When districts first started adopting response-to-intervention, the approach quickly became the target of criticism from parents who believed school districts were trying to put off more costly special education services.
RTI, an approach that involves using an escalating set of techniques to address skills a student is struggling with, got a boost in 2004, when the federal law changed to require states to let districts use it if they chose.
The hope was that its use would help distinguish between children who truly have specific learning disabilities and students whose learning difficulties could be resolved with general education interventions. Sure enough, in the last few years, the number of students identified as having learning disabilities has dropped.
But there are still lots of questions about how RTI is used, and whether it's being used correctly, considering the federal rules about identifying students with disabilities haven't changed. The RTI Action Network recently posted this piece about whether those rules and RTI jive. It comes almost a year after the federal Department of Education warned states about not using RTI to delay or deny evaluations for special education services.
Read more of Nirvi Shah's On Special Education article HERE.
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