null

Ripon Unified School District transforms education

Transforming Ripon Unified’s Learning Centers: Supporting the needs of all learners through Response to Intervention (RTI)

By: Lisa Cheney, Ed.S., Board Certified Behavior Analyst, Director of Student Services, Ripon Unified School District

Ripon Unified is well known for its staunch belief in the Inclusion Model. Last year, Ripon operated one Learning Center per elementary school site. The Learning Center staff worked tirelessly trying to meet the diverse needs of more than 25 students with special needs from grades kindergarten through eighth; an insurmountable task. This year the Ripon Learning Centers have been transformed. 

The Learning Centers expanded to include one additional teacher per school site and are working in partnership with Title 1 staff, in order to implement RTI. All instructional aides are utilized to expand the capacity of the Learning Centers. All students, kindergarten through eighth, undergo Universal Screening three times a year for both Reading and Math. The Learning Center teachers analyze this data and intervention groups are created based upon grade and skill level. All students receiving intervention are Progress Monitored using curriculum-based measures bimonthly in order to measure student progress.  If the response rate is not adequate then the student’s intervention is adjusted or more intensive intervention is provided.

Administrators prepared for this expansion at the end of the 2013-2014 school year by creating common English Language Arts and Math instructional blocks at each grade level. This laborious task was conducted to ensure that students could be pulled for intervention at times that did not interfere with their core academic lessons. The philosophy being, the highest risk students need to receive additional targeted instruction. The district also purchased more than 175 READ 180 licenses as well as high-quality supplemental intervention materials for Reading, Math, and Language Development. 

Ripon has made transforming the Learning Centers a top priority to ensure that all student’s individual needs are supported through quality instruction and well-designed intervention. For more information, visit Ripon Unified School District's website.

Posted: 1/26/2015