Many districts across the country are implementing the three-tiered RtI model to identify and help struggling readers. While I think that RtI is a great approach for finding and assisting struggling readers early in the process of learning to read, I am worried that many districts are implementing this form of early support without the proper foundation for success in place. The first leg of the RtI model rests on classroom teachers knowing how to use progress monitoring data to identify children who are not progressing adequately in their reading development. Classroom teachers must then know what to do to help these readers during another part of the day to “catch up” and learn the important developmental skills that they are missing. This is a big task and I still do not see teachers adequately prepared for this part of the RtI program. All too often, they are too quick to declare that classroom remediation is not working and bump students to Tier 2 of the RtI model. With budget cuts, this sometimes places a large burden on the Tier 2 “reading specialists” who are then charged with implementing a new layer of support for struggling readers. It is vital that districts continue to spend time, resources and energy training teachers in how to diagnose and remediate reading difficulties as they occur. As Richard Allington says, what teachers do matters and matters greatly!