In this Voices from the Field post, we archive the presentations from day 2 of the NCII 10-year celebration of the implementation of intensive intervention. On this day, panelists shared stories focused on preparing in-service and pre-service educators and leaders to implement intensive intervention.

This three-part Voices from the Field video series profiles how Education Service Center (ESC) 15 in Texas approached implementing the DBI process in San Saba Independent School District (ISD). In these videos, Dedra Carter and Valerie Moos from ESC 15 and Jenna McSherry from San Saba ISD, discuss their experiences and recommendations for other districts implementing DBI.

    Successful implementation of a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) and, specifically, intensive intervention through the data-based individualization (DBI) process, demands the collection and analysis of data. As teams consider data collection, challenges may occur with assessment administration, scoring, and data entry (Taylor, 2009). This resource reviews three data collection and entry challenges and strategies to ensure data about risk status and responsiveness accurately represent student performance and minimize measurement errors.  

This fourteen minute video shares Wyoming’s journey in building the capacity of educators to implement data-based individualization (DBI) to improve academic and behavior outcomes for students with disabilities as part of their state systemic improvement plan (SSIP). Wyoming administrators, teachers, parents and students from Laramie County School District # 1 and preschool sites share how DBI implementation impacted teacher efficacy, team meetings, quality of services, student confidence, and state and local collaboration.

NCII presented a Strand at CEC 2014 Convention and Expo focused on intensive intervention. The Strand Using Intensive Intervention to Meet the Academic and Behavior Needs of Struggling Learners provided participants with an overview of how principles of intensive intervention may be applied to students with severe and persistent learning needs across reading, mathematics, and behavior. The Strand included three content-oriented sessions focused on reading, mathematics, and behavior and one panel session covering common implementation issues associated with provision of intensive services

This checklist can be used by intervention providers or planning teams to review, document, and improve implementation of the data-based individualization (DBI) process and monitor whether the student intervention plans were implemented as intended. 

The DBI Implementation Rubric and the DBI Implementation Interview are intended to support monitoring of school-level implementation of data-based individualization (DBI). The rubric is based on the structure of the Center on Response to Intervention’s Integrity Rubric and is aligned with the essential components of DBI and the infrastructure that is necessary for successful implementation in Grades K–6. It describes levels of implementation on a 1–5 scale across DBI components. The rubric is accompanied by the DBI Implementation Interview which includes guiding questions that may be used for a self-assessment or structured interview of a school’s DBI leadership team.

NCII presented a special session at the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) 2016 Annual Convention. Presenters included Drs. Laura Berry Kuchle, Christopher Lemons, Chris Riley-Tillman, and Lou Danielson. The session (1) shared the importance of intensive intervention, (2) described data-based individualization (DBI), a process for adapting academic and behavioral interventions to meet individual needs, (3) described tools to evaluate implementation of key components of DBI, (4) discussed implementation patterns in NCII’s partner schools and lessons learned from NCII's technical assistance with schools and districts, and (5) shared resources available from NCII.

NCII presented a strand at Center for Exceptional Children (CEC) 2015 Convention and Expo. The strand, "How Can We Make Intensive Intervention Happen?  Considerations for Knowledge Development, Implementation, and Policy," address the range of issues schools and districts encounter as they attempt to implement intensive intervention—knowledge and skills, systems to support and evaluate implementation, and policy context. 

Providing more explicit instruction, captured within the comprehensiveness domain of the Taxonomy of Intervention Intensity, is critical within intensive intervention. The Recognizing Effective Special Education Teachers (RESET) project, funded by U.S. Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences (IES) and led by Evelyn Johnson at Boise State University, developed a series of rubrics based on evidence-based practices for students with high incidence disabilities. One set of rubrics focuses on explicit instruction. Based on the main ideas of Explicit Instruction, the Explicit Instruction Rubric was designed for use by supervisors and administrators to reliably evaluate explicit instructional practice, to provide specific, accurate, and actionable feedback to special education teachers about the quality of their explicit instruction, and ultimately, improve the outcomes for students with disabilities.