Administrators and teachers discuss Reading Recovery’s role in this 6-minute video. After viewing the video, we invite you to complete a quick evaluation survey.

What is response to intervention?
Response to intervention (RTI) is an educational approach to instruction, assessment, and intervention designed to provide effective, data-based interventions for struggling students. Although conceived as a means of early identification and determination of special education eligibility, RTI is increasingly becoming an overall approach to school improvement through general education. Possible benefits to an RTI approach include:

• fewer inappropriate referrals to special education
• earlier intervention with students at risk of literacy failure
• greater ongoing collaboration between general and special education

Reading Recovery and RTI
Although RTI involves multiple interventions for various needs across grade levels, one literacy intervention has compelling evidence for meeting the intent of the legislation for first graders. The goal of Reading Recovery is to dramatically reduce the number of first-grade students who have extreme difficulty learning to read and write, and to reduce the cost of these learners to education systems. With more than 25 years of implementation in the U.S. and high research ratings from the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, Reading Recovery is a proven intervention used by thousands of elementary schools.

An ideal fit within an RTI framework
Reading Recovery is a close fit with eight crucial features of RTI, adapted from frameworks provided by the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities and the International Reading Association Commission on RTI.

Other online resources

• Watch an on-demand webcast
  Reading Recovery as an Effective Component of RTI
• Download an article by Frank R. Vellutino (PDF)
  “Learning to Be Learning Disabled: Marie Clay’s Seminal Contribution to the Response to Intervention Approach to Identifying Specific Reading Disability”
• Download a briefing paper on Reading Recovery and specific learning disabilities (PDF)
  “Early Literacy Matters: Dyslexia, Specific Learning Disabilities, and Reading Recovery”
• Download an annotated bibliography for Reading Recovery and RTI (PDF)