"Response to intervention" aims to determine
When 8-year-old Hannah Hart started struggling in the classroom, her school wasted little time coming to her aid. Teachers and specialists provided extra daily tutoring in math and reading.
About every six weeks, special educators, other classroom teachers, and even the principal of her school attended "data meetings" to examine Hannah's test scores, evaluate her progress, and pinpoint her specific needs. "Anything we did was in response to the data," says Ellen Barton, Hannah's second-grade teacher at Newmarket Elementary in Newmarket, N.H.That early attention paid off; the difference was like flipping a switch. "It was like going from the dark to the light," says Trish Hart, Hannah's mother. "Her confidence as a learner and a child just soared."
Across the country, districts are adopting similar early intervention plans to help identify and evaluate students at risk for learning disabilities. The approach, called response to intervention, uses research-based instruction, data collection, and multiple tiers of intense tutoring to catch struggling students before they need to be placed in special education classes.
But implementing RTI successfully presents many challenges, especially in schools with limited resources, and classroom teachers have been generally slow to embrace the method, fearing its emphasis on data could interfere with their quality of instruction.
"Teachers really feel this will be a burden," says Wayne Sailor, a professor of special education at the University of Kansas. "Everyone's great fear is: Will the science compromise the art of teaching?" ...
2 comments:
Am I reading this correctly? Does it really say that learning disabilities can be avoided by good, if intensive, instruction before a child is categorized as learning disabled? If a disability can be prevented, it doesn't sound like it ever was going to be a true disability. What does that imply about many students who have been labeled as disabled because they never got such good instruction? Are they really disabled, or just short-changed?
Also, how can anyone write something like "Will the science compromise the art of teaching?" Good grief that is like saying, "Don't let the facts get in the way of teachers doing willful, rather than carefully considered, instruction."
I sincerely hope none of our Kentucky teachers would sign on to such a statement.
Richard Innes
Richard,
Thanks for the comment.
…and No, I don’t think the article claims that RTI can cure LD.
As I understand it, Response to Intervention is a relatively new take on an older research-based idea – early intervention.
In Kentucky, like many other states, the legal definition of a learning disability was (and I suppose still is) “a severe discrepancy between achievement and ability.” This may have been fine, as definitions go, but it created problems with our youngest students.
For example, let’s assume we have a 5-year old child who we agree is truly learning disabled. In order for that child to qualify for specially designed instruction, he would have to show that severe discrepancy. But with our youngest children that’s hard to do because our comparison group (non-disabled children) which represents expected achievement is so young. It’s hard to get a statistically “severe” discrepancy until the kids are 7 or 8 years of age. By that time, our LD kid is three years into his educational program and is not receiving special instruction.
As I understand it, RTI hopes to prevent academic failure through early intervention.
Has the law caused some children to have been short-changed instructionally because they could not be legally identified? Certainly.
RTI hopes to correct that situation. Whether it does or not – I don’t know.
The plan is to get kids when they’re young – intervene instructionally – monitor progress closely – and watch for children who continue to have difficulty.
Students who do not respond to these interventions are more likely than students who do respond to have a biologically-based learning disability and therefore to be in need of special education. I am unclear as to how that factors into today’s legal requirements, which changed the year I retired - and not being “a Special Ed guy,” I might not be up-to-speed.
As for your other question – how can anyone write something like “Will science compromise the art of teaching?” Well…I could, although I wouldn’t in this case.
There is most definitely an art to great teaching. To miss that is to view the educational process as one dimensional. It is anything but…
Science doesn’t always produce facts and facts don’t always equal truth – at least not in the social science world.
Richard
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