Question: What conditions need to be in place for effective intensive intervention implementation?

Answer: In order for teams in schools to be capable of delivering effective intensive intervention consistently and to sustain that over time, there are certain conditions that absolutely have to be met — in order for the teachers and the teams to do that. A few of those things include, well certainly the skills and resources and materials directly involved in delivering the instruction — that goes without saying. But then, teachers also need tools for evaluating how well students are doing — we are talking about data — being able to measure our students making progress or not. Then the teams are also going to need to have resources like time to actually get together and look at that data. And they are also going to need to have practices, procedures previously established for having a consistent way of evaluating. So that it is known; so that we are not learning something new each time. All of these conditions, and those are just a few of them, really can’t exist without full, active, meaningful participation of the school leaders and the district leaders.  Without what is being done at the schools being aligned to the goals and the priorities of the district, school teams, teachers won’t have the permissions they need; they won’t have the resources they need. Without a district fully involved implementation improvement in intensive intervention is really hampered.