Academy 3:
Ensuring Culturally
Responsive Student
Supports
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Introductions
National Center for Culturally
Responsive Educational Systems
NCCRESt
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What’s in an Educational System?
People
Practices
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Policies
What are Culturally Responsive Educational Systems?
People
Practices
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Policies
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Leadership Academies
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Roles
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Outcomes
Following this Academy, participants will:
• Gain awareness of the need for increased research on RTI
with students who are culturally and linguistically diverse.
• Identify and interpret existing research that demonstrates
effective interventions at the secondary and tertiary tiers for
students who are culturally and linguistically diverse.
• Consider RTI as an alternate process for identifying
students who require special educational supports.
• Consider interventions at the tertiary tier that are inclusive
and collaborative.
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Agenda
15 min
40 min
20 min
30 min
10 min
15 min
20 min
30 min
Introductions, Greetings, & Warm-Up
Activity 1: The Continuum of Supports
Lecturette 1: Intervention in Culturally Responsive RTI
Activity 2: Revisiting the Continuum of Supports
Break
Lecturette 2: Expanding the Unit of Analysis: RTI as a
Process of Culturally Responsive Special Education
Eligibility Assessment
Activity 3: A Support Plan for a Student
Leave-taking and Feedback
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Activity 1: The Continuum of Supports
Participants look at the interventions for students that
are already being utilized in their schools in order to
activate their prior knowledge.
Activity Takes 30 Minutes
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Lecturette 1
Intervention in Culturally Responsive RTI
Frameworks: Research into Practice
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Agenda
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Exploring the Research Base for Interventions Grounded
in the Role of Culture in Teaching & Learning
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Exploring the Research Base for Interventions Grounded
in the Role of Culture in Teaching & Learning
TOOLS
SUBJECTS
GOAL
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Culturally Responsive RTI with Students
Learning English
Considerable research demonstrates that
bilingualism may facilitate the
development of reading skills in a second
language & that bilingual learners benefit
from heightened metalinguistic awareness
(August & Shanahan, 2006; Lesaux, 2006,
e.g., Bialystok, 1997; Cummins, 1991).
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An RTI Research Base that is Mindful of
Culture and Language for Students Learning
English
Less proficient readers can successfully be
taught comprehension strategies, that improve
comprehension (Jiménez, 1997).
Vocabulary knowledge strongly related to
effective text comprehension ; appears to be a
highly significant variable in second language
readers’ success (Fitzgerald, 1995; National
Reading Panel, 2000).
Phonological awareness AND vocabulary are
important in predicting second language
reading achievement(Klingner, Artiles, &
Barletta, 2004).
The Research
English second-language oral proficiency,
native-language reading, & English secondlanguage reading are positively related
(Fitzgerald, 1995; Garcia-Vasquez, 1995;
Gottardo, 2002; Tregar & Wong, 1984).
• Specific comprehension strategies
can be directly taught including:
• Resolving the meanings of unknown
vocabulary items, asking questions,
and making inferences, making use
of bilingual language abilities such
as searching for cognate vocabulary,
translating, transferring information,
and reflecting on information in
either or both of their languages
(Jiménez, 1997).
The Practice
•Literacy interventions should be provided in
students’ native language in conjunction with
English interventions.
•Effective literacy interventions include oral
English proficiency interventions.
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Research-Based Interventions for Students
Learning English
Linan-Thompson et al., 2003
Teacher provided total of 58 supplemental reading sessions (5 times/week,
30 mins/session for 13 weeks) of:
Word Study
Phonological
Awareness
(5 mins.) Practice
Reading
blending,
segmenting,
Fluency
deleting,
(5 mins.) familiar
substituting &
manipulating
text & wide range
of print material
phonemes in words,
discriminating
(pictures added to
back of word cards, between real &
decodable books for nonsense words;
some activities preconnected text)
designed; others
developed
specifically for
students
Instructional
Level
Reading
(10 mins.) Practice
with text with
which students
made less than 10
errors/100 words
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(5 mins.) Explicit
instruction in the
alphabetic principle
and word analysis
strategies.
Instruction of
phonetically regular
word patterns
included the
introduction of new
patterns, metalinguistic discussion
of similarities or
differences of the
new sounds or
patterns between
English & Spanish
Writing
(2-3 mins.) Students
instructed to write
as many words as
they could think of
in 2 minutes & read
back to teacher
Culturally Responsive Secondary & Tertiary
Interventions
What?
Who?
Collaborative teams of
educators with expertise
in subject matter and
types of support
determined appropriate
for students who require
it.
Ongoing professional
learning for teachers
around types of supports
students require
Curricular & instructional
resources to utilize with diverse
learners
Research-based interventions
are grounded in culture’s
essential role in teaching &
learning.
Time and space for educators to
examine & reflect on practices.
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Where?
In general education
classrooms through
collaborative methods of
instruction.
Interventions that are Culturally Responsive…
• …are constructed by intervention design teams
• …consider students’ language, background experiences,
preferred ways of interacting, and home literacy practices
and integrate all of these factors in curricular materials,
instructional methods, educational environment,
involvement of families, and both formative and
summative progress monitoring.
• …are based on a theory of culture in learning
• …are informed by cultural brokers (Gay, 1993).
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Prescriptive Teaching
1. Teach skills, subjects, or concepts;
2. Reteach using significantly different strategies or
approaches for the benefit of students who fail to meet
expected performance levels after initial instruction,
3. Use informal assessment strategies to identify students’
strengths and weaknesses and the possible causes of
academic and/or behavioral difficulties (Ortiz, 2002).
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Culturally Responsive Interventions with
African American Students
The Algebra
Project
The Cultural
Modeling Project
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Agenda
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Activity 2: Revisiting the Continuum of
Supports
Participants revisit and enhance an intervention
generated in Activity 1 to ensure that they are
culturally responsive, beyond use for only students
learning English.
Activity Takes 40 Minutes
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Lecturette 2
Expanding the Unit of Analysis:
Culturally Responsive Special
Education Eligibility Assessment and
Intervention
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Agenda
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The Tertiary Interventions Tier: Rationale of
RTI for Assessment of Disability
Tertiary
Interventions
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Reauthorization of IDEA (2004) related to Special
Education Eligibility
Reauthorized IDEA provides eligibility and identification criteria for LD
[614(b)(6)(A)-(B)]:
– When determining whether a child has a specific learning
disability
• The LEA is not required to consider a severe discrepancy
between achievement and intellectual ability.
• The LEA may use a process that determines if a child
responds to scientific, research-based intervention as part
of the evaluation.
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How Does RTI Fit into Assessment for Specific
Learning Disability?
Special Education Eligibility Determination:
takes place within culturally
responsive RTI models through
which a child has progressed
to more & more intensive &
individualized supports, yet is determined
as not responding to robust, evidencebased instruction with adequate
opportunities to learn & culturally
responsive intervention.
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What Should LD Assessment Look Like
within Culturally Responsive RTI Frameworks?
The student’s
achievement
is
substantially
lower than
peers
The student’s
progress is
substantially
lower than
peers
Context: The student has
received solid, research
based instruction and
interventions that are
culturally responsive
and systems issues that
affect student progress
have been addressed.
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Assessment for LD Eligibility
also Rules Out:
• Other disabilities (e.g., intellectual and
developmental disabilities, visual impairment,
hearing impairment, emotional or behavioral
disorder)
• Absence of appropriate literacy instruction
• A low level of proficiency in academic English
• Situational trauma (e.g., the death of a parent)
Rationale for Design of Culturally Responsive RTI
Frameworks for Special Education Assessment
• The way that IDEA is currently written, schools get more
funding and resources by identifying children as having
special needs. In our view of CR RTI, however, an
eligibility decision does not change the location or
intensity of supports being provided to students. Instead,
eligibility allows for increased resources to ensure
sustained and ongoing intensive individualized instruction
for these students, in the general education classroom by
individuals who work collaboratively to ensure students are
getting the level of support they need.
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Lingering Assessment Issues…
• In RTI, a fixed point must be determined to
indicate the point on a continuum at which LD
identification is determined, which is still arbitrary
(Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003). How does an arbitrary
cut-off favor a certain view of what is considered
“normal” and “deficient” performance? How can
this be the same point for all students without
considering culture and context of schooling?
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Tertiary Interventions as Compared to
Universal and Secondary
• Increased intensity and explicitness
• More frequent progress monitoring (e.g. at least
once a week versus once a month in Tier 2 or
once a quarter in Tier 2)
• Smaller teacher-student ratio for instruction(e.g. 3
students per teacher)
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Culturally Responsive Secondary & Tertiary
Interventions
What?
Who?
Collaborative teams of
educators with expertise
in subject matter and
types of support
determined appropriate
for students who require
it.
Ongoing professional
learning for teachers
around types of supports
students require
Curricular & instructional
resources to utilize with diverse
learners
Research-based interventions
are grounded in culture’s
essential role in teaching &
learning.
Time and space for educators to
examine & reflect on practices.
www.nccrest.org
Where?
In general education
classrooms through
collaborative methods of
instruction.
Agenda
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Activity 3: A Support Plan for a Student
Participants will use what they know and have learned
about culturally responsive tertiary intervention, and
develop a student support plan for Francisco, the
student from Academy 1.
Activity Takes 30 Minutes
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Leave Taking
Thank you for your participation!
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