Response to Intervention: Increasing Fluency, Rate, and Accuracy for Students at Risk for Reading Failure

In recent years, with the advent of NCLB, the U S Department of Education established new guidelines for the identification of students with learning disabilities. In an effort to meet these new guidelines, many districts have implemented a Response to Intervention (RTI) model. This model has been implemented in conjunction with, or in place of the previously common IQ-achievement discrepancy model that emphasized IQ in the identification process. This quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of RTI by measurement of the impact of specialized instruction on the reading fluency of identified fourth grade children at risk of failure. The results of the study indicated that student achievement significantly increases when RTI is effectively implemented.