Cleveland Heights - University Heights City School District

Fairfax Elementary is making exciting strides in implementing Ohio’s plan to create a pyramid of interventions for struggling students.  This plan represents an important philosophical shift in the nature of curriculum and instruction.  Historically, most schools in the U.S. viewed their job as both educating and sorting students.  We received grades that reflected, to some degree, the extent to which we absorbed the material that was taught.  If we received a poor or failing grade, the institutional response was, “Oh, well, you should have tried harder.”  In the meantime, instruction marched on. 

            Ohio’s plan toward establishing a pyramid of interventions for struggling students is based on the idea that, “Oh well…” is not a satisfactory plan to address the needs of struggling students.  This philosophy promotes the idea that there are a set of skills that all children need to master and that failure is not an option.  Our job then becomes one of figuring out what children resources children need to master essential skills.  The plan at Fairfax focuses on the essential skills of Reading / Language Arts and Math.  The idea is that struggling students need a more intensive learning experience with a smaller group, more individual attention and more opportunities to practice skills under the watchful eye of a teacher. 

            Frequent monitoring of student progress is an essential component of this approach.  Think of this as similar to giving frequent quizzes to monitor a student’s progress.  We don’t want to find out at the end of a unit of instruction, i.e., on the big test, that the student didn’t really understand what was taught.  By monitoring a student’s progress frequently, the teacher can readily see what concepts children are struggling with and reteach these as appropriate.  This also enables Fairfax staff to modulate the intensity of our instructional efforts based on students’ needs. 

            As you might imagine, this approach to learning is labor intense.  We are blessed to have additional resources in the building to assist us in this process.  As the building psychologist, I am very excited about this plan and fully expect it to result in improved performance by our students.