Professional Development to Increase Problem-solving Skills in a Response to Intervention Framework

With the latest re-authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004), states are allowed to use a Response to Intervention (RtI) framework to determine whether students qualify for special education services. Although RtI has promise and has been implemented well with documented results, further research is needed to bring RtI to scale and to address implementation challenges surrounding the skills and knowledge needed by educators. Overall, results of the current study reveal that teacher perceptions of their ability to use data-based decision making increased after participating in the professional development. The results of this study add to the limited literature base surrounding professional development and content knowledge for successful RtI implementation.