Response to Intervention (RTI) is used to promote the use of evidence-based instruction in classrooms with the goal to make general, remedial, and special education work together in a more integrated way. In doing so, RTI provides a means of identifying students at-risk for academic difficulties and specialized forms of education. The essential elements of an RTI approach are:

• Universal (school-wide or district-wide) screening of academics and behavior in order to determine which students need closer monitoring or additional interventions.
• High quality, research-based instruction and behavioral support in general education.
• Multiple tiers of increasingly intense research-based interventions that are matched to student need.
• Use of a collaborative approach by school staff for development, implementation, and monitoring of the intervention process.
• Continuous monitoring and measurement of student progress in response to the instruction and interventions.
• The use of this data to shape instruction and make educational decisions
• Follow-up measures providing information that the intervention was implemented as intended and with appropriate consistency.

Districts are learning more and more about RtI, but there are still many questions. Schools who are attempting to implement an RtI approach without full understanding of the essential elements of the approach will struggle to be successful. It is important, then to be fully aware of these elements.

The Suffolk County Response to Intervention (RtI) and Literacy Center is designed to promote the implementation of RtI in Suffolk County schools, through the development of a professional development and technical assistance infrastructure to support the application of RtI countywide (at the building, district, and regional levels).

The major goals for the Center are to support county-wide capacity to implement and sustain multiple-tier intervention models focusing on general education classroom-based interventions through:

• Development of consistent, coordinated and centralized technical assistance and professional development to districts
• Coordinated dissemination of information to schools
• Provision of ongoing support to districts and schools has they build internal capacity for RtI through facilitated professional development and coaching
  Suffolk County RtI and Literacy Center is endorsed and supported by Buffalo University, identified as the statewide Technical Assistance Center on Response to Intervention by the New York State Department of Education

Contact Dr. Valerie Valenti at (631) 218-4197 or Dr. Roberta Senzer at (631) 419-1620