Beyond Traditional Response to Intervention: Helping Rural Educators Understand English Learners’ Needs

Response to intervention (RTI) allows schools to support the academic success of English learners (ELs) while helping educators rule out cultural or linguistic differences and educational background as the root of ELs’ academic or behavioral struggles. However, in rural schools, insufficient training in how to effectively instruct ELs and limited experience teaching ELs due to local demographics may lead RTI teams to prescribe inappropriate interventions or to avoid putting ELs through the RTI process altogether. The framework proposed in this article guides rural RTI teams through the process of considering the factors that might be influencing the performance of struggling ELs to provide these students with the supports they need to benefit from core instruction and tiered interventions.