6 Top Tips for Effective Intervention Programs
A successful intervention program can make a difference for struggling students and help them get back on track. With so much recent research on student intervention as well as trends that seem to pop up every minute, it can be hard to determine what truly makes an intervention program effective. While you’re working on improving your intervention program for the upcoming school year, be sure to keep these six tips in mind:
1. Leverage data
Leveraging data is the key to understanding where your students are struggling in a particular objective, and it can be a regular and consistent way to determine their level understanding. Aligning data with your instructional goals or intervention objectives can help you take your students to the next level.
2. Utilize assessments effectively
Assessments typically serve two different purposes: to monitor student progress and to identify students who are at risk. Performance on various assessments should be used to identify targeted interventions for different student groups and to determine if students in those groups are making the expected progress. Programs can be used to help prescribe content for your students so that you can spend more time working directly with them in subjects they are struggling with.
3. Maintain consistency with processes
One of the most important aspects of any intervention program is consistency. Making sure that teachers, administrators, and parents are all on the same page can help provide a great experience for all involved. In a successful intervention program, all students are part of a single, research-based instructional system.
4. Identify special populations and intervene early
When you notice that a student is struggling, early intervention is critical, and in order to identify these students, you have to have the proper procedures, training, and assessments in place. Without properly equipped staff, it can be easier for a student to fall through the cracks. For example, chronic absenteeism can be a contributing factor in a student’s success in school. As students reach the later grade levels, intervention programs can also be a critical dropout prevention strategy. By identifying struggling students early on, you can keep them engaged and motivated to stay on track to graduate.
5. Emphasize professional development
A well-prepared staff can be the key to a successful intervention program. What’s the best way to ensure this? Professional development is, of course! Make regular training sessions on instructional best practices a priority, offer your educators plenty of opportunities for collaboration, and ensure that all of your staff is well-trained on all technology resources available to them. The professional development tag on our blog or our monthly webinars is a great place to start.
6. Listen to the research
Every successful intervention program has, at the core, scientific, evidence-based curriculum and instructional practices. Take ample time to vet any new tool, approach, or online program before implementation to make sure that it’s backed by strong research. For instance, many of our own programs have undergone an extensive research and approval process through Marzano Research.