Assuring the Form Has Substance

Assessing response to intervention (RTI) is a complex process that requires selecting interventions, identifying a reasonable strength of intervention, implementing the intervention, assessing progress, and applying decision rules to the resulting data. Appropriate standards and practices are critically important for all of these activities. However, the implementation of interventions has received scant attention in the RTI literature to date despite emerging empirical evidence that assuring intervention implementation may be one of the most challenging aspects of implementing RTI. This article discusses the critical role of plan implementation within RTI. Documentation that interventions were implemented is both a substantive necessity for implementing an entitlement process in which services are integrated with assessment (RTI) and a due process protection for students. The current data regarding the assessment and improvement of intervention plan implementation is also briefly reviewed.