Culturally Responsive Response to Intervention

Abstract

This chapter examines Response to Intervention (RtI) through three lenses: culture, giftedness, and poor achievement. It argues that RtI will be most effective with culturally different gifted underachieving students when it is culturally responsive. Culture is learned and is mostly out of our awareness. RtI is the practice of providing high-quality instruction and intervention matched to students' needs and using data from screenings, assessments, and progress monitoring to make important educational decisions. The position paper mentioned the issue of implementing RtI with gifted students who are underachieving and/or who are culturally different. Universal screening is essential—all students and their educational performance must be examined to ensure that every student has an equitable opportunity to receive support. The problem-solving model of the RtI framework is grounded in literature connected with behavioral consultation, which is inductive, empirical, and focused on the problem behavior.