.

Question 3 Answer Narrative: Has being in the RTI program encouraged you to be more active in your classes, why?

Most of the students reported that they have a renewed motivation in their classwork now that they are getting help. This has led to all but one the students reporting anincrease in attendance. The data that has been pulled from the school’s attendance

software backs up these claims.

Question 4 Answer Narrative: Please give your feedback as to how the RTI program could be improved.

Several students mentioned that they would like greater input on whatinterventions are given to them. Almost all of the students disliked the weekly math orreading quizzes that were being administered to them and mentioned them as somethingthat could be done away with because they did not know why they had to take them. Twostudents reported that they did not like the school calling and informing their parents thatthe RTI team was considering enrolling the student in the program. Both of thosestudents were not of legal age and parental consent had to be obtained in those instances.

Parent Survey Results:

Question 1 Answer Narrative: How long has your student been participating in the Response to Intervention (RTI)

program at iSucceed?Out of the sixteen sets of parents that replied to the survey four reported their

student being enrolled for ten weeks. Six more reported the student being enrolled foreight weeks. The other five respondents had students that had been in the program sincelast year.



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Question 2: (1) VeryLittleImpact

(2) SomeImpact

(3) HighImpact

(4) VeryHighImpact

How would

you rate theoverall impactthe RTI program hashad on yourstudent’sacademicachievement?

0 2 13 1

Question 3: (1) NoCommunication

(2) Very LittleCommunication

(3) SomeCommunication

(4) Lots ofCommunication

Please rate the

communicationlevel you have

had with the

RTI team duringthis process.

0 0 3 13

Question 4 Answer Narrative: Do you have any suggestions for how the RTI program could be improved to make the

experience more positive for you and your student?Parents reported that students had complained about the reading and math quizzes

they were taking each week and did not know why this was happening. Some parents alsosuggested that they be allowed to come into the Boise office for the RTI meetings rather

than being asked to attend over the phone. Generally, all parents that responded to thisquestion spoke favorably of the RTI program and said they thought it was having a positive impact on their student.

Teachers and Staff Survey Results:

Question 1: (1) NotSatisfied At

All

(2) SomewhatSatisfied

(3) Satisfied (4) VerySatisfied

Please rateyour overallsatisfactionwith the RTI program.

0 1 13 3



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Question 2 Narrative:What kind of job has the RTI team done in educating you in the interventions given to the

students and how to implement them? Please explain your answer.All of the teachers reported that the RTI team notified them that there was a

student in their class who was going to be receiving interventions in their subject area.

There were mixed feeling about how much instruction they received from the team priorto being made to implement the necessary interventions. Some teachers felt theinstruction was adequate and others reported feeling unprepared.

Question 3 Narrative: Have you seen increased engagement from the students in your class who are in the RTI program? Please explain your answer.

Out of the fifteen teachers surveyed all but three reported seeing an increase inassignments being turned in and email communication increasing in frequency from thestudents. They also reported that many of the students started to attend their weekly liveclassroom sessions online. Three teachers reported that they saw neither an increase or

decrease in student engagement and attendance.

Question 4 Narrative: Do you feel the RTI program adds value to the school and your teaching experience?

Please explain your answer.All teachers felt like the RTI program was a valuable and necessary component to

the school. Five teachers stated that they were not pleased with the added effort they hadto make when working with some of the students in the RTI program. They felt that theinterventions were “extra work” and interfered with their workflow.

Question 5 Narrative:

Please give your feedback in how the RTI program could be improved.Five teachers mentioned that they would like to see a way to better streamline theadministration of the interventions for the students in the RTI program. Fourteen of thefifteen respondents suggested they get more training in how to better implement theinterventions for the students. One teacher thought the program was fine as it is. Someteachers were also concerned because students did not make the progress that the teachershad anticipated.



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Student Attendance and Achievement Chart:

The above chart illustrates the increase in student attendance and achievementfrom the time the evaluation period started to the time of the evaluation’s conclusion. Inorder to chart the data, the seventeen students’ average grade across all core classes andtheir average rate of attendance was calculated every Wednesday. While the attendancedata looks extremely low, this is due to how iSucceed’s software calculates attendancetime. For an online school, the average attendance time for the students who were trackedstarted on the slightly below average side and ended just a little above the average whencompared to the rest of the student body.

In all, students in the RTI program did see improvement in both areas. It wassporadic at times and not as high as some of the staff had hoped it would be. The

reasoning behind the dichotomy between staff expectations and reality will be discussedin more detail later in this report.

Discussion

This evaluation was conducted as a means to assess the efficacy of iSucceedVirtual High School’s new Response to Intervention (RTI) program. What the evaluationfound was that the program did have a positive impact on student engagement andachievement, though the impact was not as large as some had expected. Based on theevaluation, the program has areas that could be improved upon that would strengthen it.

Based on the data gathered from the students, they thought the program washelping them but did not like the weekly quizzes in either math or reading they weregiven. Each student had a weakness in one of those areas and the quizzes they were beingadministered are meant to remediate some of those areas of struggle. Students’ gradesand attendance did improve during the time that this evaluation was conducted.

The parents were hearing the concerns of their students and voiced them whenasked to do so on the survey they were given. The RTI team had been communicatingwith them but the team may want to consider reaching out more based on the data

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received from the parents. Overall, the parents were reported they were pleased that theirstudents’ grades were improving.

Teachers felt that more communication and professional development wasneeded from the RTI team. Some teachers also reported that they were not happy withhow the RTI team added more work to their lessons. Teachers did report that the extra

work was paying off in the form of increased engagement and somewhat achievementscores but some were disappointed that the students did not make bigger gains.The big point that stands out include the communication aspect of the RTI

program. The RTI team may want to consider increasing the amount of training eachsubject area teacher receives on the interventions they are expected to implement. Theteam may also want to communicate more realistic expectations to the teachers so that thestaff is not let down when students do not make the gains they were anticipating. Theteam may also want to communicate to the students and the parents the reason the weeklymath or reading quizzes are being administered so that the students and their families seethe value in participating in them. More communication all around may help allstakeholders in the program better understand the program and its goals.

Overall, the iSucceed’s RTI program seems to be somewhat successful. Studentengagement and achievement increased during the time of the evaluation and all of thestakeholders are able to say the program does more good than not. Communication could be strengthened and professional development time increased, but the program seems to be headed in the right direction.

Project Cost

Below is a breakdown of the cost of this evaluation. The evaluator was paid astandard rate of $500 per day worked and he worked for forty business days. There wasalso a small amount of money used for stationary and printing fees associated with the

compiling of this document.

Personnel: Cost

Tyson Chaplin: 40 days x $500/day $20,000.00

Total Personnel: $20,000.00

Other Expenses:

Miscellaneous Supplies $125.00

Total Expenses: $125.00

Total Project Cost: $20,125.00



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Appendices

Appendix A: RTI Teacher Referral Form

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Appendix B: RTI Program Survey – Parents

Appendix C: RTI Program Survey – Students



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Appendix D: RTI Program Survey – Teachers & Administrators

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