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Richard Allington, a professor of education at the University of Tennessee and the author of a number of prominent books on reading policy and instruction, is one of the country鈥檚 most recognized experts on early literacy. A former president of the International Reading Association and the National Reading Council and co-editor of (Teachers College Press, 1995), Allington has long advocated for intensifying instructional support for struggling readers, and he is often credited with helping lay the groundwork for the response to intervention concept. But while he believes RTI is 鈥渙ur last, best hope鈥� for achieving full literacy in the United States, he is critical of the way it has been conceptualized and implemented in many schools. Allington鈥檚 most recent book, tellingly, is titled (Allyn & Bacon, 2008).

In No Quick Fix: The RTI Edition, you describe response to intervention as an 鈥渙ld wine with a new label.鈥� What do you mean by that?

Well, I鈥檓 62. And literally, since I entered the education field at 21 and became a reading specialist the following year, the promise has been held that we鈥檙e going to teach all kids to read. The good news is that, in the past five or 10 years, we鈥檝e had large-scale demonstrations that show that in fact we could do that if we wanted to. We have studies involving multiple school districts and hundreds or thousands of kids demonstrating that, with quality instruction and intervention, 98 percent of all kids can be reading at grade level by the end of 1st or 2nd grade.

So it鈥檚 not a question that we don鈥檛 know what to do. It鈥檚 a question of having the will to develop full literacy in this country, and to organize schools and allocate money in ways that would allow us to do that. Instead, we鈥檝e tended to come up with flim-flam excuses for why it鈥檚 not possible.

So you see RTI as a way of building on the research that鈥檚 been done on successful literacy instruction?

I鈥檇 like to think it could be. I鈥檝e called it perhaps our 鈥渓ast, best hope.鈥�

Why do you think it holds promise?

If for no other reason that, for the first time in many years, the federal government wrote a law that is not very prescriptive. It simply says: Take up to 15 percent of your current special education allocation and use that money instead to prevent the development of learning disabilities or reading disabilities. And do it in a way that, while there鈥檚 no mention of specific intervention tiers, incorporates increasingly expert and increasingly intensive instruction. It鈥檚 just telling schools to stop using money in ways that haven鈥檛 worked over the past half-century and start investing at least some of that money in interventions that are designed to actually solve kids鈥� reading problems.

So it鈥檚 not so much the specific framework of RTI that you see as promising as the emphasis it puts on intensive reading instruction?

Yes. For me the most important part of the proverbial three tiers is the first one: regular classroom instruction. In my view, RTI works best if it鈥檚 started in kindergarten and 1st grade鈥攚e know how to solve those problems. Unfortunately, we have good evidence that a lot of kindergarten and 1st grade teachers in this country are just not very skilled in teaching reading. They may offer solid social and emotional support, but when it comes to delivering high-quality academic instruction, they just don鈥檛 do it. And a lot of them also assume that if a kid is struggling and is way behind in reading, he must have some neurological problem, and therefore it鈥檚 not their job to teach him.

So you can do a lot by strengthening instruction. The evidence is there in the research literature. We can reduce the number of kids who have trouble in the 1st grade by half just by improving the quality of kindergarten. And by 2nd grade, we can reduce the number of kids who are behind by another half just by improving the quality of 1st grade instruction.

How do you do that? I mean, if you were an administrator who was implementing RTI, what would you do in terms of professional development? How do you help teachers so they can deliver that high level of instruction?

I think it takes someone who knows what they鈥檙e doing to start with, and virtually every school system already has those people on their staff. Again, we know from the research literature that, while a lot of kindergarten and 1st grade teachers might not be that strong in academic instruction, at least 25 percent of kindergarten and 1st grade teachers are in fact very skilled. So that 25 percent is out there whose expertise can be built on. The problem is they鈥檙e just typically ignored.

But, yes, the most successful training models are those that involve teachers who are actually working with each other, where the teachers who don鈥檛 know what to do in delivering reading instruction are given a few days each to observe a teacher who does know what to do. The skilled teacher, that is, becomes a mentor teacher who helps others acquire those types of skills.

And the effects of a little high-quality training can be significant. One of the studies on reading professional development that the [U.S. Department of Education鈥檚] What Works Clearinghouse has rated as having strong evidence鈥攁ctually I think it鈥檚 the only one鈥攚as done by my wife [University of Tennessee Professor ] in Philadelphia with kindergarten teachers. This program primarily involved using mentor teachers and some staff from an organization called the . And it really only required about three days of work before the school year started and about three hours a month of professional development and, for some teachers, a little in-class support. But the difference in performance was dramatic: Students in the classes of the teachers who got the training ended the year in about the 45th percentile in reading, while those with teachers who didn鈥檛 get the training ended the year at the 13th percentile.

And I鈥檒l tell you, I actually went down to help my wife with some of the debriefing interviews at the end of the year. We had veteran teachers鈥攑eople my age鈥攂reaking down in the interview and starting to cry, saying, 鈥淲hy didn鈥檛 anyone ever teach us this before? Why have I been teaching for 30 years and never knew how to teach kids to read?鈥�

What mistakes do schools commonly make in implementing RTI?

Letting the interventions be done by paraprofessionals or parent volunteers or special education teachers who have limited reading-instruction expertise. If you want a kid to remain illiterate and ultimately end up in special ed., send him out to work with someone who lacks expertise in teaching reading. If you want him to develop literacy, put him with someone with expertise in teaching kids at that age to read.

The idea behind RTI was for a district to actually take some of its special education budget to fund reading specialists, but in most cases, they haven鈥檛 done that. In too many cases, they simply have paraprofessionals work with those kids. So the amount of expert reading instruction the kids are getting under RTI is typically very slight.

My question to superintendents is always, 鈥淲ould you let me randomly select one of your paraprofessionals to be your assistant superintendent for finance, or to be the head football coach, or teach AP chemistry?鈥� No, of course not, because those jobs require that you know something. But when you take people who are not reading experts and put them with hardest kids to teach, and then blame the kids when they don鈥檛 make progress, you penalize the children for the rest of their lives because of your decision.

You鈥檝e been critical of the use of so-called packaged reading programs in schools. Why?

Well, the problem is that the concept of a packaged reading program doesn鈥檛 have any scientific validity to start with, because we know that if you take 100 kids or even 10 kids, there are no prescribed programs that will work with all of them. What kids need are teachers who know how to teach and have multiple ways of addressing their individual needs. And the evidence that there鈥檚 a packaged program that will make a teacher more expert is slim to none.

So the alternative would be to focus on building on teachers鈥� expertise and knowledge?

Right. And one good example of how to do that is the much-criticized program, which isn鈥檛 a scripted program in the sense that most commercial programs are. Instead, it鈥檚 a year long鈥攐r even life long鈥攑rofessional development plan. Of the 150 reading-intervention programs that the What Works Clearinghouse looked at, it was the only one determined to have strong evidence that it worked. And I鈥檝e been telling principals for 20 years that the good thing about a program like Reading Recovery is that, if your district ever decides not to continue funding it, your teachers still have that expertise, and you can鈥檛 take that away from them. You can take away the one-to-one tutoring that鈥檚 part of the program, but even more important than that is the expertise of the teachers. Another example of a large-scale program that schools ought to be looking at is the , developed by researchers F.R. Vellutino and Donna Scanlon. That is also a kind of extended PD plan.

When schools implement RTI, they often use digital screening and monitoring tools for assessment 鈥�

It鈥檚 idiotic.

Those tools aren鈥檛 effective?

No. We don鈥檛 have any evidence that any computerized screening and monitoring tools are related to reading growth. It just doesn鈥檛 exist. In fact, I think we have enough evidence in the opposite direction with the problems of Reading First.

So what do you advise schools to use to determine where a student is in his reading ability?

Well, I tell them, if the student is in kindergarten or 1st grade, to listen to the child read. And you have to have some sense of the difficulty level of the books, and you need to be expert enough to know what strategies students at different stages should be demonstrating in their reading.

OK, say I鈥檓 a principal, and I say to you, 鈥淟isten, I鈥檓 not sure my teachers have the expertise at this point to make those kinds of judgments without the help of available tools.鈥�

I鈥檇 say you鈥檙e a principal who doesn鈥檛 have a clue, and you probably need to go off and develop some expertise yourself. Or maybe find another job.

Look, the problem isn鈥檛 that teachers don鈥檛 know which students are in trouble and need help. I mean, you could try an experiment: Call 100 1st grade teachers around the country and ask them, 鈥淒o you have any kids who are in trouble in learning to read?鈥� They鈥檙e not going to say, 鈥淕osh, I don鈥檛 know. I haven鈥檛 DIBEL鈥檇 them yet.鈥� Teachers know who needs help. If they don鈥檛 know, they shouldn鈥檛 be teaching.

But you just said that many teachers aren鈥檛 skilled in teaching reading?

But that doesn鈥檛 mean they don鈥檛 know who鈥檚 in trouble. They just don鈥檛 know what to do with a kid who鈥檚 in trouble. The point is we need to free teachers up from spending their time using an assessment program on kids every few weeks, or having a reading or LD specialists going around doing it. Educators need to be working with kids and teaching them rather than continuing to document that they can鈥檛 do something.

Do you have any guidelines for the amount of intervention time that should be provided for a struggling reader?

Well, let鈥檚 talk about kindergarten and 1st grade. In kindergarten, amazingly, it takes as little as 15 to 20 minutes a day, working in a one-on-one or very small group setting with a child. That鈥檚 it. In 1st grade, most of the studies have recommended either a half-hour or 45 minutes a day, five days a week, usually for a period of roughly 20 weeks, as an initial shot at it. At that point, some kids still may not be up to grade level. But if you give them another 20 weeks, you can be down to 2 percent of kids who aren鈥檛 reading at grade level. And that 2 percent, according to the large-scale studies, are typically those students who are highly mobile and come in and out of the program, or are part of that very small portion of the school population who have very severe or profound cognitive disabilities. But you have to look around and ask, how many schools do we currently have that have any kind of intensive expert intervention in place in kindergarten, much less 30 or 45 minutes a day of one-to-one or one-to-three expert intervention for up to a year in the 1st grade? The answer is, there are virtually no schools like that in this country.

None?

None. And they鈥檒l say they don鈥檛 have enough money to provide that kind of intervention. And I鈥檓 saying, wait a second, we鈥檙e spending between $5,000 and $10,000 a year on every child who鈥檚 identified as having a learning disability, and you don鈥檛 have enough money to try to prevent that?

Can RTI work with older students or adolescents?

Well, we don鈥檛 have a lot of research on how well it works with older children, but I certainly think it can. The problem is that you really have to ramp up instruction because, as they get older, the kids get further and further behind in the current setting. Let me give you an example: Let鈥檚 say you have a 4th grader who鈥檚 reading at the 2nd grade level. So you鈥檝e got evidence that whatever you鈥檝e been doing up to this point has produced about a half grade鈥檚 growth per year. So even if you can provide something that will double his rate of growth, up to a year鈥檚 growth per year, by the time he gets to 9th grade, he鈥檒l only be reading at a 7th grade level. Now, if we can triple his rate of growth鈥攖o a year and a half grade level per year鈥攈e鈥檇 be caught up by 9th grade. If we could quadruple it, he鈥檇 be caught up by 6th grade and in even better shape.

How do you do that?

I think you could do that, with a substantial amount of high-quality instruction鈥攁nd that means, in effect, that his reading instruction has to take place all day long. In other words, if he鈥檚 reading at a 2nd grade level in 4th grade, this child would need texts in social studies, science, and math that are written at the 2nd grade level but cover the 4th grade curriculum, so he has a book in his hands all day long that he can actually read. If we did that in addition to high-quality classroom reading instruction and then provided 45 minutes every day after school of one-on-one expert instruction, and maybe did something in the summer that wasn鈥檛 as useless as what we usually see going on in summer school, we might be able to catch him up.

How realistic is that scenario?

I think it鈥檚 pretty realistic, and it鈥檚 not very expensive compared to what we鈥檙e doing now to keep the child essentially illiterate. If you look at the research on the quality and quantity of reading instruction given to students in special education or Title I classes (some of which both my wife and I conducted), I mean, it鈥檚 not a rosy scenario. Too often, no one gets worse or less instruction in reading than the kids who need it most. Did you know there are only 19 states that require special education teachers to take even one course in teaching reading? In other words, special education teachers often know less about teaching reading than the regular classroom teachers who turn to them for help.

When do you think a determination for special education should be made under an RTI framework?

I think if you鈥檝e spent most of kindergarten and 1st grade giving a child expert, intensive instruction and he or she is still lagging way behind, it might be time. But I鈥檇 be awfully hesitant to classify any child given the lack of expectations for academic growth in special education. If we had evidence that special education programs were actually declassifying a third of their kids each year鈥攊n other words that two or three years of treatment in special education could get them caught up鈥擨鈥檇 be more optimistic.

So, in most cases, you鈥檇 just continue the interventions and expert reading instruction?

Yes.

Even if a student failed to make it to grade level for several years running?

Yep. Now, you could define special education such that the whole point was that kids who go into it were getting more and better instruction every day, such that special education was likely to catch them up and perhaps lead to declassification. But I don鈥檛 see any will in schools to do that. And I worry about RTI, in some states and schools, being run by special ed. personnel. Again, though it was created in a special education law and has potential bearing on how special education determinations are made, it鈥檚 not intrinsically a spec. ed. program. It鈥檚 about strengthening regular classroom instruction and general education interventions for students so they can stay out of special ed. But I鈥檓 afraid some schools just see it as a way to find more LD kids faster.

What advice would you have for a teacher who is in a school that is implementing RTI and wants to make it work?

Well, the best advice is to make sure you know what you鈥檙e doing with struggling readers in your classroom, all day long. And then work to ensure that, when a student leaves your classroom for intervention, he or she is going out to work with someone who knows as much or even more than you do about what to do with that child.

Any particular resource or book you would recommend to start with?

I think one of the most powerful resources is a skinny little book called by Peter Johnston. I think it鈥檚 all of 68 pages long, and the subtitle is How Our Language Affects Children鈥檚 Learning. It鈥檚 simply a careful and close look at how effective teachers talk to their children and how less effective teachers talk to their children. How do you foster a child鈥檚 sense of agency and identity? Think about it: By the end of 1st grade, most struggling readers already know they鈥檙e terrible at reading and they think they鈥檙e the problem. And at that point they start working very hard on any number of schemes to try to hide the fact that they can鈥檛 read or aren鈥檛 very good at it. And not surprisingly, they don鈥檛 do much reading independently. This is a cycle that teachers need to and can break.

In the end it鈥檚 us, educators, who really matter in the case of struggling readers. We have to understand that and ask the questions about what we are doing or not doing, rather than asking what is wrong with the child.