New Model Will Monitor Behavioral And

Academic Progress At Reed And NHS

By Eliza Hallabeck

A new federal and state program being implemented this year will seem familiar at Reed Intermediate School this fall, according to Assistant Principal Anthony Salvatore, because the school already had preemptive methods in practice during the last school year.

The Response to Intervention (RTI) Model monitors a student’s academic achievement while attempting to reduce behavior problems. It uses an assessment and prevention system to monitor a student’s success. In Connecticut a similar model, called Scientifically Research-Based Intervention, monitors disparities in performance to help improve education for students.

“There’s an academic side and then a behavioral side to the model,” said Dr Salvatore.

In response to bad choices or behaviors in a student, the RTI Model or the Scientifically Research- Based Intervention Model would be implemented to track the student’s improvement.

“What is working for 85 to 90 percent of the students may not be working for the 15 to 10 percent of the students for whatever reason,” said Dr Salvatore. “It is kind of what we have done. It just formalizes what we have been doing.”

It requires monitoring a student’s academic and behavioral progress.

“So you begin to collect data on an ongoing basis,” he said. “You can adjust more rapidly in terms of making improvements instead of waiting for the end of the unit test or the unit exam.”

Dr Salvatore said the state and federal programs liken the models to a physical examination, where health progress is monitored along the way.

Collecting data, making charts, and analyzing the data is done in the model to make adjustments to strategies.

“We can’t just use any strategy,” said Dr Salvatore. “We have to use a strategy based on research.”

The model is based a three-tier system. Level one would be collecting the data, and level two, he said, becomes more intensive. An example of a level two strategy would be to have a student get extra help in a lab outside of the classroom.

“Tier three is even more intense instruction,” he said. If the student requires more instruction, more time would be added to the student’s day.

“It looks at quality instruction before anyone jumps the gun and says the student needs to be tested for special education, for example,” said Dr Salvatore.

The state developed its framework for the model in February 2008, and two members of the committee that helped draft the state’s model work in the Newtown School district, Director of Pupil Services Michael Regan and Sandy Hook School Principal Donna Pagé.

“This has to be implemented as of July 1, 2009,” said Dr Salvatore, “so there are some school systems that are just beginning to discuss what RTI is. We’ve already been working with it for two years, so we have been a head of the curve.”

A workshop held in Hartford at the Educational Center discussed RTI for behavior, and a team from Reed attended to discuss what a behavior model for RTI would look like. Dr Salvatore said ideas were shared between the schools that attended.

As fifth graders, first year students at Reed write personal mission statements, and their goals are reviewed at the end of every marking period throughout their time at the school. Dr Salvatore said that was something the team from Reed contributed to the discussion in Hartford.

During the discussion of core values at the workshop, Dr Salvatore said, the team discussed what core values were for the entire building of Reed. One school at the workshop had a hand as a visual aid, and it had five statements to go with each finger.

“That’s how we adopted the hand,” said Dr Salvatore. Then a survey of the whole staff was completed to come up with five overall values for Reed Intermediate School.

The five values are Be Safe, Be Responsible, Be Respectful, Be Productive, and Be Healthy. These five concepts were used to create examples of expected student behavior throughout the school.

“The Positive Behavioral Support Program,” said Dr Salvatore while referring to the five concepts, “looks at direct instruction, again like the academic side. If you expect kids to know something, then you need to teach them, and then you need to monitor their progress on an ongoing process, then reteach this if they need it.”

The Positive Behavioral Support Program is a schoolwide approach for consistency, Dr Salvatore said, and does not assume students understand what “safe” actions look like across the school.

“We took a look at our data, because this is all data driven. We analyzed the data to find where most behavioral incidents are coming from. Clearly the cafeteria pops up, and the hallway is another one of the more unstructured areas,” said Dr Salvatore, and added the bus and classroom were also added as areas the students could implement the five concepts.

Another staff meeting was held to expand on each particular area, to determine what the core values look like in each location. This was completed in December, and after the completion, Dr Salvatore said, feedback was requested from student groups.

The goal last year was to prepare the values and implement them this year, according to Dr Salvatore.

In the lobby of Reed Intermediate School posters of the five behavioral models were set up as students entered to test their lockers over the summer.

Two programs implemented last year were products of the newly designated Positive Behavioral Support program at Reed. One program was a homework lottery, which began in March, and the other program created a special lounge for students to meet in the cafetorium.

For the homework lottery, every student in a cluster was given a number, and each Friday a cluster and a number are drawn from a hat by Jen Welton, who came up with the idea for both programs. The student chosen had to verify with his or her teacher that all of the student’s homework for one week had been completed. If the student could verify this, a prize was received. The school’s PTA funded the prizes.

“The kids really seemed to like it,” said Dr Salvatore, “and teacher’s feedback said they seemed to be getting more homework.”

The second Positive Behavioral Support Program that was instituted last year was a lounge on the stage in the cafetorium to identify and recognize students for their good work. The lounge was called the VIP Lounge, or the Very Invested Persons Lounge. It was placed in the cafetorium to reinforce for students eating lunch the positive example of good work.

The national RTI, according to Dr Salvatore, is a three-year commitment to implementing the program in the school. It will also be implemented at Newtown High School this fall.

NHS Assistant Principal Scott Clayton said the program will be used to analyze disciplinary data, and to see the types of deterrents that work positively at the high school.

“With this three-year commitment we have to adopt this behavioral referral form,” said Dr Salvatore. The University of Oregon collects the data and uses the school data for nationwide results. “It’s not a big change, it just adds clarification.”