Comments on: Does RtI reduce numbers of children in special education? http://LDBlog.com/2010/02/25/does-rti-reduce-numbers-of-children-in-special-education/ News, commentary, and resources about Learning Disabilities Fri, 18 May 2012 01:58:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: URL http://LDBlog.com/2010/02/25/does-rti-reduce-numbers-of-children-in-special-education/comment-page-1/#comment-165174 URL Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:26:52 +0000 http://LDBlog.com/?p=934#comment-165174 <strong>... [Trackback]...</strong> [...] Read More: ldblog.com/2010/02/25/does-rti-reduce-numbers-of-children-in-special-education [...]... … [Trackback]…

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]]> By: Ben L http://LDBlog.com/2010/02/25/does-rti-reduce-numbers-of-children-in-special-education/comment-page-1/#comment-47983 Ben L Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:27:25 +0000 http://LDBlog.com/?p=934#comment-47983 These findings are not surprising. Iowa has moved to an RTI model for all disabilities, and has rewritten state regulations to define disability as an "educational disability" that manifests itself as a functional limitation...early numbers suggest that special education identification decreased dramatically; however, litigation that has occurred and is ongoing has shown that those reductions were simply a result of a "new interpretation of IDEA child find", i.e., failure to timely evaluate fully and identify (when needed), rather than an a natural outcome of evidence-based RTI (albeit used loosely, given the lack of evidence). Therefore, Iowa now finds itself in the precarious position of ironically opening the floodgates to a new subset of IDEA-eligible (according to Iowa regulations and current RTI implementation) group of false positives. Predictably, and no less ironic, the ranks of special education students will begin to swell as this trend is repeated over and over again. Bad policy (i.e. policy without a sufficient scientific research base) breeds bad outcomes. These findings are not surprising. Iowa has moved to an RTI model for all disabilities, and has rewritten state regulations to define disability as an “educational disability” that manifests itself as a functional limitation…early numbers suggest that special education identification decreased dramatically; however, litigation that has occurred and is ongoing has shown that those reductions were simply a result of a “new interpretation of IDEA child find”, i.e., failure to timely evaluate fully and identify (when needed), rather than an a natural outcome of evidence-based RTI (albeit used loosely, given the lack of evidence). Therefore, Iowa now finds itself in the precarious position of ironically opening the floodgates to a new subset of IDEA-eligible (according to Iowa regulations and current RTI implementation) group of false positives. Predictably, and no less ironic, the ranks of special education students will begin to swell as this trend is repeated over and over again. Bad policy (i.e. policy without a sufficient scientific research base) breeds bad outcomes.

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