Response to Intervention Part 3: Success!

N.B.E. Man

Part 1 in this series covered the background of our 1st year of school-wide interventions. Part 2 looked into the guidelines, management issues and lessons learned. Finally, in Part 3, the success of the reading interventions are laid out for review. 

After a year of planning, training, and implementing it is rewarding to report on the student achievement success from the interventions used during the 2010-2011 school year. The best proof that professional learning has been successful is the resulting student achievement. On the FCAT, Florida’s state test, Neptune Beach Elementary grew by 52 points and made AYP in reading!

An earlier post described the some of the professional learning the teachers participated in prior to the start of the Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) lessons. As with any new program, there were some glitches that had to be worked out, but in the end it was running smoothly. LLI was the main reading intervention in the primary grades. We are proud to report that 100% of the students in LLI showed 6 months or more growth in reading. Our 3^rd grade students take the FCAT. They must pass FCAT Reading to be promoted to 4^th grade. The 3^rd grade students in LLI groups made outstanding growth with 90% of them passing the FCAT Reading test. In fact 70% of them scored at proficient level or above!

We had other reading interventions also in place in 3^rd grade. The students in Corrective Reading also made growth. The Corrective Reading Group B1 had 40% of the students passed the FCAT while Corrective Reading Group B2 had 60% pass the FCAT. In 4^th grade the students from the Corrective Reading groups will most likely be placed in LLI groups, starting around the second week of school.

Our main math intervention, Math Navigator, was easier to implement but more difficult to document. As mentioned in the previous post, effective record keeping and documenting student growth was problematic. At the end of the school year the data had holes and a number of students had missing scores. Due to the inconsistencies in the data, it was not possible to clearly report student growth in math. NBE did not make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in math, in both of our subgroups. Three things could have impacted our math scores: new generation standards, new textbook adoption, and a retooled test FCAT 2.0. Any one of these could account for a decrease in student achievement. Next year there will need to be an increased focus not only on the interventions, but also on the core math instruction.

In the past, teachers have asked, "What can we do with students who come to my class reading a year or more behind the rest of the students?" Until this year there wasn't a clear answer. Now, with the LLI and other interventions being used with a dedicated time to provide them, there seems to be an answer that meets the needs of both the students and the teachers. This continued focus, working with tested and untested grades, should reduce the overall number of students requiring interventions. At least now when they are identified, we have options. We also have a reason to celebrate all the hard work everyone gave to get to this point. 

Thank you for reading about our interventions and sharing in our successes. Please take a moment to leave a comment, ask a question, or make a suggestion. All will be greatly appreciated!