With RTI, schools 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 or other disabilities (NCRTI, 2010).

These elements of RTI can be observed readily in almost any RTI implementation. Struggling children are identified through a poor performance on a classwide, schoolwide, or districtwide screening intended to indicate which children may be at risk of academic or behavioral problems. A child may also be identified through other means, such as teacher observation. The school provides the child with research-based interventions while the child is still in the general education environment and closely monitors the student's progress (or response to the interventions), and adjusts their intensity or nature, given the student's progress. RTI can also be instrumental in identifying students who have learning disabilities.

RTI typically has different levels of intensity.

Tier 1 | At-risk children who have been identified through a screening process receive research-based instruction, sometimes in small groups, sometimes as part of a classwide intervention. A certain amount of time (generally not more than six or eight weeks) is alloted to see if the child responds to the intervention-hence, the name RTI. Each student's progress is monitored closely. If the child does, indeed, respond to the research-based intervention, then this indicates that perhaps his or her difficulties have resulted from less appropriate or insufficiently targeted instruction. 

Read more