Impact of TRI Services on Special Education Referrals

History of Special Education

In 1974, Valentin Hauy formed the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles, which is recognized in the world as the first school for the blind inspired by LEpee and others such as Madame Von Paradis who helped in the developing of the methods used to teach in the school. Hauy educated a blind boy who became a teacher later in teaching the same school. Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard is another person who was concerned with developing education approaches for helping the disabled to learn more effectively.  Jean’s work influenced other researchers’ investigations on special education, especially, in the United States.

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Thomas Gallaudet formed the first school of the deaf that was later called the American School for the Deaf. On the other hand, Samuel Howe was interested in educating the blind. As such, Howe founded the first school of the blind in the United States in 1829, which is currently named the Perkins School of the Blind. At the same time, numerous changes were made to the laws that regulated the implementation of special education schools. Different policies were made in 1897 that required the states to provide learning institution for special persons, particularly, children. The effort led to the development of the Department of Special Education, which was created by the National Education Association.

Spaulding and Pratt (2015) review and analyze the history of special education and contend that the 20^th century was a period that was characterized by implementing laws to ensure that people with disability would acquire rights and were guaranteed an education. Organizations such as New York University began offering training programs for special education teachers.  Other researchers like Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet created intelligent scales, for instance, standardized intelligence test to identify mentally retarded children, a test that would later be utilized to establish the Intelligent Quotient that was introduced by Lewis Terman in 1916. The effort for the need for special education continued, and 1918, the majority of the states in the U.S recognized that all individuals had the rights to education.  In 1922, Elizabeth Farrell founded the Council for Exceptional Education (CEC) that played a fundamental role in providing and improving laws that protected persons with disabilities. Further, Spaulding and Pratt (2015) documents that the United State Office of the Education created law concerned with exceptional children in 1931 and blind persons were included in the Social Security Act of 1935 in 1936. The efforts were disrupted by the Great Depression and Second World War. However, the government made significant transformations in 1950, which led to the establishment of the National Association for Retarded Children (NARC) supported by parents of children with mental disabilities.

Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, Mattison, Maczuga, Li, & Cook (2015) document that 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was created and passed that provided policies for funding schools supporting the development of a proper environment for children with disabilities. Other laws such as Education of Handicapped Act were formed to grant funds to schools for training teachers. At the same time,  the Rehabilitation Act as passed in 1973 to assure the rights of individuals with special education needs with regard to housing, being involved in learning process without discrimination, and employment upon finishing the learning programs.  Other small acts emerged in the Public Law 94-142 that guaranteed persons with disabilities the rights to appropriate and free public education in the least restrictive environment possible. The law was revised in 1990 and is currently known as the individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA).

Discrepancy Model and Its Drawbacks

According to Brynjarsdóttir and OʼHagan (2014), the traditional discrepancy model hold that learning disability can be determined by combining cognitive and academic testing. Whenever a severe discrepancy between achievement and ability is found, together with the underlying details process problems, a learning disability can be identified and special education can be offered to the individual. Discrepancy model is used to capture and compare the students’ scores through different assessment approaches. The method examined a child’s intellectual ability (IQ) and compares it the progress an individual can make in school. According to Taylor, Miciak, Fletcher, and Francis (2017), the reason discrepancy model is used to test students this way is to see if the persons have the ability to learn to determine if they need special attention on the certain subject. The authors also argue that the discrepancy model is the most superior theory to use although it has several disadvantages. The model measures how the levels in which children are unable to keep up with their peers. Therefore, it measures the person’s IQ and depending on the school’s or state’s policy, different criteria are established depending on the resources to match up with the children who might qualify. In addition, Restori, Katz, and Lee (2009) confirm that under the conventional discrepancy model, in an evaluation, the referred individuals are given a series of standardized tests that are composed of two important components. The first one is the IQ test that is intended to establish the mental ability of a student or potential to learn. The other is an achievement test that is meant to show where the learner is likely to perform better academically in relation to their ability. The two approaches might seem logical since they estimate the potential of a student to learn using the IQ tests and compare its potential with how the person is achieving.

Among other aspects of the discrepancy model, O’Donnell and Miller (2011) discuss its major problems. According to them, although the discrepancy model offers a rather objective approach for determining students’ learning disability, there are numerous significant limitations that must be considered. The First one is that it is considerably difficult to accurately identify the severe discrepancy for young children or students. Learners arrive in the kindergarten with differing level of exposure to developmental and educational progress at a various rate even without effect on learning disability. Most importantly, it takes several years before determining that a student has a learning disability. At the same time, O’Donnell and Miller (2011) and Restori, Katz, and Lee (2009) indicate that cognitive and academic assessment instruments are not reliable and accurate at early ages.  In addition, even though early interventions are an important element to helping students with disabilities become successful in their academic work, the discrepancy model has proven difficult and effective to identify education-related problem are early stages of childhood development. Other considerable issues with discrepancy model s that severe discrepancy cutoff value is somewhat arbitrarily identified and fails to consider adequately error of measurement that occurs in every form of standardized assessments. As such, the discrepancy model merely provides a probability that achievement of a person is significantly discrepant from their potential to learn. As a result of the errors of measurement as well as other factors, certain cutoff values are not a severe discrepancy as indicated by the test for some students. On the other hand, for other individuals, the score above the cutoff is an indication of severe disability. Hence, the result obtained from the discrepancy model produces individuals with not actual learning disability and fails to identify those with severe achievement challenges. As an outcome, the majority of the districts and states have experienced a disproportionate representation of students from linguistically and culturally diverse background based on the traditional discrepancy approaches.

Overrepresentation of the Minorities in the Special Education

  According to Togut (2011), there has been a consistent overrepresentation of minorities, especially, the people with disability and people of color in the United States in special education programs. Hence, the author contends that overrepresentation is one of the fundamental issues of public schools. Ford (2012) asserts that African-Americans made up 16% of the total enrollment in school and 38% of these individuals were considered intellectually disabled in the 1980s. African Americans have the highest tendency of being received as persons with disability in the United States. Another reason is that minority groups are often perceived to have behavioral problems. Historically, children of color have been perceived as “emotionally handicapped” (Zhang, D., Katsiyannis, Ju & Roberts, 2014). The author also argues that the greater number of minority students in special education program as a result of the relationship between parents and school officials, education politics, and quality of education outside of the programs.

Maydosz (2014) focuses on the disproportionate representation of minority in special education and aims at answering the question of why the situation is a concern. According to the scholar, the issue is problematic because the identification of special education means less inclusive and more restrictive placement for the minority groups as compared to the white counterparts.  At the same time, identifying individuals to be enrolled in special education programs involve a subjective process despite the federal guidelines. The assessment teams are usually made of school-level experts, child’s teachers, and parents who decide the individuals to test, the evaluation approaches to use, how the results are interpreted.  The most underlying problem is that the process of referrals, as well as identification, is often biased. As the number of the minority students continue to increase in the special education services, the disproportionate impact the quality of education received.  The possible cause of the problem includes testing bias, referring to teacher pre-service, subjective nature of the child study team decision, and overcrowded classrooms. Artiles and Trent (2014) agree that teacher makes discriminatory decisions regarding minorities for different reasons, for example, most of them are middle-class females who are culturally distinct from minor students. Some may even believe that minority students are inferior and misestimate the intellectual ability of the learners and their potential to achieve in academic work. Hence, educators may have low expectation from the minority learners as a result of their learning and behaviors styles.  As a result, the problem leads to teachers’ over-referral of minority student to special education programs. As such, these are the major reasons there is overrepresentation and over-identification of minority persons to special education services.

Services Offered Through RTI

RTI became more prevalent in the US following the introduction of the No Child Left Behind law in 2008. The law required that every child is given education service in an environment where they are least restricted. For children with disabilities, a least restrictive environment means that they are taught together with children who have disabilities. According to Barrio and Combes (2015), the new laws that support RTI place the responsibility of teachers to offer interventions and to monitor the progress of children who are in the intervention initiative.

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 The RTI initiative has made it increasingly important for educators to be accountable for all students under their care. In this initiative, the teachers play the role of recognizing students who can benefit from early intervention so as to minimize the number of students being referred to special schools. Fuchs (2006) establishes that every student had reaped social or academic benefit from the RTI initiative that seeks to include all students. Tutors who conduct the intervention apply instructional practices that have been tried and proved to yield results. The US Congress commissioned scientific research to be done in a bid to improve instructional practices so as RTI can succeed.

 Al Otaiba, Connor, Folsom, Wanzek, Greulich, Schatschneider, and Wagner (2015), RTI must have well-defined components and elements for it to succeed. The first aspect or element or RTI is identifying or screening for students who have special difficulties. The second step is always about monitoring the progress of the students and offering them with intervention services. The nature and weight of the interventions are determined by how good or poor the students’ response is (Al Otaiba et al., 2017). This stage proves to be the most critical in all the RTI process for at this point data for determining what to do with a student is collected. Another aspect of RTI is a multi-level prevention system. In this phase, the educators are allowed to provide intensive instructional support. The first prevention level is primary. In the primary level, all students are given fundamental instruction and elementary curriculum. In secondary prevention level, the intensity of instructional support is intensified since students in this stage were identified as being at risk of poor learning outcomes in the primary prevention level (Al Otaiba et al., 2017). In these stages, the students are also monitored in intervals of weeks or a month depending on the teacher’s preference. The third level of prevention is tertiary prevention level. In this phase, students are given very intense, and goal oriented instructional support.

Castro-Villarreal, Rodriguez, and Moore (2014) hold that RTI allows parents to participate in their children’s education. Under RTI, parents can request the institutions to give them more information on the kind of intervention their children are receiving and which ones are working. The school can also give parents a graphical representation of their children’s progress after each assessment. Parents can be keen to follow the RTI process and be patient to see if it will yield the expected results the data provided by RTI proves to be of great use in such a case. When through RTI parents understand the strengths and weaknesses of their kids they can be able to help them better at home. RTI offers a seamless transition between general education and special education as children who remain in general education and those who are referred to special education are exactly where they should be. Castro-Villarreal, Rodriguez, and Moore (2014) also argue that for RTI to be as successful in schools as it should be the leaders must implement it well. RTI should avoid implementing RTI in rapid increment as it has been proved that small increments are more effective and sustainable (Castro-Villarreal et al., 2014). It is the task of the school leaders to convince all tutors and other stakeholders to embrace RTI by showing them its benefits. There is no doubt that some institutions have major adjustments to do so as to do RTI effectively, however, the success or failure of RTI in any institution depends on the leadership prowess of the concerned school administrators.

Impact of RTI on Special needs Schools

 RTI can minimize the disproportionality that is seen when students are placed in special needs schools. RTI affords the tutors the opportunity to deal with the needs of different student groups at a personal level. Evidence-based interventions are also consulted and the response of different student groups is evaluated before the decision to send them out to special needs schools is reached. The elements of RTI such as high-level instructional approach, assessment, data-based decision making are means through which RTI uses to minimize disproportionality.

 When RTI decides that a child should go to a special needs school it can also help the special needs school understand the kind of services and support to offer a student through his or her Individualized Education Program (IEP).  A parent has the right to ask for his or her child to be transferred to a special education school if they feel that the RTI is not helping their child. Another aim of RTI is to provide as much aid as possible for students in the classes before consigning them to a special needs school. When the interventions carried out by tutors prove successful there is then no need for special education.  Through RTI, tutors are able to get more insight into both the strengths and weaknesses of a student and so they can tailor their services to benefit them the most.

Fuchs and Fuchs (2017) contend that RTI is not without its disadvantages. First, students who have exemplary performance in one unit may not be acknowledged if they perform poorly in their weak areas since most of the attention in RTI goes to improving areas where a student struggles the most. Secondly, most institutions have not trained their teachers on RTI and so they find themselves lacking qualified personnel to run the RTI initiative (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2017). However, it is important to note that even the teachers in general education are rapidly becoming familiar with RTI and so within a short period of time there will be no shortage of RTI experts. The RTI initiative is yet to come up with ways of identifying students who need special attention in all subjects, especially in math. The most common interventions are done to help students who have a problem with reading; consequently, students who are weak in other areas could miss out on the benefits of RTI.

Robertson and Pfeiffer (2017) conducted an investigation which indicates that when RTI is properly implemented, the number of children in special needs school should decrease.  According to research over 80% of students under special education qualified to be there due to reading difficulties majority which can be tackled through RTI and that way referrals to special education can be reduced (Fuchs & Fuchs., 2017). RTI has to remain as an initiative of the general education but that does not prevent it from partnering with special education (Robertson& Pfeiffer., 2017). In fact, the success of special education to a large extent is dependent on the success of RTI. RTI elements of screening, identification, and monitoring are very crucial to the success of special education.

References

• Al Otaiba, S., Connor, C. M., Folsom, J. S., Wanzek, J., Greulich, L., Schatschneider, C., & Wagner, R. K. (2015). To Wait in Tier 1 or Intervene Immediately: A Randomized Experiment Examining First Grade Response to Intervention (RTI) in Reading. Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.
• Artiles, A. J., & Trent, S. C. (2014). Overrepresentation of minority students in special education: A continuing debate. The Journal of Special Education, 27(4), 410-437.
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