Who implements Response to Intervention (RTI) in Math, and Does RTI Benefit Math Achievement? K-fold Cross-Validation and Causal Inference Under a Multilevel Quasi-Experimental Study

The purpose of this research project is to examine the effects of school-level math RTI implementation on student math outcomes in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (ECLS-K: 2011). Our primary purpose for this study is to examine the extent to which attending a school that implemented RTI positively impacts student-level achievement. We are also interested in whether students who show initial difficulty in mathematics (based on the fall semester of kindergarten math score) benefit more from RTI than average performing peers, given that RTI is typically intended to differentially benefit at-risk students (e.g., Clarke et al., 2015). Last, we are focused on whether multilingual students differentially benefit from attending a school implementing RTI. The final purpose of our study is to determine which school-level variables in the ECLS-K: 2011 are most predictive of whether schools report implementation of math RTI.