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The 2004-05 school year didn鈥檛 start off well for the Sanger Unified School District.

The 10,500-student district, located about a dozen miles east of Fresno, had entered its first year of 鈥減rogram improvement鈥濃�攁 gentler way of saying that Sanger was among the 98 lowest-performing districts in the state based on the success criteria spelled out in the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The district fell short because it had failed to make adequate yearly progress. Hardly any group of students was doing as well as they could be, administrators said.

鈥淲e recognized we had some weak areas. We didn鈥檛 recognize how profound they were, and that was a shock for us,鈥� said Marcus Johnson, who has been superintendent of Sanger Unified since 2003.

The district, set among the vineyards and citrus groves of California鈥檚 Central Valley, has some children with high needs: Seventy-six percent are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch and 24 percent are English-language learners. But in 2004, the system hadn鈥檛 aligned its curriculum to state standards, had a fractured system of professional development, and had no real way to expand or sustain the random bursts of improvement that would appear in an individual school or classroom, according to local educators.

It鈥檚 a sad story that Sanger administrators don鈥檛 mind telling six years later, because the district鈥檚 turnaround since then has been so dramatic. In two years, it exited program improvement and racked up honors at its schools for academic achievement.

California measures its schools on an 鈥渁cademic performance index,鈥� an annual measure of test-score performance that starts at 200 and tops out at 1,000. The target is 800 points or more. In 2004, Sanger鈥檚 API was 599 points. In 2010, it was 805. And Mr. Johnson was named the 2011 by the American Association of School Superintendents.

One key piece of the district鈥檚 success, administrators here say, was committing to response to intervention. RTI is an instructional practice that involves identifying students with specific learning or behavioral weaknesses and then providing progressively intensive interventions to help them improve. Here in Sanger, response to intervention was not put in place solely to address lagging special education achievement; instead, the process was seen as a way of improving education for the entire district, including students with disabilities.

Sanger鈥檚 experience is one practical example that can help answer some questions that have swirled around RTI ever since its inclusion in the 2004 Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. The increasingly popular educational framework is described by its supporters as a 鈥済eneral education initiative,鈥� but what does that look like in operation?

To answer that question, it鈥檚 necessary to look at where the district was, and where it is heading.

Diving In

The response-to-intervention framework can be implemented different ways, but there are some common elements. It requires that all students be evaluated and that those with identified academic weaknesses be given specific lessons or interventions that address those weaknesses. Students are monitored closely for their response to the interventions, and if they improve, the extra interventions are scaled back. The process is often represented as a pyramid, where all students are in the bottom tier, getting strong instruction, while the smaller groups of students who need extra help are represented in higher tiers.

Sanger considers RTI one leg of a tripod of interventions that it put into place after getting the bad news from the state about its poor academic ranking. The other two changes were the implementation of and the creation of professional learning communities, a collaboration framework designed to make student instruction a collaborative effort among school staff. The benefit of Explicit Direct Instruction鈥檚 systematic approach, Sanger鈥檚 educational leaders say, is that all students in a particular grade end up being taught the same information, aligned closely to state standards. Bringing Explicit Direct Instruction to the district was a way of bolstering instruction in RTI鈥檚 鈥淭ier 1,鈥� the instruction that all students receive, said Mr. Johnson, the superintendent.

Creating professional learning communities allowed teachers, administrators, and support staff members to interact in a way they never had before, Mr. Johnson said. Teachers and school psychologists could get together, for instance, to share information about students who may need extra support.

The RTI process, along with other reform efforts, were rolled out in what district administrators call a 鈥渓oose-tight鈥� model of leadership: All of the district鈥檚 13 schools were expected to adopt the changes, but the specifics were left up to each school.

Kimberly Salomonson, a program specialist who provides support services to several schools in the district, remembers being worried at first that each school wouldn鈥檛 be given a specific series of steps to follow.

鈥淲hat we realized was that it just wasn鈥檛 going to be necessary,鈥� she said. The fact that schools were trying some different elements allowed the district to experiment with a broad set of resources, she said. Principals and teachers were able to learn from their counterparts at other schools.

鈥淚f you own [the process], and it鈥檚 not successful, you really have an incentive to fix it,鈥� Ms. Salomonson said.

How RTI looks

To those who argue that RTI sounds just like good teaching, Ketti Davis and the staff at Sanger鈥檚 Lone Star Elementary describe how a struggling student might have been helped before the district reform initiatives. With 560 students, the school is about 40 percent Hispanic and 40 percent Asian, with the remainder white, African-American and Filipino. Three-quarters of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and around 40 percent are English-language learners, the principal said.

Ms. Davis and her colleagues said the school has good teachers, who would recognize if a student was struggling and would try different activities to nudge the child into better achievement鈥攂ut there was little coordination of that work. The result was that everyone at the school would be working hard, but not seeing the kinds of improvements that could boost the school鈥檚 performance overall.

鈥淭here was no real coordinated information. Behavioral issues would be mixed in with the academic,鈥� Ms. Davis said. Some teachers referred many students for special education evaluations; others referred relatively few. And if a student was found ineligible for special education, there was no set plan for what to do next.

Under Lone Star鈥檚 restructured process, students who need extra help may now work with the same teacher who provides special education services without having to be identified as a special education student. Frequently regrouping students helps keep all of them from feeling embarrassed by labels, said Leslie Hoffman, the school鈥檚 resource, or special education teacher.

鈥淚t鈥檚 like a revolving door in my classroom. There鈥檚 no stigma attached to that,鈥� she said.

Parents are notified when their children move into 鈥淭ier 2鈥� or 鈥淭ier 3鈥� interventions, so they can know they are receiving extra help.

But the process can be a juggling act between giving students extra interventions and making sure they鈥檙e not missing other instruction that can leave them behind. The third tier of instruction can be individual instruction on a daily basis, but teachers try to make sure students aren鈥檛 missing so much regular class time that they fall behind in other subjects.

鈥淒o we want to move students out of standard instruction to give them remediation? That鈥檚 not always the best program,鈥� said Anna Quintanilla, the school psychologist at Lone Star. Explaining those needs to parents is an ongoing process, she said.

The role of school psychologists is one element that changed at all Sanger schools when response to intervention was introduced districtwide.

School psychologists often spend a lot of time evaluating students for special education. In Sanger, the school psychologists see their work as much more expansive. They鈥檙e the ones who have the professional training to evaluate the mountains of data that an RTI process yields on each student, they say.

Mitchel Casados, the school psychologist at the 1,700-student Washington Academic Middle School, the district鈥檚 sole middle school, says he sees school psychology shifting in the direction of 鈥渕ore systems-level consulting and less individual service delivery鈥� as a result of the district鈥檚 move to RTI. Washington Academic has been honored this year as a 鈥渟chool to watch鈥� by a national alliance that promotes middle-grades reform.

Before the reform process, 鈥渕y role was a firefighter,鈥� Mr. Casados said, noting that he and other administrators processed discipline referrals all day long.

鈥淭eachers didn鈥檛 get the sense that discipline was something they could address themselves,鈥� he said. The middle school put in place a behavior-focused, tiered-intervention system, which cut down on students鈥� acting out in classrooms. Students still get sent to the office for misbehaving, but the reduction in referrals gives administrators time to leave the office and visit classrooms, too, Mr. Casados said.

The district credits RTI and other initiatives with its improved performance on state tests. In 2004-05, 35 percent of all students were proficient or above in English/language arts, and 44 percent were proficient or above in math. Last school year, the proficiency rates were 58 percent in English/language arts, and 67 percent in math.

In special education, where RTI is often focused, Sanger also has seen improvement. In 2004-05, the proficiency rate for that student group was 18.6 percent in English/language arts, and 23 percent in math. Last school year, those rates had risen to 36.5 percent proficiency in English/language arts, and 48 percent proficiency in math.

The , part of a federal network that provides assistance to the California education department to implement the NCLB law and improve student achievement, Sanger and three other California districts for having better-than-expected performance among special education students, considering the district鈥檚 demographics.

Positive Results

Even with the improvement in special education test scores, Sanger officials struggle with closing the achievement gap completely.

鈥淚f you exit students out of special education who can learn in a regular setting, we鈥檙e left with the kids who have really intensive needs,鈥� said Matthew Navo, the director of pupil services for the district.鈥� But keeping students in special education is expensive and doesn鈥檛 serve those children well, he said.

The district credits the reform effort for reducing 鈥渆ncroachment,鈥� a term for when the district has to draw from general funds to pay for special programs. W. Richard Smith, Sanger鈥檚 deputy superintendent, says that encroachment was reduced by $640,000 in the first three years of the initiative.

Sanger still is working on how to incorporate RTI into a process for identifying students who possibly have learning disabilities. The idea, which introduced response to intervention to federal education law, says that states can allow districts to use RTI as part of a special education evaluation. The federal Education Department since has issued guidance clarifying that RTI cannot be the only method that a school uses to make such a determination, but it can be part of a comprehensive evaluation.

This year, Sanger is piloting at two elementary schools an identification process that includes RTI. District administrators said they want to avoid a situation where a student might be considered learning disabled in one school, but not another, because of differing RTI practices. Eventually, some interventions, and the length of time that students spend in them, will look similar districtwide, say central office staff.

District officials do say that RTI has cut down on special education referrals. 鈥淲e鈥檙e constantly problem-solving,鈥� said Elizabeth Dobrinen, an intervention teacher at Madison Elementary School in the district. 鈥淚f this program doesn鈥檛 work, it doesn鈥檛 mean we鈥檙e on the way to special education. It might mean we haven鈥檛 gotten quite the right thing for every kid.鈥�

Time will tell what happens to those students as they move through middle school and high school. Sanger staff members say that the process will continue to adapt to the changing needs of its students.

鈥淚鈥檓 sorry, but business as usual is not doing the job for our kids,鈥� Superintendent Johnson said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e created a support structure where it鈥檚 harder for a child to fail than it is for them to succeed in our system.鈥�