practices will not occur without close scrutiny and accountability.  RtI practices will not disappear into the proverbial black hole of educational fads.   There are many examples - both emerging and scaled up - of secondary schools that are on the journey of RtI implementation with plenty of success stories and lessons learned.

How does RtI Work in Secondary Schools and Why Should I Care?

Let’s get straight to the guts of RtI and what this site is about:

Effective instruction
=
Successful outcomes for kids. 

“Instruction” means everything we do/say/teach every minute of the school day related to academics and social/behavior.

“Kids” refers to every kid that walks through our school doors.

     RtI is not about adding something new to already full plates. Any educator - whether non-tenured or veteran - will find that that the fundamental constructs of RtI are the same fundamental constructs of effective instructional practices that have been known for decades. That is, high quality, research-supported instruction, frequent monitoring of instruction using data, teachers working in teams to plan for how to teach, what to teach, and when to teach, and a school-wide infrastructure to support it all. Frankly, the core principles and practices of RtI are actually nothing new under the sun when it comes to what we know about good, effective instruction. This is encouraging news.  
    So why has RtI generated so much conversation and interest even among secondary educators?  This framework ought not be viewed as another passing education “fad,” or good for some kids but not for all.  RtI is not a product, intervention, or program.  RtI is a framework for how resources are allocated in our school buildings.  RtI brings structure and a common language to already existing practices in our schools, and eliminates ineffective, unnecessary ones.  There are emerging experiences of diverse secondary practitioners that have found that the principles, vocabulary, and framework of RtI make how we serve all secondary students more efficient and effective.  For these practitioners, once they understood and saw how implementing the framework with integrity affected outcomes for kids they would never go back to how business was being done before.
    We also know that implementing these RtI practices to a degree of sufficient integrity in secondary settings will most likely take longer than in elementary settings - 5-10 years!  Since part of RtI is designing a system of regular data collection to guide educational decisions, we can feel confident that any "new"