DRAFT 9 (08/17/2005)
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO SCHOOL DISTRICTS
Identification of Students with Learning Disabilities under the IDEA 2004
Oregon Response to Intervention
Office of Student Learning & Partnerships
September 2005
OREGON DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Public Service Building
255 Capitol Street NE
Salem, Oregon 97310-0203
Phone: (503) 378-3569
www.ode.state.or.us
This paper could not have been developed without the assistance of the special education staff from Tigard-Tualatin School District. The Oregon Department of Education appreciates their willingness to share their skills and knowledge to benefit Oregon students with disabilities and their families.
OrPTI Guidance, September 2005 33
It is the policy of the State Board of Education and a priority of the Oregon Department of Education that there will be no discrimination or harassment on the grounds of race, color, sex, marital status, religion, national origin, age or disability in any educational programs, activities or employment. Persons having questions about equal opportunity and nondiscrimination should contact the State Superintendent of Public Instruction at the Oregon Department of Education.
Identification of Students with Learning Disabilities under the IDEA 2004
Oregon Response to Intervention
This report is posted on the ODE website at:
http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=319.
(Effective September 28, 2005)
The Oregon Department of Education hereby gives permission to copy any or all of this document for educational purposes.
OrPTI Guidance, September 2005 33
OrRTI Guidance
Table of Contents
Page
Introduction 1
Section One, Response to Intervention 5
Section Two, Implementing Response to Intervention (RTI) 17
Section Three, Perspectives on Evaluation Models 39
Appendix
References 45
Response to Intervention Readiness Checklist 51
OrPTI Guidance, September 2005 33
Introduction
Every day Oregon educators make decisions about children that are of life long importance. Among the most profound of these is the conclusion that a child’s educational struggles are the result of a disability. Educators engage in this difficult task because they know that, despite the dangers inherent in labeling students, important benefits may follow. When the decision is accurate, it can help parents and children understand the source of difficulties. It opens the door to resources, assistance, and accommodations.
Deciding a child does not have a disability is equally important. That conclusion says to general educators that they can effectively educate the student. It tells parents and students that success is attainable through hard work, practice, and engaged instruction, without special education services.
It is critical that schools make these decisions based on the best information possible. For the majority of children in special education, those identified as having a learning disability (LD), this decision has been made in a climate of uncertainty. For decades the field of learning disabilities has struggled with identification issues both in practice and in the law. However, with the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004), the climate is changing.
When IDEA was reauthorized in 1997, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) began a process to “carefully review research findings, expert opinion, and practical knowledge … to determine whether changes should be proposed to the procedures for evaluating children suspected of having a specific learning disability” (Federal Register, 1999, p. 12541). This review resulted in a “Learning Disabilities Summit.” At this summit, a series of white papers presented relevant developments in the LD field and provided empirical validation for the use of alternatives to traditional discrepancy models. Following the summit, a series of meetings was conducted to gain consensus in the field regarding issues around LD. The following are consensus statements from the 2002 Learning Disabilities Roundtable report that apply to LD identification and were influential in the 2004 reauthorization process:
· Identification should include a student-centered, comprehensive evaluation and problem solving approach that ensures students who have a specific learning disability are efficiently identified.
· Decisions regarding eligibility for special education services must draw from information collected from a comprehensive individual evaluation using multiple methods and sources of relevant information.
· Decisions on eligibility must be made through an interdisciplinary team, using informed clinical judgment, directed by relevant data, and based on student needs and strengths.
· The ability-achievement discrepancy formula should not be used for determining eligibility.
· Regular education must assume active responsibility for delivery of high quality instruction, research-based interventions, and prompt identification of individuals at risk while collaborating with special education and related services personnel.
· Based on an individualized evaluation and continuous progress monitoring, a student who has been identified as having a specific learning disability may need different levels of special education and related services under IDEA at various times during the school experience.
(Source: Specific Learning Disabilities: Finding Common Ground; pp. 29-30)
IDEA 2004 represents consensus on at least three points regarding LD identification. These points are: (1) the field should move away from the use of aptitude achievement discrepancy models, (2) there needs to be rapid development of alternative methods of identifying students with learning disabilities, and (3) a response to intervention (RTI) model is the most credible available method to replace discrepancy. RTI systematizes the clinical judgment, problem solving, and regular education interventions recommended in the consensus statements above. In RTI, students are provided with carefully designed interventions that are research based, and their response to those interventions is carefully tracked. This information is analyzed and used as one component in determining whether a child has a learning disability.
IDEA 2004 includes two important innovations designed to promote change:
1. States may not require school districts to use a severe discrepancy formula in eligibility determination, and
2. Districts may use an alternative process, including a “response to intervention” (RTI) method described in IDEA 2004, as part of eligibility decisions.
This document provides information to assist school districts in designing and adopting an RTI approach that best fits the district, is technically sound, and is sustainable. It also reviews current information regarding the use of other evaluation approaches. Whatever model the district uses to implement RTI, such an adoption will affect more than a district’s special education and evaluation departments. RTI requires a way of thinking about instruction, academic achievement, and individual differences that makes it impossible to implement without fully involving general education.
It is important that practitioners know why the authors of IDEA 2004 decided to include an alternative to the discrepancy approach. Adopting an alternative requires that individuals release long held beliefs and practices and involves substantial effort and resources. Federal requirements call for states to adopt criteria for LD eligibility that districts will be required to use. This paper will provide a basis for Oregon’s criteria and a better understanding of the basis for the criteria for relevant stakeholders. The development and implementation of an RTI model has been identified as an area of focus in Oregon’s System Performance Review & Improvement system (SPR&I).
This paper contains three sections: “Response to Intervention,” “Implementing Response to Intervention,” and “Perspectives on Evaluation Models.”
“Response to Intervention” provides detail about various models that have been proposed, described, and implemented and strengths and challenges inherent in each. “Implementing Response to Intervention” is a practical guide to developing and sustaining RTI in a school district. “Perspectives on Evaluation Models” reviews background information regarding research in discrepancy and processing models of LD evaluation.
Section One
Response to Intervention
IDEA 2004 allows the use of a student’s “response to scientific, research-based intervention” (20 U.S.C 1414 (B)(6)(A)) as part of an evaluation. Response to intervention (RTI) functions as an alternative for learning disability (LD) evaluations within the general evaluation requirements of IDEA 2004. The statute continues to include requirements that apply to all disability categories, such as the use of validated, non biased methods, and evaluation in all suspected areas of difficulty. IDEA 2004 adds a new concept in eligibility that prohibits children from being found eligible for special education if they have not received instruction in reading that includes the five essential components of reading instruction identified by the Reading First Program. These requirements are those recognized by the National Reading Panel: phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency (including oral reading skills), vocabulary development, and reading comprehension strategies. RTI is included under this general umbrella. By using RTI, it is possible to identify students early, reduce referral bias, and test various theories for why a child is failing. It was included in the law specifically to offer an alternative to discrepancy models.
RTI is not a new approach. It is recognizable under other names such as dynamic assessment, diagnostic teaching, and precision teaching. Those terms, however, have been applied to approaches used to maximize student progress through sensitive measurement of the effects of instruction. RTI applies similar methods to draw conclusions and make LD classification decisions about students. The underlying assumption is that using RTI will identify children whose intrinsic difficulties make them the most difficult to teach. Engaging a student in a dynamic process like RTI provides an opportunity to assess various hypotheses about the causes of a child’s difficulties, such as motivation or constitutional factors like attention.
Capacities Required to Adopt RTI
Several organizational approaches are available for implementing RTI. These models generally encompass the following four system requirements (Gresham, 2002 Vaughn, 2002):
1. Measurement of academic growth
2. Use of validated interventions
3. Capability of distinguishing between:
a. Performance deficits and skill deficits and
b. Instructional problems and individual learning problems
4. Ability to determine the effects of interventions and make decisions about cutoff criteria
These requirements imply both technical and practical capacity that must be considered when an RTI system is developed or adopted.
Measurement of Academic Growth
Fuchs and Fuchs (1998) introduced the important concept that a student, in order to be considered to have a learning disability, must be dually discrepant. It has been demonstrated that, in order for a student to be reliably classified as having LD, low achievement must be accompanied by slow progress. Using low achievement alone results in group membership that will change substantially over time, with students moving into and out of the group. (Francis et al., 2005). RTI decisions must be made both on the basis of a student’s relative low achievement and on the student’s slow slope of progress.
This criterion can be met by use of a well documented approach referred to as curriculum based measurement (Fuchs and Fuchs, 1998). Curriculum based measurement uses “critical indicators” of growth such as oral reading fluency, correct word sequences written, and rate of correct calculations. These measures may be normed on a local sample (Shin, 1988) or on the results of large scale studies. Alternatively, typical peers may be sampled as a direct comparison group during the assessment phase (Fuchs and Fuchs, 1998). CBMs have been established as valid, easy to use, and economical. They can also be used as frequently as daily without threatening their sensitivity.
To aid in the early identification of students who are not progressing as expected, Good and Kaminski (Good and Kaminski, 1996) have developed a number of “indicators” of early literacy development as predictors of later reading proficiency. These measures, included in the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), provide a tool to overcome the important challenge of early identification of children with potential reading problems. The DIBELS system allows for careful tracking of students on the development of early skills related to phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding, and fluency. The DIBELS system includes a series of benchmarks that assist in the “sorting” of students into tiered groups that have increasing levels of risk. A further benefit of using the DIBELS system is that oral reading fluency measures extend through sixth grade and provide normative data to thousands of school districts in the United States.
The DIBELS measures are provided to Oregon schools at no cost through the Oregon Reading First Project. Further information about DIBELS may be found at http://dibels.uoregon.edu/techreports.
It should be noted that RTI research and model implementation generally focuses on elementary aged children. The measures that are available are most appropriately used with younger students and, as students mature, factors such as motivation and behavior make interpretation of students’ performance increasingly complex. This is true of traditional testing paradigms as well. RTI models frequently combine response to intervention with hypothesis testing or problem solving approaches, both of which become increasingly important for older students. For students in late elementary and secondary schools, careful review of students’ histories is very important.
Use Validated Interventions
General education is the first intervention. Many authors (Kame’enui and Simmons, 2002) conceptualize the first phase of “intervention” to be at the general education basic or core curriculum level. From this perspective, use of a research based core curriculum is a necessary precondition for adopting RTI. Such curricula provide development in the instructional components identified as essential by the National Reading Panel: phonemic awareness, systematic phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension. A number of published curricula have been aligned with these instructional components. An issue for consideration in an RTI model is that there should be a mechanism in place for judging the fidelity of implementation of any identified curriculum.
Interventions are supported by research. With respect to more intensive individual interventions, the body of literature on validated procedures is growing. Gresham (2002) reviewed the current body of literature and reached the following conclusions:
1. The concept of a validated intervention protocol is supported by research.
2. A combination of “Direct Instruction” and “Strategy Instruction” is the most productive in effecting growth.
The use of validated instructional protocols presumes that the school has identified sets of instructional interventions, usually of increasing intensity, that have been demonstrated to be effective. These interventions are varied by curriculum focus, group size, frequency, duration, and motivational conditions. Often, these variables are modified in relation to student characteristics.