Implementation of Response to Intervention at Middle School: Challenges and Potential Benefits

Middle school represents a major transition in a student’s academic career. For most students, it means changing schools, adjusting to a longer school day, changing teachers for content courses, and meeting demands of more complex assignments requiring independent learning and critical thinking skills. Given these challenges, the fact that many students require additional support to experience academic success in middle school is not surprising. For a variety of reasons, such as existing learning difficulties, increased academic demands, language proficiency, and transience, early interventions to support success in middle school are routinely needed for an increasingly large and diverse population of students.