Invitation to Regional Meetings on Response to Intervention

INFORMATIONAL LETTER: 52
POLICY CODE: IMI

TO: Superintendents of Schools
FROM: Susan Gendron, Commissioner
DATE: December 2, 2009
RE: Invitation to Regional Meetings on Response to Intervention

We know that schools are concerned about getting RTI in place and being confident that they are satisfying the requirements of the law. The Maine Department of Education will be offering regional meetings to provide schools with basic information about RTI systems and to assist schools in documenting their progress with RTI Systems. A final meeting will be offered at the Department that will also be a podcast available for those who are unable to attend in person.

There will be sixteen regional meetings scheduled between December 14 and January 28. Teams of four from every school in Maine are invited. We encourage these teams to include school leaders such as the principal, teacher leaders, and curriculum coordinators. You may access the meeting dates and locations and sign up for a meeting at (link will be added). The registration deadline is December 11, 2009. You may register online at (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=el02mlLZ82Ylt2u1HLCNUQ3d3d .

During these regional meetings, trainers/facilitators that have been trained by the National Center for RTI will provide information about RTI and walk your school team through a School Readiness Profile. This profile will serve two purposes:

Provide baseline data for the DOE and Educational Partner organizations.
Provide a tool for your school to direct and track your implementation of an RTI system.

RTI is a multi-tiered, decision-making approach that addresses academic and behavioral difficulties of ALL students. It is an integrated school improvement model that is standards-driven, proactive and incorporates both prevention and intervention. RTI frameworks may differ from SAU to SAU and even within SAUs, from building to building. Consequently, the unit of change in adopting an RTI framework is the school building. The success of RTI (and, ultimately, all students) depends on a unified approach to teaching and learning supported by everyone in the school. RTI requires a collaborative effort. In many schools, such collaboration requires educators to adopt new ways of thinking and acting together. Implementing an RTI framework requires a systems focus. To implement this innovation in a school setting, attention must be paid not only to research about effective instruction, but also to managing the change process.

The Maine Department of Education (DOE) has provided guidance and resources that can be accessed at http://www.maine.gov/education/rti/index.shtml . The first item on this webpage a school or SAU leader should access is the Maine State Response to Intervention/Pre Referral Guide . This guide outlines the core components of successful RTI frameworks, suggests planning questions that SAUs and schools must answer, and provides a research base for each component.

If your school has already completed one of the many readiness profiles available on the Department’s RTI website, and you choose not to attend one of these regional meetings, we would invite you to fill out the readiness survey so that we may have more comprehensive baseline data for the State on schools’ readiness to provide an RTI system.

The readiness profile can be found online at : http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=MtCQ6cgfghwRUasW7HpQTQ3d3d

For more information please contact: Barbara Moody at barbara.moody@maine.gov