How can RTI help kids with learning disabilities? And what are the challenges? I'm Doris McMillan. Please join us for this RTI National Online Forum, The Role of RTI in LD Identification.
The RTI Action Network is a program of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Funding for the RTI National Online Forum is provided by the Cisco Foundation, the Lee Pesky Learning Center, and the Janet Schaffran Memorial Fund. Hello everyone, I'm Doris McMillan and welcome to the RTI National Online Forum.
Today we're going to talk with three top experts about the role of RTI or response to intervention in identifying children with learning disabilities. Joining me we have have Dr. Don Deschlerr, the Gene A. Budick Professor of Special Education at the University of Kansas. Also joining us, Dr. Jack Fletcher.
He is a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston. And finally, Dr. Rick Wagner is the Alfred Binet Professor of Psychology at the Florida State University. He is also Associate Director of the Florida Center for Reading Research. I'd also like to welcome our studio audience and those who are joining us online.
Later on in the program, we're going to take questions in the studio, as well as by email and by phone. If you'd like to email a question, please send it at any time during the show to forum at rtinetwork.org. That's forum at rtinetwork.org. Or you may call us at 1-888-493-9382.
We'd love to hear from you. And we want to say thank you all for joining us. Let's start with something very basic but perhaps not so simple. The question is, what are learning disabilities and how have they traditionally been identified? And I'd like to hear from all of you on this.
Dr. Fletcher, why don't we start with you first? Well, thanks, Doris. It's a pleasure to be here, and I welcome the opportunity to talk about RTI. Learning disabilities are really complex in the sense that we've had lots of difficulties understanding how to define and measure them.
The key concept, and I'm going to try not to talk like Rick, you know, a pointy-headed professor. Things like that. But the key concept has always been the idea of unexpected underachievement. We talk about kids and adults having learning disabilities when they have difficulty mastering academic skills and all the things that ought to be in place are in place.
So traditionally, we try to define learning disabilities through exclusions. We try to... Identify conditions that cause low achievement, keep kids and adults from mastering academic skills, and eliminate them as a potential factor, and everything that's left is presumably a learning disability.
Well, that proved unsatisfactory. We knew, for example, that one of the things that didn't cause learning disabilities were pervasive impairments in cognitive function, like mental retardation. And so early on we tried to identify people with learning disabilities based on selective impairments and cognitive skills and looked specifically at the idea of a discrepancy between a score on an IQ test and an achievement test.
There was some early research in the 70s that seemed to support that idea and then it was picked up and actually placed in legislation after Public Law 94-142 in 1975. So for the past 30 years, this idea of a discrepancy between IQ and achievement as a marker of a learning disability has been very prominent in policy and in practice and has been the basis for identification in schools. As soon as people proposed that as a hypothesis, the research base was pretty limited. A lot of us started studying it. What we know now after about 30 years, at least in my opinion, is that this is a concept That's pretty weak in terms of its relevance for identification.
It's certainly true that people with a discrepancy between IQ and achievement may have a learning disability, but we haven't been able to differentiate people who, for example, don't read well and don't have discrepancies with IQ. They don't seem to differ on behavior or academic achievement. There are very small differences in cognitive functions, but not on key cognitive functions that are really related to academic success. IQ doesn't seem to predict prognosis very well. Well, it's not strongly linked to intervention response.
And so real questions have been raised about that particular approach to operationalizing learning disabilities. Somebody else might want to jump in here. Dr. Deschlerr. Building on what Jack said, I think what is an important thing to remember in learning disabilities is that it... Manifests itself over the lifespan of an individual.
And often times we think about it, and much of the research that's been done has been done with younger children. But what is an interesting phenomenon in many cases is that children may be successful during their elementary years, but when they move into middle school and high school where the requirements upon them from a curriculum standpoint escalate, And now they're expected to organize and plan at a level that they didn't have to do as elementary students. Then some of the difficulties may start to emerge. And so it's important for us to keep that in mind. Just because someone may have gone underneath the radar screen early on, it may manifest itself later as well.
Okay. Dr. Wagner. Classically, learning disabilities have been really unexpected, unexplained, poor achievement.
We've used IQ to sort of identify what we thought the reasonable levels of achievement would be, but there are clear problems with the traditional approach. The two that we've been concerned about, one it's been called a wait-to-fail approach in the sense that we don't really identify kids soon enough, so it might be a second grade before we really get help to children who need it. There's also a problem with some referral bias things because you look in the classrooms and you might see maybe four to one boys to girls.
But when we do a research study and go out and apply the same criteria to everyone, it looks like it's about one-to-one or nearly as many girls are struggling with reading problems as boys. So clearly there are some problems we have to work with. Okay. Well, let's bring in RTI. And Dr. Deschler, let me direct this question to you.
How does it change things? Well, I think one of the big changes is the focus of attention moves to how does a child learn? Which is at the heart of this whole matter. And response to intervention is all about a child's response to instruction. And if that response is not favorable over time, that gives us very valuable information as to what changes should we make in the instruction that we're providing.
And we continue to measure that child's progress from a learning standpoint. And so rather than looking at labels that previously have been used in our description of the condition of learning disabilities, now the emphasis has shifted to what can we do on a day-to-day basis to ensure that we're seeing the kind of growth that we would want to see. And if we're not, then that's a signal to us to make some changes.
Dr. Wagner, is there anything else that we need to consider? Well, it's certainly a new approach and one of the issues that we face is it's been rolled out without us knowing everything we would like to know about it. But it potentially can help solve some problems. I mentioned the wait-to-fail problem and the boys-to-girls ratio problem.
I'm optimistic that it can at least handle the boys-to-girls problem because we're really tracking the progress of everyone. Rather than wait until a child is referred and then to see how well they're doing, when it's done well, we're really keeping track of of all the boys and all the girls out there and people who are falling behind can get some help early. Dr. Fletcher, let me come back to you. Are there districts that have been able to establish identification practices from the RTI models? And so could you give us some examples?
Well, sure. I think there are really good examples out in the field. I mean, one of the things that people often don't understand about RTI Is that there have been large-scale implementations in major school districts across the country, the Heartland region of Iowa, the Long Beach Unified School Districts.
The entire state of Iowa, for example, has a pretty extensive handbook on identification practices that are based on an RTI model. There's some beautiful smaller examples. One that I like to cite a lot are the Vail, Colorado examples. public schools. It's a small district in Colorado, but they have a fully functioning RTI model that includes the identification component.
One of the things that really characterizes successful implementations of RTI models is that not only do referrals to special education ...to go down, but achievement levels for everyone goes up. And RTI is really about enhancing outcomes for all students, not just for students with disabilities. The identification component is really a byproduct of an RTI system. RTI, per se, does not diagnose learning disabilities, but it certainly provides important information. You know, and if I can just add one other thing to return to the...
the place that we started this idea of unexpected underachievement. There is a big conceptual difference when you start thinking about RTI because we really shift from the historical idea that a learning disability is a bright child who can achieve to the idea that a learning disability is a persistent inability to master an academic skill in a person. It's a fundamental shift conceptually that leads to differences in identification practices.
Okay. Go ahead. I'm sorry, I was just going to jump in on the point that Jack made that RTI is about raising the achievement for all. The significant thing about that, or one of the significant things, as it relates to identification of students with learning disabilities, is that we, in a sense, can factor out some key explanations as to why children might be failing if we're committed.
As a school, as a school district, to having as our base high quality instruction and ongoing assessment for students, then it's much easier to zone in on those children who are not responding as we would hope they would. And that just makes our task relative to learning disabilities identification much clearer. Okay. Now, even though RTI was created to improve outcomes for all kids, I think that's a really good point.
I've heard of concerns from some quarters that RTI is kind of a way to delay a special education evaluation. Can you explain why this may or may not be, and I'll turn to Dr. Wagner for that. Well, that really should not be the case, although one can imagine that it's possible for that to occur maybe in some school districts.
But ideally, you do want to see how well the child responds to instruction, and that ought to be part of the evaluation. But realistically, of the problems that RTI is designed to really handle, it isn't clear to me that it's going to help us a lot with early identification because we're really talking about waiting until a child is getting some good reading instruction. So whether children identified through an RTI process will be identified much earlier than the traditional process isn't clear to me. Dr. Deschler, let me come back to you.
What impact do you think RTI is going to have on issues of... Over-identification, I mean, meaning we're finding too many students eligible for special ed. I think the question that we'd all agree to, I think, as educators, is really not first and foremost one of numbers. Our concern has got to be, are we providing the right kind of education for all of the students?
And whatever numbers fall out, so be it. Unfortunately, what has happened, though, without attention to high-quality instruction that RTI insists on, then when educators don't have, if you will, some answers or a means to deal with the ongoing challenges of just achievement in general, what we've seen in the past is one of the answers is let's refer that student. for special education services.
But now when we're creating this base of solid instruction, we're seeing in many instances where those numbers indeed are going down. Okay. Dr. Fletcher. RTI doesn't change, you know, that fundamental principle.
I mean, there is still a referral model that operates in RTI, and the legislation that governs RTI indicates very clearly that a child, that a parent can request an evaluation. that a child can be referred at any time for special education. It continues to indicate and has always indicated that just because a parent request or some referral is made, the school does not have to do the evaluation. But in an RTI model, this idea that RTI per se delays the evaluation doesn't really have to do with anything other than implementation.
Perhaps there are districts that implement an RTI model in a really rigid sort of way. And I think that the legislation, IDEA 2004, is very clear in terms of promoting flexibility and referral practices, the types of evaluations that are done, and really ...tries to move special education away from mandates and one-size-fits-all evaluations and things of that sort. And what exactly does IDEA say about RTI? Well...
A lot of people misunderstand the RTI components in IDEA 2004. From an identification perspective, what IDEA 2004 says is that districts have some choice in terms of the type of identification model that they actually implement. But that choice is tempered in terms of the state rulemaking process. A district, a state for example, has to write rules for an RTI model.
A district can choose and has the right to implement an RTI model. If the state writes rules for it, a district can also choose an alternative identification model, including the traditional IQ achievement discrepancy model. It could choose a low achievement model where kids are referred or identified in part because it's always in part.
Test scores alone are never sufficient to identify a kid with a learning disability, but they can identify them based on absolute low achievement. There's sort of a menu that districts have, and it's a district-level decision, but RTI is not mandated at a federal level. Okay, ideally, how would districts be responding to what the law recommends, and if you would paint a picture for us? Well, there would be a There would be a dialogue and I think in particular districts that are interested in an RTI model have to have a dialogue sort of up and down different levels of the school district hierarchy. Administrator, you know, central office administrators, teachers, principals and so on.
But in terms of identification ideally there would be a dialogue about what sort of identification model best fits. both the local context of the district itself, so that you'd actually talk about whether to adopt an RTI model, whether to continue with an IQ discrepancy model, whether to adopt some sort of alternative research-based model, and then dialogue with the state agency as well about the types of models that you think would fit best in your district, and that would have some impact on the rulemaking process. Dr. Deschlerr, you're shaking your head in agreement. Yeah, I think the point Jack has made there is so important. important on this notion of dialogue.
And in today's educational environment, we're under a great deal of stress to close the achievement gap. And we want to do things quickly to have that happen. Dialogue doesn't lend itself to quick solutions.
And so it's almost counterintuitive to set aside the time, get key people involved, having them weigh in. And to work these issues through that are not necessarily that simple, either from an instructional standpoint or organizationally within a school. But the time invested in doing that kind of dialoguing that Jack is talking about is time well spent. Okay, let's talk about assessing the quality of instruction and idea.
What if a school isn't doing RTI? Well, if... Again, if a school is not doing RTI, or if they are, the notion of quality instruction has to be at the heart of what a school is doing.
That's what defines what we should be doing in education. One of the key features of RTI is its focus on high quality instruction. First of all, there's real concern about what it is we're going to be teaching students. That is, what reading program or what particular component of a reading sequence might we be teaching? The other thing that is vitally important is how is that instruction of the what taking place?
And the term is frequently bantied about and it's sort of at the heart and soul of RTI and that is fidelity of implementation. In other words, are we doing? the instruction in the correct way. And this emphasis has really altered the nature of the conversation and things that we are thinking about as educators on the front line.
We're now having conversations about, am I teaching this in the right way? And if you're a colleague of mine, I'll ask you to come in and observe me and I'll come observe you. And we're just focusing on, are we doing it in the right way?
Dr. Fletcher, did I see? Well, I wanted to add a little bit, Doris, and bring this into the context of IDEA because one of the things that's different, at least about the regulations in IDEA, it's not really a difference in the statute, is that IDEA 2004 says that a child cannot be identified with a learning disability if low achievement is the result of inadequate instruction in reading or math or limited English proficiency. That's in the statute.
And then the regulations say that in order to be eligible for special education in the learning disability area, you have to have data on the quality of instruction and on the child's response to that instruction, and the data has to be provided to the parent. Now, a lot of people focus on the RTI component of IDEA 2004, but to my mind, This component of the regulations is most significant because it applies to any identification model that you might use. So even if a district chose to continue an IQ achievement discrepancy model, they still have to have data on the quality of instruction and data on the child's instructional response prior to qualifying that child in the learning disability category.
Okay. Now, Dr. Deschlerr, if—I'm sorry, Dr. Widen. The good news is that, as Don and Jack were saying, The good characteristics of instruction and being responsive to children's needs goes well beyond RTI.
We do a lot of research in the schools and one of the biggest changes we've seen is just an increase in the quality of instruction in general, not associated specifically with RTI or not, but just across the board. Dr. Deschlerr, if the schools don't use the discrepancy formula, then what test scores should they use to make eligibility determinations? Well, as has been mentioned before, RTI can be one key component in informing our understanding of how a student is performing. And the wonderful thing about RTI is that we have an ongoing record of a student's achievement or lack of achievement. And when we stand back from that, that is a powerful set of information.
But according to the legislation, if ultimate determination decision is to be made to provide special education services, multiple measures must be used beyond RTI to look at a student's cognitive functioning or some of the underlying... components beneath skill functioning. And so there's a broad array of other measures that are called upon, and then teams of teachers and administrators and parents sit together to review that material to make some decisions. Okay. What's the purpose of assessing cognitive processes, and how did the data from this testing inform intervention planning?
Well, in the work that we do with RTI, as I've mentioned before, we've mentioned before, focuses on the curriculum that students are having to deal with on a day-to-day basis. And in reading or arithmetic and so forth. And if we see over time that a student is not responding on an ongoing basis, then To make some additional decisions as to what do we do next instructionally, we may need to move beyond the skill-based measures that we are taking on students to help us understand more about that student as a learner who may have a unique profile as a learner, or some very unique attributes that we need to zone in on and refine the way we make intervention decisions. in light of that information that we would pick up. Okay.
Dr. Fletcher, what's your assessment of the value of such testing? Well, it all depends on what we mean by testing and test scores. There's an enormous amount of controversy amongst practitioners about the value of certain types of tests. I think what the evidence base shows Is that assessments of cognitive processes that involve reading and writing and math and things of that sort, achievement sorts of measures are very useful. I think that, I don't think there is a lot of evidence.
...reports the value of what people would call cognitive process assessments, assessing things like memory or learning styles or things of that sort. They haven't been shown to be tightly linked with intervention outcomes, with some exceptions that I know Dr. Wagner is going to talk about. And I, for one, don't really think that we need those sorts of extensive cognitive process assessments in order to accurately identify. I absolutely agree that we need multiple sources of information and flexibility so that we actually think about what each individual child needs to have assessed in order to make an accurate identification. Dr. Wagner.
I think the key is to focus on processes that we know are linked to reading and writing. To give you a couple of examples, we know phonological processing is very important in reading and writing, and if you look at the need to do early identification, you know, the need to do early identification, We actually have very good measures of phonological processing now for preschool children. So we can identify children who are likely to have a weakness in this area even before they've been taught to read.
So that would be a real good example where it's important to assess something that's not reading per se but will be relevant to their ability to learn to read. Another example of a real important thing to assess is vocabulary because if you are struggling with reading comprehension later on it's really important for us to know if Is it a vocabulary issue? Is it an English language learner issue or what the problem is? So I do think there's a real need to assess things other than reading and writing when we want to help children learn to read and write. But it's important that what we assess is directly related to reading and writing.
Dr. Deschler? I would underscore that because our time that we have for instruction is so limited, especially as students move into middle and high school. And we have no time to waste teaching students underlying processes that are not related directly to giving them the kinds of skills and strategies they need to respond to the demands of the curriculum.
So I would just amplify with both Jeff. If I can add, I agree that the kinds of assessments I'm talking about, and parents should be really aware of this, are the multi-hour battery. ...kinds of assessments where somebody goes in and they get a standardized battery of cognitive tests that assesses different aspects of short-term memory and processing speed and simultaneous processing and this kind of processing.
Those are the ones that I'm talking about. We have very little evidence that they're linked to reading and writing. We have lots of evidence that training these kinds of processes doesn't generalize to better academic outcomes.
What's the point? Well, that is exactly it. What's the point? Why spend the money there when we could shift those resources to intervention?
Okay. Well, what I'd like to do now is to talk about where the parent fits into this equation. Dr. Desch, let me come back to you.
When should parents be informed that their child is receiving supplemental instruction or intervention within an RTI framework? Well, ideally, parents should be involved. in all aspects of their child's education.
And some of the schools where we're seeing some great gains with the entire student body is where specific steps are taken to create ongoing conversations and dialogues and provide to parents mechanisms that they can use to engage with schools on an ongoing basis. So if... If that is an operating principle within the school, it then becomes somewhat secondary as to when in the process of RTI programming do we engage that parent.
But as a parent myself, any time that supplemental education is being offered or a change is being provided in... My child's programming. I would want to know and I think then parents can become a part of that process and not apart from.
Absolutely. Okay, what sort of information should the schools be providing to the parents when an intervention is initiated? Well, I think parents should be informed, you know, at the at the very outset. I mean, you know, in an RTI model, if you really have a fully functioning RTI model in the school. The child is basically in a surveillance system.
There's universal screening. Everybody's being screened. Some kids are going to be designated as having risk characteristics.
Parents should be informed that... Their child has been identified as having risk characteristics. In the surveillance system, if you're at risk, we start monitoring your progress.
Parents should be informed not only that the child's progress is being monitored, they should be provided with examples of the data and how to interpret the data that's being generated by an RTI model. If the nature of the intervention changes, Because the progress monitoring data indicates that the child needs a more intensive intervention, more time on task or something of that sort, the parent should be informed. If the child continues not to respond to different sorts of increasingly intense interventions in our surveillance system, the child may need a referral to special education to take advantage of the power and flexibility of IDEA because they may need an intervention that can't just be provided in the context of your regular RTI model. And it goes beyond just being informed.
Parents need to be actively involved in the process. No one really knows a child better than their own parent. They bring a lot to the table in terms of knowledge.
What they don't have is what educational professionals can provide in terms of norms, knowing, seeing a lot of kids, but we don't have a lot of time with any one child as an educational professional. So there really is a complementary aspect to the kinds of knowledge that parents and educators can bring to the table. Dr. Deschlerr?
Yeah, and we're the parent and the family can become an extension of what is happening within the classroom. Not necessarily that the parent becomes a teacher, but being aware of the things that are being emphasized in instruction as you're working with a child to ensure that homework is being done and so forth. With an understanding of what is being emphasized in school, you can make certain that that is carrying over to home. It's very important. Dr. Fletcher, when can parents request an evaluation for their child?
For so long, I think advocates have promoted getting your kid tested as soon as possible. And if your child is in the middle of the early stages of RTI, will the school test? And also, will RTI delay testing? Well, those are really controversial sorts of questions and a source of confusion for a lot of people. Basically, I think that...
the referral process can operate independently of the RTI model. And a child can be referred for an evaluation at any time in the RTI process. What IDEA 2004 promotes, I think, is a lot of flexibility in that kind of decision-making. So a parent can can certainly request, a teacher can refer. It does not mean that the school will automatically do the evaluation, and even in the past, schools might require some sort of observation of the child or some sort of pre-referral intervention or something of that sort.
But the flexibility is important because you can have children, say, with a reading problem who are going through an RTI model. People may notice, for example, the child has a speech impediment of some sort. The child ought to be referred at that point for a speech and language evaluation.
The child might have a behavior problem. The reading problem is so severe that the child is having a lot of trouble controlling him or herself in the classroom. The child may need a behavior plan. It may be useful to refer to special education at that point, not just to get a behavior plan, but also because the child needs the due process protections that are built into IDEA, and which is the other reason that we have special education services, to protect children, to protect teachers, and so on.
Okay. Did you all want to add anything, gentlemen? I think Jack said it well.
Okay. Dr. Deschlerr, let me come back to you. Right now, a lot of districts don't have RTI. So what can parents do to encourage their district to adopt it?
I think the first step is an informational one. And while increasing information is available, there's still not the level of information out there that we would hope. Of course, there's a very rich set of information available through NCLD's RTI Action Network website, which is www.rtinetwork.org.
And parents can arm themselves well with some key pieces of information around RTI so that they can be more conversant with it. And see what other schools are doing. That's one thing.
Secondly, if you mentioned the district is not doing it, I think it is always well, if you're going to communicate with the district at the district level, to try to go there with allies and some of the best allies. You can go with are people from your school, your child's teacher, principal, and so forth. And I'm an advocate of always starting at the school level and then together move on to the district level.
to try to make the case and inform them as to the advantages. Okay. Well, we have almost reached the point in our program where we'll be taking your questions. So if you haven't already, please do email us at forum at rtinetwork.org or you may give us a call. The number is 1-888-493-9382.
And we'll take as many calls on the air as we can. But before we do, I have a few more questions for our panelists. Let's talk now about interventions.
And Dr. Fletcher, do interventions for students already identified with LD change once RTI is adopted? And how does RTI affect IEP? Well, if the...
The child has already been identified as eligible for special education. IDEA says that no changes can be made without convening the interdisciplinary team and rewriting the IEP. So technically, interventions could not change just because a school implemented an RTI model.
Sometimes when people bring in RTI models, they bring in new interventions, and it may be desirable. for the child to participate in a new type of intervention that's brought in. But even then, the IEP, the individual educational plan, would have to be rewritten in order to accommodate that.
Just because the school changes the identification model should not affect students who are already identified in the absence of an interdisciplinary team meeting. Dr. Dasher. I agree with Jack.
The thing that RTI brings to the table to inform those discussions of interdisciplinary teams that are brought together around specific children is there's now a new set of data and information that can really inform other decisions that have been made about a child's IEP and can indeed enrich it because we can't forget that students who have an IEP In all likelihood are spending the vast majority of their school day within, with their classmates in the general education classroom. That being the case, they are going to be a part of the school's RTI program, and that will help enhance what is happening through their IEP program as well. Okay. If I could just amplify on that just a little bit.
The other thing that would happen if... if a school adopted RTI for kids already in special education, is the surveillance system would need to be extended to include children who are receiving interventions through special education. And I think that's really important because one of the things that doesn't happen for students who are currently on IEPs is that there's very little monitoring of progress. A lot of times people monitor progress say yearly.
when they rewrite the IEP or maybe every three years when they redo the eligibility evaluation. And a real key for effective instruction of students with disabilities is frequent monitoring of progress. So introducing the progress monitoring component and helping parents focus on that and being able to see how much, see whether the child is actually accelerating progress is really a key point.
Dr. Wagner, what are some of the general principles that guide the interventions for students with learning disabilities and and I know we talk about more time and more repetitions Something I would like to say is that the I think we understand why more time and more repetition is as effective as it is in looking at the research literature over the years it really turns out that increasing intensity is about the best thing we can do specialized programs magic bullets don't seem to exist out there and we think we understand why if Anyone in this audience would try to learn a new skill, like to learn French or learn to play tennis. You could really imagine pretty much a normal distribution in how much effort and experience each of us would have to make to reach competence in that area. And because schools are limited, you might have 20 or 30 students, you've got a single curriculum, you're under pressure to get through it all, we pretty much teach to the middle. And so if you can find a way to get some...
Greater intensity, some greater experience. You're going to be able to help children who just can't keep up under the normal circumstances really keep up with the additional help. So more intensity. More time on task is just critical.
Okay, Dr. Deschler, what else should teachers keep in mind? Just building on the point that Rick made, well, time and repetition is critical. It only becomes effective if we couple that with ongoing progress monitoring. That is, if we're repeating something, we want to make certain that it is leading us to where we want to go. And so that's just something that's built into an RTI system.
The other thing that I think is important for us to remember as we are implementing RTI programs is that in giving students practice on particular skills, we continually ask ourselves, how is this tied and linked to the regular curriculum? Sometimes we can Dr. Wagner gets so enamored in worksheets and particular practice exercises that we start to get a little drift away from the core curriculum that we're really wanting all students to orient to and be successful in. Dr. Wagner, what do you do when a child doesn't respond to interventions provided at the most intensive level under RTI? And I think exactly when do you begin to talk about special education?
And then address questions of disability. It really matters what the most intensive level of RTI is. So as a parent or an educator, you really need to know what is the most intensive thing that's been tried because that allows you to figure out what is left to be tried.
But in general, the earlier you can get children the help you need, the better. And the other thing to say too is there are children out there, maybe 2 to 3 percent, who really don't respond effectively to just about anything we've tried to do with them. And so it's important to identify those children early and not only to continue to work on their problems, but to consider some assistive technology.
There's no reason that, given all you need to learn about the world and vocabulary and language, that we need to constrain everything that needs to be learned through a restrictive channel if a child has a very serious reading problem. And that becomes even more true as children get older. It's important that a child in seventh grade hang in there and learn seventh grade social studies with everyone else. And there are important computer-based assistive readers and other things that could be used in those situations. Because I was going to ask you, when you talk about assistive technology, what are you talking about?
I'm really talking about, like, there are pens, there are good computer programs that actually can do some reading for children. Okay. If I might just come back to the point that...
Rick said there's two or three percent of the student body that really doesn't respond to instruction as we would hope. Given that reality, to me it underscores how important an effective RTI program is within a school for this reason. Those children, the two to three percent, do indeed need some specialized instruction. And we need to reserve the limited resources that we've got within a school setting so they can be really targeted on those kids.
Under the old paradigm, when the really only alternative for teachers getting help for students who were struggling was to refer them on to special education or other more intensive services, pretty soon they became overloaded and they did not have the time and the energy. To devote and the kind of, to give the clinical attention to these students who are really struggling. And so it's a dynamic that is important to be sensitive to and that we keep it in place. I think that's the one, that's probably the most important upside to RTI.
And there is some evidence of reduced referral rates when it's implemented well. And Dr. Fletcher, I know you wanted to comment. It's just that I agree completely. We now identify 6% of kids in United States schools in the learning disability category. But more relevant is the fact that 9 out of every 10 children who are identified in special education are identified because of a high incidence disability where achievement is usually an issue.
If we have high quality instruction, the number of kids who have achievement problems goes down and then we have this subgroup. that's really intractable. It is a smaller subgroup than, say, 6%.
Some people think that what we're trying to do is to basically save money, but in fact, this is a different kind of child. They're going to be much harder to teach, and you need more resources. ...is to deal with kids who are intractable learners.
And this is the group that's under the 6%? Yeah, the 2%. Okay, 2%.
Okay. Now, would there ever be a reason, Dr. Fletcher, to refer special ed before the RTI steps were completed? Well, yeah, there could be reasons. You could identify a problem in a child that might warrant a speech and language evaluation or occupational therapy or something of that sort that's not directly addressed. In the RTI process, you might have due process issues for kids that have, you know, the thing that stands out are behavior and discipline, you know, kinds of issues where the due process protections are very important.
I mean, IDEA is both a service and a form of civil rights protection, and we have to keep both in mind. Okay. Dr. Deschler, let me come back to you. How do you know when a child has made significant progress?
Yes. We've talked several times today about the importance of regular progress monitoring. Generally, when you look at effective progress monitoring systems, they look at at least two basic things.
Number one, what is the level of performance where a student is, and secondly, is he or she making progress toward where we want them to be? And as we're getting more and more experience in implementing RTI programs, schools are developing, if you will, local norms. How are students within their school performing on like oral fluency tasks and so forth? And we can judge a student's performance in relationship to what his or her classmates are doing to give us an indication, are we making the kinds of progress that we're making progress that we need to be making and if not let's make the kinds of accommodations and adjustments that we need to be making to have that happen.
Okay, Dr. Fletcher what are you looking for? I'm looking for the child to achieve just certain critical benchmarks. I think they need to be laid out very clearly in the surveillance system and that's what we want parents and teachers to be aware of is what these benchmarks really are.
I think in addition to local norms, we need to consider national norms as well, because it's possible certainly to see children grow, but not grow at a rate that will help them catch up. So it's important to look at national norms as well. Okay.
Well, we'd like to pull this all together here and then talk about comprehensive evaluation. Dr. Deschlerr, why isn't RTI sufficient alone to diagnose a learning disability? I think perhaps we've hit upon this point before, but... Learning disability, as Jack said at the outset, is a very complex condition and one measure alone or one set of measures is not sufficient to make that serious decision that would be made on behalf of a child.
And the law requires that we have multiple measures to make that decision and that we bring together an interdisciplinary team. to weigh that evidence and to make certain that an informed decision is being made for placement. Okay, so RTI is not a method of identification in and of itself?
No, RTI is a framework of delivering services to students. It provides... the arena within which, and it defines the rules by which all instruction is going to take place and how we're going to judge the instruction that we're doing.
Okay. Dr. Fletcher, can you provide more information about the hybrid model for identifying LD? What is it? Well, the hybrid model, I think that's a term that was taken from a paper I wrote on identification that's on the RTI. Yes, I happen to have it right here.
There you go. Okay. But what it really is is a summary of the recommendations that were made by a group of researchers after the Learning Disability Summit sponsored by the Office of Special Education Programs in 2002. And it's also, I think, a summation of the research findings from the different Learning Disability Research Centers from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It's really an attempt to talk about the different... Components that need to be in place.
The first is an assessment of instructional response. We shouldn't be talking about kids as having learning disabilities unless we have demonstrated that their instructional program has been adequate. And we assess that with the progress monitoring kinds of assessments as a formal assessment of instructional response and in many respects it's the first thing that we do because the first thing that we try and do is determine is there a disability and that's what instructional response is about.
Then we try and figure out what's the nature of the disability. Is it a learning disability? Is it related to something else like limited English proficiency? So in a hybrid model you assess instructional response with the progress monitoring data.
You establish low achievement, which means that you would do some norm-referenced assessments of achievement. It's not a multi-hour evaluation. In many kids, it's an evaluation that would take 30 minutes or so, and it's one that you would pick based on hypotheses about what the nature of the problem was.
But it's a norm-referenced test. It gives you validation of what you're learning on the progress monitoring measures, which are often based on local norms. And then the third component is the traditional part of a definition of a learning disability. You want to make sure that there's not another disability that explains low achievement, and you also want to evaluate contextual factors and things of that sort that might impact achievement. For example, some kids may not be learning academic skills because they have a behavior problem.
or attention deficit disorder or something of that sort and it's not a learning disability per se. Some kids may have both kinds of problems. Some kids may have mental retardation or autism.
If they have mental retardation or autism you ought to have some idea about what that referral question is because you've been following this kid in the surveillance system for a long time and so you would do IQ tests for example if that's a referral question. But for a learning disability you're looking to evaluate instructional response. establish low achievement, and then evaluate for the presence of other disabilities and contextual factors. The difference in an RTI model is that you don't have an automatic assessment battery. You are assessing to plan instruction, and so the types of things that you assess are based on what you know about the child when the referral is made.
And in many instances, the evaluation process is shortened and simplified. I used to work as a school psychologist in a traditional model and one of the things we had to assess was opportunity to learn. We had to make sure the achievement problem wasn't because the child just had not been taught. Instructional response is really a way to formalize that and quantify it in a way that we didn't have before. So in the past it was an exclusionary criteria.
We excluded kids if we thought, based on testimony, that they hadn't been taught well. Now what we do is we make it an inclusionary criteria. exclusionary criterion because we formally measure it and if we have intractability or lack of progress that includes a child in the learning disability category. It's necessary but it's not sufficient. Dr. Deschlerr, how are the data collected during RTI incorporated in a comprehensive evaluation and how much data should we be collecting?
I think Rick and Jack have Largely answered that the data that comes through an RTI work is data on how a student is responding to instruction and adjustments that are made to that. And the wonderful thing about it is what comes into the comprehensive evaluation is an array of data. About how that student is performing as a learner on curriculum based tasks. And that is what we're seeing is now starting to drive the decision making in comprehensive team work.
In terms of how much data should we be collecting, I think one of the challenges we've got today is many of our schools are drowning in data. Yeah. And... We may think that data are good, and yes they are, but we need to be judicious in terms of what we collect and make certain that we're putting in place the kinds of support mechanisms to help teachers manage the data and use it in wise ways to guide their instructional decision-making. But as Jack was saying, an RTI, well-designed RTI program really yields.
very useful information. There's not a lot of excess fat generally that is there. So the question becomes, do we have some mechanisms so that we can use it and store it and return to it? in an efficient way and make effective use of it. I think our audience agreed on that too much data.
But Dr. Fletcher, let me come back to you. If you would summarize and if you can provide more information about the primary elements that you need for solid identification. You know I'm trained as a clinical neuropsychologist and one of the things that clinical neuropsychologists do is give kids lots and lots of tests.
You know, and I've run clinics. Where I used to call it the school problems clinic and we would bring kids in and assess them for several hours to figure out if and why they were having a problem in school. Around 1998 or so, I quit.
I quit doing those sorts of evaluations because I did not feel that they were effective. And the research base was really showing pretty consistently that a lot of the information that I was collecting. It wasn't really very useful or relevant.
So now if I run a clinic and I'm interested specifically in kids that have school problems, what I do is I try and get some assessment of instructional response. And that's hard to do if you're not actually working in schools. But even so, the way I conceptualize it is I'm going to bring the kid in, I'm going to screen them, I'm going to give them norm reference achievement tests.
I'm going to screen everybody for behavioral problems, emotional problems, things of that sort with rating scales. I'm going to be worried about other disabilities that the child might have, and I'm going to be prepared to assess the child for mental retardation or autism or limited English proficiency. That's not a disability, but it's something else that you would consider. And I'm going to do every child differently. No child is going to get the same battery of tests.
And then if I don't have an assessment of instructional response, I'm going to send the kid back out. I'm going to tell the parents that we need to figure out, we need to plan an intervention, we need to see how the child responds, and I'm going to talk about somebody giving me some data or the child coming back so I can reevaluate the child briefly and evaluate instructional response. So those are the things that I have to need.
I cannot diagnose somebody with a learning disability unless I can demonstrate that they have poor instructional response. Low achievement in reading, writing, and or arithmetic, and then I had to demonstrate that it's not due to limited English proficiency, another disability, problems at home, you know, things of that sort. That's what my clinic does now.
All right. I think one of the biggest changes is the reliance on school-based data. It really isn't the case anymore that a child can be sent off to a clinic where all kinds of specialized tests are done, you can come back with an important answer.
Okay. Well, I want to thank our panel right now, but their work is not done. We're going to take some questions from our studio audience and by phone and by email. So let's move over to our audience because I think we have someone with a question. Thank you.
Hi. In our school district, children have to fall two grades behind on achievement tests in order to qualify for an IEP. Do you think RTI could help children before they have to suffer such a blow to their self-esteem? Well, I have two comments.
The first is that the big problem... With special education is the use of formula-based decision-making. I mean, the heart of special education is dealing with children as individuals.
IDEA, almost since its inception, has said that schools have to use multiple criteria. And if a school has a rule like that, like you have to have 12 weeks of RTI, you have to be two grade levels below, that basically is not consistent with the spirit of IDEA. So...
My second comment is that RTI models can indeed help with that sort of issue because rules like that would not be relevant in an RTI model. The thing that would be relevant would be lack of progress. Okay, thank you.
We have email questions that have come in, and Jennifer sent in a question. Jennifer says, what would a best practices LD evaluation look like with RTI? Don't everybody jump at once. Well, I'm a big talker.
I thought this is something I thought about a lot, you know, and I'm just going to repeat myself. It has progress monitoring data that assesses instructional response. It has selected norm reference tests because we want multiple criteria and we want to be careful about the reliability.
I mean, we don't know everything that we need to know about instructional decision making based on progress monitoring measures. And then there would be a hypothesis-based. evaluation of contextual factors in other disabilities. Okay. Let's take another question from our studio audience.
Please go ahead. Hi. I'm wondering if the RTI framework seems to rely on cooperation between a lot of school professionals, teachers, reading specialists, school psychologists, I'm wondering if there are training programs in school districts or at the university level that are helping these professionals work together.
Dr. Wagner why don't you take that? Well actually I'm probably the least qualified to answer that. I don't know about, I mean I think the programs we have in place are sort of trying to work with that but I don't know about specialized programs to work on that kind of communication. It clearly is an important need. I just jump in the You're asking a very, very important question and quite frankly there's in many instances a considerable delay in the preparation of professionals in many of our universities systems to move into this new reality within schools and what we're seeing is that many professional development programs within schools are Stepping in to fill the void and it's a significant one because we are asking professionals not only to acquire a new skill set in many instances but we're asking them to take on some new roles and to redefine themselves as professionals so there's change at multiple levels here and we shouldn't trivialize if you will That change in role element of this because if a professional has invested his or her life doing one thing and now we're saying here's a new reality for you, how we systematically move to that new reality and arm them with the skills that they need to use effectively sometimes takes more time than a couple in-service sessions to accomplish.
Okay, let's take another question. This one comes to us from Esther. Esther says, once a student has been ID'd as quote, at risk, how does curriculum-based monitoring take place within the RTI process?
Should the frequency of curriculum-based assessment increase, i.e., rather than just stibles every three months, or should there be one times a month or even more frequent assessment from the actual curriculum? We'd like to take that. Well, I think it depends on the model that's in place but certainly if you're in elementary school where kids show fairly rapid rates of growth you need progress monitoring assessments that are much more frequent than once every three months and much more frequent than just the screening assessments that people do I think a minimum for a child who's been identified as being at risk is one is once a month but I really think it ought to be even more frequent than that and then it If a child moves into an increasingly intense intervention, the frequency of the progress monitoring assessments needs to increase as well. Okay, let's take another question from our audience. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my question. This weekend I read the summary findings of the National Reading Panel, and what really stood out to me was the fact that instruction in an explicit phonics component is not always the best way to explain it. was deemed inextricable as an element of reading instruction and success.
My question is, why are most school systems still using basal series, which focus on instruction in whole word approaches instead of instruction that includes explicit phonics as an essential element? Dr. Wagner? I'm actually surprised that that's sort of the picture out there, because the picture at least I see in Florida is We're really using basals that include explicit phonics as well as other elements, sort of a balanced approach with a lot of things going on, but clearly specific phonics is in the curriculum.
That's pretty widespread. The new basals are dramatically different. I mean, maybe you're talking about districts that are using older basal programs, but the newer basals usually incorporate some pretty explicit phonics components.
I think there's still a lot of confusion about, you know, what explicit means and what systematic means and things of that sort. And I think it's very important to understand explicit as being something that means that the teacher intends to teach as opposed to passive learning strategies or the osmosis theory or the exposure theory or something like that. It means active, intentional instruction on the part of the teacher. Okay.
Let's take another email. This one comes to us from Jody. Jody wants to know, she says, what does the panel think about students who are evaluated and the data show the student has a low, below average IQ? Is this child who is considered a low average slow learner now considered elderly? Based on the new RTI system, or would the student remain in the RTI process without a label of LD?
Panel? Well, I don't have any problem answering that question. I know my answer is often controversial, but I think IQ is really a red herring in this process and that the only way to know that somebody is a slow learner is to put them in an intervention and measure their response. The problem is that...
that people want to use IQ as a capacity measure, and they're just major problems with the use of IQ tests as indicators of aptitude or ability to learn or things of that sort. The literature says that once we exclude mental retardation and levels of IQ that are associated with mental retardation, IQ is not a very good predictor of prognosis, intervention response, and so on. And there are psychometric reasons for that that have been laid out in the literature.
Dr. Descher? I would agree. Jack did use the term capacity, and it is an important thing for us to try to understand across children is what is the various capacity that children have so that we are not... If you will, under-educating and setting expectations too low, which we often can do, especially in schools from poverty areas.
In some of the research that we've done, we've seen that happen. And so it's important that we not just zone in on how a student is performing currently, but have an indication of what they can accomplish. All right. Let's go back to our studio audience.
We'll take your question. Please go ahead. What should parents do if they suspect that RTI is delaying the specialized services that their child needs?
Dr. Wagner? I think they should request an evaluation if that's what they want. I mean, they're certainly allowed to do that.
You know, I would be talking with the principal and people in the schools about how the RTI process is being operated if that's in fact what it's doing. It's not operating correctly. Absolutely. Okay. We have agreement here?
Absolutely. Okay. Let's take an email from Nancy. Nancy says, I'm interested in hearing more about the amount of state-level guidance support in LD identification that's used across the nation.
How finely or how loosely do states dictate how this identification should look? And how finely or loosely should states dictate what RTI should look like at the district levels? Panel? Well, I think states, if you look at the guidelines that are coming out, they vary considerably in terms of what they identify in the rulemaking process, the sorts of evaluations that they require, and so on. To me, what's important is the focus on outcomes.
And I tend to worry less about process and how things are done so long as there's data on how well things are working. And to me, that's what's really important. Okay. Let's take a call from our studio audience. Please go ahead.
Psychologists change as RTI is implemented and standardized tests are not as emphasized. Well, as someone who's trained to be a I was a school psychologist that did that. from my career before I became a researcher. I think there's a real opportunity for a school psychologist to step up to the plate and learn some important new skills and help lead an RTI effort in the local school.
There are new roles here. There are more things to do. Somebody's got to do it.
And a school psychologist, with the quantitative skills they bring to the table, I think school psychology has a really important role to play here. Okay, thank you. Let's take a telephone call.
We have Laura on the line. Laura, thank you for calling. Please go ahead with your question. Hi.
Hi. Students identified as having LD while an RTI model is in place may not have adequate documentation to access accommodations for the ACT, SAT, and on some college campuses. What do you recommend can be done when IQ is still required for accommodations?
Dr. Fletcher? I had trouble hearing the question, but I think it was about accommodations on high-stakes tests and SATs and things of that sort. What I would say is that even now you're not likely to get as much of an evaluation as you need to meet the criteria that are being laid out by the medical board. ...awards and the SAT requirements and things of that sort.
And so what has happened is that there's now an industry that sprung up that basically provides the testing that these different groups require. So even now, I don't think that you would necessarily get the evaluation that you needed from a school in order to meet the requirements that are laid out by ETS and other organizations like that. If I was in a school, I would go in with the criteria and request the evaluation. The school, you know, may or may not do it. Okay.
Let's take another call from our studio audience. Please go ahead. Hi.
When it comes to identifying students with learning disabilities, what will RTI look like at the secondary level? The same principles that have been described for elementary grades are going to be operable. Number one, we're talking about a tiered system in which we're looking at varying levels of intensity of instruction.
And secondly, what we really need to attend to in secondary grades, particularly high school, is having the instruction that is provided be integrated and coordinated. If there's anything that defines An educational experience for high school students, it's fragmentation. What happens in the first period during the day is generally totally unrelated to what is happening throughout the rest of the day. And adolescents cannot, particularly those who are struggling in learning, cannot endure a fragmented educational program. And so as we put in place tiered programs, Frameworks within secondary schools.
We really need to attend to the issue of integration and we need to revisit the issue of what is going to be our respective roles as teachers within a setting. To think that okay a literacy coach is going to assume all responsibility for reading achievement within the school is an inappropriate way to deal with the issue. All teachers have responsibility to ensure success, student success in reading within the curriculum. Now with that said, I'm not saying all teachers are reading teachers.
There's a vital role that history teachers, science teachers can play relative to helping students understand that content and acquire the language base. to make it a meaningful learning experience for them. All right. Let's take another email. Jody has another question.
She says, at our school, our special ed staff is often involved in RTI at levels 2 and 3. So when children who don't respond are referred for testing, it is often asked what is the difference between special ed services and RTI level 3? Well, I think that when you talk about special education and you try and differentiate it relative to level three, you're talking about interventions in special education that extend beyond what is typically provided in a general education framework. So in particular, I think you're looking at scheduling changes, more time in certain sorts of areas. You might want to take a child who's really not learning to read words. and put them in one of the programs that Rick's group really specializes in, which are these very intense eight-week, two-hour-a-day programs that have been shown to work with very intractable learners.
But to do that, you probably would have to qualify the child, and you would probably have to write an IEP that would allow the child to participate in a reading intervention for two hours a day. And that would give you the ability to move away from some of the other general education requirements and things of that sort. I might just...
add something to that answer and to respond to the question. As we think about the various tiers within an RTI model, attention needs to continually be given to what uniquely defines instruction at each tier so that we are providing unique learning opportunities for students at each tier and we have clear criteria for moving students into a tier and out of a tier. Something that I've observed happen in some schools is having one tier Sort of the weak puppy and the other two, be it two and three or one and two, not carrying more of the load.
And eventually what may happen is the weight of the system will cause... them to weaken. An RTI system to be effective has to have integrity at each of the tiers within the system. One problem we have too is I think we know a lot more about what tier one ought to look like.
something about what Tier 2 ought to look like. What Tier 3 ought to look like is more of an open question. Okay.
Well, let's take another question from our studio audience. Thank you for waiting. Please go ahead. Sure. Isn't the provision that parents can request a comprehensive evaluation in conflict with the RTI requirement that we demonstrate interventions over time?
Well, I don't think there's a conflict. I mean, a parent can request the RTI component. You know, if you're really in an RTI network, since the child is in a surveillance system, the data is going to... going to already exist in terms of instructional response.
So I don't think there has to be a conflict, particularly if you're an RTI model, where it may be more of a problem and historically has been a problem, is in a traditional referral model where kids are referred, the kid is tested, but we don't know anything about the child's instructional response, instructional history because it's never been measured. in any systematic way and that's where it might be a problem. There really shouldn't be a conflict.
The RTI data should naturally be part of a comprehensive evaluation system. Let's take a telephone call. We have Lydia on the line. Lydia, thank you for waiting.
Please go ahead with your question. Given the important role of fidelity to the assessment of instructional response, What are the core RTI components that must be in place prior to a district using RTI to make eligibility determinations? Dr. Wagner. Thank you for signaling me out.
This is what happens when you don't talk. My long-winded colleagues next to me have something to say. It's a real good question.
The conundrum is this. We've We've really rolled out RTI before its time. There's a lot we don't know about it, and we're learning by doing.
And so, you know, this is a great example of a question where you're going to learn as much from other people out in other districts and others. states who are trying this out than you will from pointy head colleagues like the two people on my left and right. They just love each other.
I think, in fact, we do know a lot about measuring fidelity. And the issue with when you roll out RTI is a difficult one. I mean, if we waited to pass Public Law 94-142 until we knew how to write IEPs and until we had special education personnel, to a certain extent, we needed...
public law 94-142 in order to get special education services into place and to learn how to write IEPs. I think we do have an evidence base that supports the different components to different degrees of RTI, and the issue is scaling. How do we scale it?
How do we implement it? But the problem is that until we have legislation that allows it, it's not going to get scaled. We're going to keep doing things the same way we've always done.
All right. Let's take another question. And we have an email question from Kathy. Kathy says, our school district requires 12 weeks of RTI as part of a comprehensive evaluation.
Isn't this a delay of services? Well, if there's any hard and fast rule like that, policy is trumping what the needs of the student are. And And I think both Rick and Jack made the point earlier today, the most effective RTI programs are ones that understand the importance of flexibility and being. not only responsive to the needs of the individual child, but responsive to the needs of the school and the school district so that we can put in place the kind of program that makes sense.
I think we all understand why policy guidelines like that might be put forward, you know, to help us sort through the complexity of things that we're dealing with. But we need to continually stand back. and ask some hard questions about that.
And Rick made the point that in some instances, We've put things in place before we knew all the answers, and right now we are feeling our way on some of these kinds of issues, and we need to be willing to say, hey, we didn't quite have that right. We need to do some adjustments here. We don't want hard and fast rules, but it also was the case that we never really got immediate evaluations in the past anyway, so we always had to try other things to make sure there really was a need for an evaluation.
It isn't clear to me that evaluations need to be delayed any more than they have been, and hopefully they can even be speeded up. It's also true that, you know, if a parent is in this particular conundrum, the question is, the question that they should ask is, what does special education have to offer that I'm not going to get out of the RTI program? I mean, is there some sort of service or something of that sort that leads to the request for the evaluation? And if that's the case, there may be a communication problem.
But in a well-functioning RTI model, it's unclear to me, you know, what the advantages would be of going immediately to special education. I'd rather go through the series of steps, and I think it's important for the school to make sure the parent understands what's being done for the child. The child is in an intervention. Why interrupt the intervention and take the child out in order to do a lot of testing that may or may not be useful?
Okay. Let's take another email. Marie has sent us one, and she says, How does the panel feel about what types of interventions should be reserved for a child that's been classified as LD and the types of interventions reserved for children needing extra help? Does the panel think there's such a difference? I think the research literature would suggest there's less of a difference than we used to maybe think there was so it isn't the case that there are specialized Sort of magic bullet programs for children with learning disabilities that work for them that don't work for others.
And so the effective intervention programs are looking like more intensity and more chance to learn the material. Okay. Yeah, the point was made earlier, too, that we know we seem to, we've spent less time giving definition to Tier 3 or higher tiers than we have to Tiers 1 and 2. And I think that... does represent an area that we really need to turn our attention to as a field.
I agree with Rick that there are not programs that are specifically designed for a student who's been classified, but it is how we orchestrate and design instruction and how we take what we know that may have been used at tiers one and two And how that gets reframed and structured and nuanced differently because of the unique needs of children at that tier. And that comes back to the question that was raised earlier about preparation of teachers and school psychologists and so forth. I think as a field, unfortunately, since 94-142 was passed, we've moved away from Preparing teachers to make the kinds of, if you will, clinic clinical based decisions within a school setting to deal with the two to three percent of the students who really need that unique instructional program. I'd like to be able to tell you what to do with the child who is part of the two to three percent, but I can't do that until we have well-functioning instructional programs that allow me to find these kids. Because right now if I go into schools I get a mix.
of kids who haven't been taught well and kids who are intractable, and it's up to me to figure out who's who. Okay. Well, I want to say thank you so much to the panel and to the audience and everyone that contributed. What I'd like to do, because we just have a couple minutes left, is to get a final thought from each of you.
What should people remember about RTI and LD identification? And let's start with Dr. Wagner. Well, RTI has been rolled out without us knowing some important things about it.
There clearly is an important role for research. I'm glad to see that NICHD has sort of stepped up to the plate and like for the four NICHD learning disability centers, RTI was a component of something they had to investigate. Hopefully that will be helpful.
We have some we don't know about its reliability for example. If you think about a test, every child is sort of responding to the same items. Now we're trying to measure children by how they respond to different teachers.
On the one hand, there may be real reliability problems with that. On the other hand, because we're collecting data over such a long period of time, we may get much more reliable information than we think we have. We just don't know, so there's an important research agenda for us to do. But realistically, the people who are out there implementing this That's where the learning is really happening. Forums like this where we can get the discussion going, I think are going to be critical and we need to learn by doing.
Okay, Dr. Fletcher. Well, I think that the important thing to remember is that RTI models are about all students and about enhancing outcomes in all students and that the key to identification is being able to identify kids who are not making progress in a well functioning educational. I mean, that's really what it's about.
Dr. Deschlerr? I've been in education now nearly 40 years, and as I stand back and look at the things that have been happening over the past several, under the rubric of RTI, I think we have the greatest opportunity now than we've had to really make some significant gains for all children, including those with learning disabilities. Okay. Well, again, I'd like to say thank you so much to everyone who has participated. Thank you for joining us for this RTI National Online Forum.
For more information about how you can help the struggling learners in your lives, please visit us on the web at www.rtinetwork.org. Again, thanks so much for being with us. Take care.
I'm Doris O'Fillon. Have a great day. The RTI Action Network is a program of the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
Funding for the RTI National Online Forum is provided by The Cisco Foundation, the Lee Pesky Learning Center, and the Janet Schaffran Memorial Fund.