The road to successful reading can be a tumultuous journey for many students entering middle school. The ability to read text out loud in both an accurate and quick manner is what determines a fluent reader. Additionally, the prosody, or melody, expression and flow while reading leads to good reading comprehension. There are an alarming number of students in grades K-12 who lack good reading fluency skills. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 35 percent of the nation's eighth grade students were at or above proficient in reading in 2017. In order to help students gain better reading skills there needs to be a Response to Intervention (RTI) program in place to maximize student potential. Therefore, in the middle school grades it is critical that students receive the sufficient amount of support while teachers are collecting, analyzing, and reflecting upon the data that results from proper programming and monitoring progress prior to their transition into high school. Reading fluency is a key indicator for success in reading comprehension. The process of placement into the appropriate RTI tier is fluid and must be done with fidelity. Disaggregating data is an important part of the process but there are many other contributing factors that can determine if a student is appropriately placed in a particular RTI tier or in the program at all. Assessment is a tool to help determine the correct placement and break down the reading skills into specific needs areas such as decoding, fluency, identifying key words and details, or determining the meanings of words in a given text. With proper implementation of a progress monitoring tool, teachers can unlock a student's understanding of the material to determine how to best meet the needs of the learner and create an instructional plan within the RTI framework that is differentiated for all students within the class. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]