Thoughts on Response to Intervention as a Means of Identifying Learning Disabilities

Originally published here on March 25, 2008.

As an IRA member, I subscribe to the International Reading Association's listserv. Recently, someone brought up the subject of response to intervention and how it relates now to identifying learning disabilities. I thought I'd share my statements on the listserv here, as well...

My perspective is this:

1. RTI is a useful model; but it is a concept, not a curriculum. How effective it is depends on what specific curriculum package you're using.


2. Abandoning the old discrepancy model allows students with real disabilities to be identified and placed earlier - sometimes MUCH earlier. That's good.


3. Reading and/or learning disabilities come in varieties. They are not homogeneous and generic. RTI may serve to tell you that there is a problem, but it will not necessarily tell you what the problem is. Figuring that out may require some sort of a more technical cognitive evaluation (which may or may not include an IQ test). Federal law no longer REQUIRES IQ tests to legally identify learning disabilities, but psychological or cognitive tests are sometimes still useful.


4. The old discrepancy model provided a mathematical definition for learning disabilities (achievement is 71, IQ is 88, in our state that big of a discrepancy implies a learning disability). RTI by itself leaves much more room for professional judgment - and people will disagree when a committee sits down to discuss it. One person will say, "Johnny is responding to our intervention; so he doesn't seem to me to have a disability." Another person will say, "Johnny's response to our intervention, while it exists, is not adequate to allow him to ever catch up with his peers; so he DOES seems to me to have a disability." At the end of the discussion the group will either flip a coin to decide whether to place Johnny in special education or fall back on other tools for determining whether he has a disability.

As I understand IDEA 2004, it says that:

• the discrepancy model cannot be used exclusively by your state anymore


• RTI has to be one choice available for considering whether a student has a learning disability


• and your state is free to look for other methods of determining whether a student has a eligible disability.

I don't think IDEA 2004 makes clear exactly HOW you use RTI decide whether a student has a disability. It is a marvelous general education tool, especially when employed as Allington suggested, in a manner where they curriculum in the tiers compliment each other instead of competing with each other. It may well prevent reading disabilities in particular children from becoming such profound problems that the child will have to be identified as needing special education services. But it's effectiveness and usefulness in identifying learning disabilities is only now beginning to be tested...

The role of RtI in identifying learning disabilities is sure to be the topic of much more discussion as IDEA 2004 gets further implemented in individual states...