DECATUR - In the hallways and classrooms of all Decatur schools, the same sign hangs where teachers can't help but see it:

What is it we expect students to learn?

How will we know when they have learned it?

How will we respond when they don't learn?

How will we respond when they already know it?

Those signs remind teachers that, as part of professional learning communities, they should apply those questions to each student.

Response to Intervention blends perfectly with that philosophy, said Brian Hodges, assistant superintendent for secondary.

"Through No Child Left Behind and the concern of how kids learn and how instruction takes place, Response to Intervention is a process in which you help kids learn over a period of time what they're supposed to know at a particular grade level," Hodges said.

As of Jan. 1, districts statewide are required to have a plan in place to implement Response to Intervention and to begin using it by August 2010. Students' achievement will be measured against the Illinois State Learning Standards. Schools with improvement plans will have to show how their blueprint for Response to Intervention works with their plan.

Basically, Response to Intervention is a method of matching instruction to an individual student's needs using research-based practices.

"We do a lot of this right now," Hodges said. "A portion of what we've been doing for the last three years fits real nicely into Response to Intervention."

The response is not only for children who aren't keeping up, he said. It's also for those who are. The teacher has to help achieving students move forward, lagging students to catch up, and average students to excel, all at the same time.

"There are steps to take," Hodges said. "(For example), how do you respond to kids who can't learn? It sounds simplistic, but it is a process, so when you assess kids and determine where they are, how do you go about fixing it? How do you get them back to (grade) level?"

This, said Marla Robinson, assistant superintendent for elementary, is what teachers have always done, though they might not have had a formal name for it or a plan in place.

"The idea is to step up different levels of interventions or techniques, learning processes, to get everybody to the same standards, so that at the fifth-grade level, every kid is reading at the fifth-grade level," Hodges said.

vwells@herald-review.com|421-7982