General Brown Central School District

 Dexter, NY 13634

Academic Intervention Services &

Response to Intervention Plan

Updated June 2024

Table of Contents

About General Brown                                                                        2

Response to Intervention                                                                3

Academic Intervention Services                                                        7

General Brown’s Intervention Process                                                9

About General Brown Central School District

The mission of the General Brown Central School District provides a supportive learning environment that prepares all students for their successful future.

General Brown’s focus is on providing an educational program that will meet the needs, abilities, aspirations, and interests of each child.

This will include:

• Develop interventions that respond to students’ specific needs.
• Research and consistently review universal screening tools and progress monitoring tools that assess the effectiveness and appropriateness of interventions.
• Look at models of enrichment to support students at all places on the academic and social-emotional spectrum.
• Integrate technology and alternative models of learning and instruction to remove barriers to learning that prevent students from accessing core curriculum.

Response to Intervention

Overview: Response to Intervention (RtI) functions as a significant educational strategy or framework designed to identify students who may be at-risk for substandard academic performance and intervene by providing supplemental interventions targeted to their learning needs. Response to Intervention integrates assessment and intervention within a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement. With RtI, schools can use data to identify students at risk for poor learning outcomes, monitor student progress, provide evidence-based interventions and adjust the intensity and nature of those interventions depending on a student’s responsiveness, and identify students with learning disabilities. (NCRTI, 2010)

Legislative Background: In September of 2007, the NYS Board of Regents approved multiple amendments to 8 NY Code of Rules and Regulations that require schools to establish an RtI policy and procedures for students in grades K-4 in the area of literacy. These amendments established a policy framework for RtI in regulations relating to school-wide screenings, minimum components of RtI programs, parent notification, and the use of RtI to identify students with learning disabilities. By adding Section 100.2(ii) to Part 100 of the Commissioner’s Regulations it set forth minimum requirements for using a RtI process to determine a student’s response to research-based intervention.

Minimum Requirements The Regents policy framework for RtI:

• Defines RtI to minimally include:

• Appropriate instruction delivered to all students in the general education class by qualified personnel.
• Screenings applied to all students in the class to identify those students who are not making academic progress at expected rates.
• Instruction matched to student needs with increasingly intensive levels of targeted intervention and instruction for students who do not make satisfactory progress in their levels of performance and/or in their rate of learning to meet age or grade level standards.

• Repeated assessments of student achievement which should include curriculum based measures to determine if interventions are resulting in student progress toward age or grade level standards.

• The application of information about the student’s response to intervention to make educational decisions about changes in goals, instruction and/or services and the decision to make a referral for special education programs and/or services.
• Written notification to the parents when the student receives an intervention beyond that provided to all students in the general education classroom that provides information about the:

• amount and nature of student performance data that will be collected and the general education services that will be provided;
• strategies for increasing the student’s rate of learning; and
• parent’s right to request an evaluation for special education programs and/or service

•  Requires each school district to establish a plan and policies for implementing school-wide approaches and prereferral interventions in order to remediate a student’s performance prior to referral for special education, which may include the RtI process as part of a district’s school-wide approach. The school district must select and define the specific structure and components of its RtI program, including, but not limited to the:

• criteria for determining the levels of intervention to be provided to students,
• types of interventions,
• amount and nature of student performance data to be collected,
• manner and frequency for progress monitoring.

[8 NYCRR section 100.2(ii)]

• Requires each school district implementing an RtI program to take appropriate steps to ensure that staff have the knowledge and skills necessary to implement a RtI program and that such program is implemented consistent with the specific structure and components of the model.

[8 NYCRR section 100.2(ii)]

• Authorizes the use of RtI in the State’s criteria to determine learning disabilities (LD) and requires, effective July 1, 2012, that all school districts have an RtI program in place as part of the process to determine if a student in grades K-4 is a student with a learning disability in the area of reading. “Effective on or after July 1, 2012, a school district shall not use the severe discrepancy criteria to determine that a student in kindergarten through grade four has a learning disability in the area of reading.”

                 [8 NYCRR section 200.4(j)]

• In addition to the above RtI requirements, regulations adopted by the Regents regarding screening of students with low test scores now requires a review of the students’ instructional programs in reading and mathematics to ensure that explicit and research validated instruction is being provided in reading and mathematics.
• Students with low test scores must be monitored periodically through screenings and ongoing assessments of the student’s reading and mathematics abilities and skills.
• If the student is determined to be making substandard progress in such areas of study, instruction shall be provided that is tailored to meet the student’s individual needs with increasingly intensive levels of targeted intervention and instruction.
• School districts must provide written notification to parents when a student requires an intervention beyond that which is provided to the general education classroom. Such notification shall include: information about the performance data that will be collected and the general education services that will be provided; strategies for increasing the students rate of learning; and the parents’ right to request an evaluation by the Committee on Special Education to determine whether the student has a disability.

The RtI process as described above will meet the section 117.3 requirements to ensure a student’s progress toward meeting the State’s standards.

RtI serves as a multi-tiered prevention framework/model that can be viewed as layers of increasingly intense intervention that respond to student-specific needs. Within General Brown Central School District, a three-tiered model will be used.

The graphic presentation below provides a visual illustration of the district’s RtI model. Further information for each tier follows the graphic.

Academic Intervention Services

Overview:  Academic Intervention Services (AIS) are student support services, which supplement instruction provided in the general curriculum, and are designed to assist students in meeting proficiency with the New York State Next Generation Learning Standards.

There are two components of AIS:

• Additional instruction that supplements the general curriculum (regular classroom instruction) and/or
• Student support services needed to address barriers to improved academic performance.

 AIS are available to students with disabilities on the same basis as non-disabled students. The services for students with disabilities shall be provided consistent with the student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

The NYS Education Department defines additional instruction as the provision of extra time for focused instruction and/or increased student-teacher instructional contact time. The regulations also indicate that services may vary in intensity depending on the student’s needs, but must be designed to respond to student needs as indicated through State Assessment results and/or the district-adopted or district-approved procedure that is consistent throughout the district at each grade level.

Eligibility for AIS: Students eligible for AIS, including those with disabilities and/or limited English proficiency (LEP), include:

• Students who are in K-3 who are determined through a district-developed or district-adopted procedure that meets State criteria and is applied uniformly at each grade level, to either lack reading and/or math readiness based on an appraisal of the student, or are determined to be at risk of achieving the State designated performance level in ELA and/or math.
• Students who are in 4-8 identified to receive AIS through a two-step process.

• First, all students performing below the median scale score between a Level 2/partially proficient and a Level 3/proficient on a grade 3-8 ELA or mathematics state assessment shall be considered for AIS.
• Second, upon identification of a student for consideration for AIS, districts shall then use a district-developed procedure, to be applied uniformly at each grade level, for determining which students shall receive AIS.
• Finally, after the district considers a student’s scores on multiple measures of student performance, the district determines whether the student is required to receive AIS.

• Students who are English Language Learners (ELL) and are determined, through a district-developed or district-adopted procedure uniformly applied to ELL students, to be at risk of not achieving State learning standards in ELA, mathematics, social studies, and/or science, through English or the student’s native language.

Multiple measures will always be used for determining eligibility for AIS and follow a tiered approach to interventions.

At General Brown these measures may include:

• Fastbridge Math and ELA universal screening assessments
• State test scores in ELA and Math
• Student work samples
• Student writing samples
• Recommendations from teachers and support staff

General Brown’s Intervention Process

Tier 1:

• All students in grades K-8 will be given universal screenings 3 times a year. These screenings will occur in September, January and May.
• Universal Screenings will be administered by Interventionists.
• Teachers will receive the data from the screenings to assist them in structuring Tier I instruction based on student needs. Data chats will occur to allow collaboration within grade levels, and to set goals to meet student needs.

• Tier I interventions occur within the general education setting provided by the classroom teacher.

Tier II:

Students who fail to demonstrate adequate progress as determined by the progress monitoring data, will receive small group, differentiated instruction in the specific areas of difficulty.

• Tier II interventions are individualized and are designed to meet the unique

needs of struggling students. Interventions will occur 2-3 times per week for a duration of 15-30 minutes.

• Tier II interventions are provided through small group instruction with groups limited to six students. This grouping is based on the similarity of student needs.
• Interventions for Tier II may include, but are not limited to:

• Supplemental instruction using a different teaching strategy

• Progress will be monitored using designated progress monitoring assessments. Teachers will collaborate on the data collected to determine if the student is responding to the intervention.
• A meeting will be held with the building principal and other relevant instructional staff to review progress to determine if the student’s program should be continued, modified, or discontinued.