By law, all public schools must offer academic intervention, or additional instruction, to students who are performing below grade level expectations in reading or math. The amount that a student must perform below grade level in order to receive intervention, as well as the specific types and amounts of additional instruction provided via those interventions, is dependent on a wide variety of factors.
In my opinion, it is wonderful that schools are trying to provide additional instruction to help struggling learners catch up and reach grade level benchmarks and expectations. As with any broad-scale implementation of anything, however, the effects on students receiving the interventions vary widely. This can be due to a lack of resources, staffing and/or training issues, geographic location, school demographics, and many other complex factors.
I have always found that when you are in a situation where results vary widely, generalized guidelines and trends can be helpful to finding a center or determining a path. The information on this page is intended to support families to do just that.
In longitudinal studies, intervention programs are shown to increase the growth rate of students who participate in them consistently by approximately .2 of a year per year of participation. That means that in most settings, a child who is performing a year below grade level will likely take, with continued participation in intervention, 5 years to “catch up” and achieve grade level expectations.
In my own experience, students who receive intervention achieve growth, but rarely enough to catch up or exit the intervention programs. In essence, they experience some improvement, but there isn’t a significant “moving of the needle”.
There are several other pieces to intervention that I consider critically important for families to consider. These do not pertain to academics, but in my opinion are even more important.
Students who receive intervention, which again is additional instruction that goes on top of what all students in a particular setting receive, often get that instruction during parts of the school day that are considered non-essential or non-critical. Times when intervention instruction typically occurs include, but are not limited to: student choice, work, “catch-up”, or flex times; study halls; and electives such as gym, foreign language, or other interest-based classes. This results in students who need extra help getting additional instruction, but missing out on many of the opportunities for choice and autonomy that students who do not need that extra help are given. This is not intentional, but it is accurate, in my experience.
In my opinion, none of this is a bad thing, as long as it is finite. The concern that I have comes in relation to the fact that most students who receive intervention services do not exit them in a timely manner. In addition, the criteria for exiting intervention is not often clearly stated or determined at the onset or conclusion of each intervention cycle. These cycles typically run in 10-12 week increments. For a student who has not significantly increased his/her growth rate and who is unsure which criteria need to be met for exit, there is not an end to intervention in any kind of near or state-able future. This means that there is not going to be access to the opportunities for choice and autonomy that students who do not participate in intervention are afforded, for an extended period of time.
When students spend extended amounts of time in intervention programs without making significant or highly visible growth, they often begin to struggle in other areas, particularly those related to their mental health. This is something that I see with a vast majority of my upper elementary, middle, and high school clients. Their self-concept is low, which leads to a lack of investment or effort in work related to academic improvement. This is not because they are lazy: it is because they have stopped being willing to risk working hard and failing yet again, so instead they decide that they will fail on their own terms. It is a sort of “taking back of control” for a person who has had all of his/her academic decisions made for him/her for an extended period of time. This can also come out through negative or disrespectful behaviors, anxiety that arises related specifically to areas of struggle, or that becomes generalized, and withdrawal from other activities, such as sports or hobbies, which can lead to depressive symptoms.
For the reasons discussed above, I would encourage parents to ask the following questions if they have a child who is recommended for intervention services, in the area of either reading or math:
- How/using what methods or tools will my child’s progress be assessed/monitored, and how often will that assessment occur?
- How will my child’s progress be communicated to me? How often will that communication be provided?
- If positive effects are not demonstrated in the data or according to specific adult observations with regard to the intervention, how long will we wait until we determine the intervention has not been effective and we pursue a different option?
- What is the criteria that my child needs to meet in order to exit this intervention? What is the estimated timeline for that criteria to be met?
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