Culturally Responsive Response to Intervention Instruction and Rehabilitation (RTIIR) Practices in Public Schools Using MTSS

The adoption and use of Response to Intervention (RTI) has been recognized as a resource for all schools to use to adequately identify a learning disability. Today, public schools have found success by adopting RTI as a preventative and intervention method of assessment and pre-referral to address the misidentification and over-representation of students considered in need of special education. Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) has also become one of the most widely utilized systems that works in partnership with RTI to address social and emotional needs of students, while at the same time intervening where there are academic deficiencies and areas of weakness overall. Youth with, or at-risk for, emotional and behavioral disorders have severe deficits in their academic functioning. This chapter posits the use of RTI as a larger framework of rehabilitative intervention using MTSS as a culturally responsive tool to address the social, emotional, and clinical needs of students.