8 pages due in a few hours
General Pat
spe_500_ch_5_summary.docxHow will Response To Intervention (RTI) identify students with Learning Disabilities different from a battery of standardized assessments? State your understanding of one identification process benefiting these students better than the other.
Chelsea,
I agree that RTI is better identifying students with learning disabilities because using a standardize test to determine if a child has a learning disability is not fair to the child. Everyone is not good “test takers” and judging a child based on a “standard” test can lead to more (unnecessary) cases of students with “learning disabilities”. What if a student score the minimum score of 6/10 to determine if they have a learning disability? Does that alone determine if the student doesn’t have a learning disability? The student passed the test…and vice versa.
Explicit instruction is a “deceptively simple strategy” that includes the following: teachers show students what to do, give them opportunities to practice with teacher feedback, and then provide opportunities for students to apply these skills on their own over time (Hempenstall, 2004). It is not trial-and-error learning, discovery, exploration, facilitated learning, or some other approach where teachers assist or facilitate performance; rather, the teacher’s “direct actions have a direct and instructional influence on students’ learning” (Carnine, Silbert, Kame’enui, & Tarver, 2010, p. 5).
Assessments commonly used with students with learning disabilities include standardized intelligence and achievement tests, criterion-referenced tests, curriculum-based measurement, and direct and daily measurement.
The basic premise of response to intervention (RTI) is that measuring a low-achieving student’s response to increasingly intensive, scientifically validated instruction can determine whether the child’s struggles to learn are the result of poor or insufficient instruction or of a disability for which special education is needed.
When done well, RTI has two functions: screening/identification and prevention. A child’s positive response to scientifically validated instruction eliminates instructional quality as a viable explanation for poor academic growth and suggests evidence of a disability (L. S. Fuchs, Fuchs, & Hollenbeck, 2007). Children who respond favorably to RTI’s increasingly intensive instruction benefit from the preventive aspect of the approach. The trustworthiness of RTI depends on two equally important elements: (a) the consistent, rigorous implementation of research-based interventions and (b) an accurate, reliable, easy-to-use measure for monitoring student progress. CBM is the primary approach of progress monitoring in RTI. Although there are numerous approaches to RTI, a three-tiered model is most common (L. S. Fuchs & Fuchs, 2007a, 2007b; Johnson, Mallard, Fuchs, & McKnight, 2006). A student who moves through each tier of the model experiences all three levels of preventive intervention introduced in Chapter 1 . The following examples describe how RTI can be used to prevent reading problems and identify children who need special education for reading disabilities.
TIER 1: PRIMARY INTERVENTION IN THE GENERAL EDUCATION CLASSROOM
Primary prevention is provided to all students in the form of evidence-based curriculum and instruction in the general education classroom (Foorman, 2007).
TIER 2: SECONDARY INTERVENTION
Students who are struggling in the general education program receive an intensive fixed-duration trial (e.g., 10 to 12 weeks) of small-group supplemental tutoring using a research-validated program (Vaughn & Roberts, 2007).
TIER 3: TERTIARY INTERVENTION
In most RTI models, Tier 3 is special education (Stecker, 2007). Some special educators recommend that students who do not make progress with small-group intervention in Tier 2 receive intensive individualized interventions prior to a determination of special education eligibility (e.g., Reschly, 2005).
I believe that Response to Intervention (RTI) is an extremely useful tool determining if a student has a learning disability and can be applied to students of all ages. In the text, “the basic premise of response to intervention (RTI) is that measuring a low-achieving student’s response to increasingly intensive, scientifically validated instruction can determine whether the child’s struggles to learn are the result of poor or insufficient instruction or of a disability for which special education is needed.” RTI also functions as a prevention method verses battery of standard assessments only has one function…screening/identification. RTI creates a fair playing field for the student because it’s created based on the student and not standardized. “The trustworthiness of RTI depends on two equally important elements: (a) the consistent, rigorous implementation of research-based interventions and (b) an accurate, reliable, easy-to-use measure for monitoring student progress. CBM (curriculum-based measurement) is the primary approach of progress monitoring in RTI. Although there are numerous approaches to RTI, a three-tiered model is most common (L. S. Fuchs & Fuchs, 2007a, 2007b; Johnson, Mallard, Fuchs, & McKnight, 2006).” Primary prevention (Tier 1) is provided to all students in the form of evidence-based curriculum and instruction in the general education classroom (Foorman, 2007). In Tier 2, students who are struggling in the general education program receive an intensive fixed-duration trial of small-group supplemental tutoring using a research-validated program (Vaughn & Roberts, 2007). In Tier 3, the student is placed in special education. It seems as RTI is used to eliminate or reduce a student’s diagnosis of having a learning disability.
Dan,
