A Promising Alternative for Identifying Students with Learning Disabilities

This article was first published in WestEd's R&D Alert^®, 2004.

“Alyssa” is a first grader with a wonderful imagination who loves listening to stories and quickly incorporates new words into her spoken vocabulary. Yet, while most of her classmates have begun to read fluently, she continues laboring over each word and her comprehension remains low.

Alyssa is not a real student, but a composite of many students familiar to virtually every experienced teacher: the ones who appear bright and engaged but inexplicably founder when trying to learn some essential part of the curriculum.

Determining whether a student like Alyssa has a specific learning disability poses a significant challenge. Because there are numerous concerns with the current model for identifying specific learning disabilities, many schools are experimenting with alternatives, and WestEd’s Northeast Regional Resource Center (NERRC), along with numerous other groups, is researching these new approaches.

Under the traditional model, the teacher’s next step with a student like Alyssa is to refer her for special education testing. If the testing reveals a “severe discrepancy” between Alyssa’s ability, as measured by intelligence tests, and her academic performance, as measured by standardized achievement tests, then Alyssa may be considered to have a specific learning disability qualifying her for special education. Her teachers, parents, educational psychologist, and others would then develop an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) outlining services the student will receive.

Sounds good in theory, but numerous problems crop up in practice. The process is often time-consuming and expensive, requiring time and specialists outside the regular classroom or school. All the while, the child isn’t getting the special education and related services that she may need.

Some critics argue that cultural biases in the assessments call into question the results of intelligence tests for identifying specific learning disabilities. Also, because the tests are often not connected to the school’s regular curriculum, the IEPs developed under this system often have limited connections to what the child is supposed to learn in a general education classroom.

Perhaps the biggest concern with the “discrepancy” model is that it relies on what Michael Hock, formerly with WestEd’s NERRC, calls a “wait-to-fail” approach. In the case of Alyssa, a special education referral would lead to her being tested for reading ability. But the level of reading expected of someone Alyssa’s age, first grade, is not very advanced. So, even if she doesn’t score well on reading tests, it is possible — even likely — that her score will not be low enough to indicate a statistically significant discrepancy from her intelligence level as identified by the IQ test.

Alyssa would have to “wait” until she has fallen farther behind before this “discrepancy” approach would formally identify her as eligible for special education. The identification typically isn’t made until around third grade for students who have reading difficulties.

NERRC’s Learning Disabilities Initiative has been exploring alternatives to this traditional model. In one of the most promising alternatives, schools don’t wait for formal identification of a learning disability, but instead start providing targeted interventions early on. In this “responsiveness to intervention” model (RtI), monitoring how the student responds to those interventions becomes a part of the special education identification process itself.

For Alyssa, RtI might play out like this: Having noticed Alyssa’s early difficulties in reading, her teacher monitors Alyssa’s efforts and provides focused support through daily small-group work. If this support does not seem to help, the teacher enlists the school reading specialist to work with Alyssa as well, one-on-one. Throughout the few months of these interventions, the teacher also conducts regular assessments and documents Alyssa’s limited progress. She also notes the child’s increasing discouragement.

When these interventions seem to yield no consistent or substantial gains for Alyssa, her teacher requests a meeting of a “Student Study Team.” There she presents her concerns about Alyssa’s reading and an overview of the interventions that have been conducted, along with supporting documentation, including samples of Alyssa’s work and the results of multiple classroom reading assessments. The team agrees that because Alyssa has not responded in a reasonable amount of time to appropriate interventions, she has a specific learning disability and so needs additional support through special education.

RtI is, first and foremost, about good teaching: Even before students are formally classified as having “learning disabilities,” those who need more assistance receive additional and progressively more intensive interventions. With this solid system in place in the general education classroom, a teacher is able to quickly identify students who need still more help. And for some students, the early support may make special education eligibility unnecessary. So, RtI is as much a prevention model as an identification model.

The experience of urban districts like California’s Long Beach Unified suggests the power of RtI. The district was recently honored by the Broad Foundation for Urban Education for making significant improvement in student achievement while reducing achievement gaps among ethnic groups and between high- and low-income students. Judith Elliot, Assistant Superintendent, Office of Special Education in Long Beach, credits part of that progress to implementation in all departments of interventions focused on student learning needs and the use of data to drive decision-making and problem-solving. There are no IQ tests in Long Beach Unified, but there is an abundance of student data used to identify students requiring special education resources.

While RtI seems a promising option, concerns include questions about the depth of research supporting the concept. Although multiple studies identify benefits of RtI, the studies have been relatively small.

To generate additional information, the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), in collaboration with the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities and the six OSEP-funded Regional Resource Centers (including WestEd’s NERRC), has initiated a study to identify key components and outcomes of RtI in schools across the country that are using the model. Additionally, NERRC has a technical assistance agreement with one of its states to pilot RtI in four elementary schools, with plans for statewide implementation if pilot results support the promise of this approach.