Using Response to Intervention to Assess Learning Disabilities

The recent reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990, known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA, 2004), stated that districts cannot be required to use the traditional discrepancy model to diagnose learning disabilities (LD) and allowed for assessing response to scientifically based interventions as a diagnostic tool. The concept of using student response data for eligibility decisions is not new (L. Fuchs & Fuchs, 1998; Heller, Holtzman, & Messick, 1982), but it entered the national debate in 2001 when Gresham presented a response-to-intervention (RTI) approach to LD diagnosis at the LD Summit, hosted by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs. Gresham argued that a student should be identified as having a learning disability only after academic behaviors did not significantly change following implementation of a validated intervention. Almost simultaneously, the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education (2001) and the National Research Panel’s report on minority students in special education (Donovan & Cross, 2002) endorsed RTI, as did several professional associations, including the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, National Center for Learning Disabilities, and the Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children. Recent legislation increasing accountability in general and special education has created a climate conducive to data-based decision making and emphasizing student learning outcomes. IDEIA (2004) defined RTI in law, and permitted the use for eligibility decisions, but data obtained from an RTI model should be used for educational decisions beyond eligibility for special education. We consider RTI to be the systematic use of data-based decision making to most efficiently allocate resources to enhance learning outcomes for all children. However, different models described in the literature used RTI for different purposes, which resulted in substantive inconsistencies between existing models (Burns & Ysseldyke, 2005). Moreover, several researchers have identified important— although, as of yet, unanswered—questions regarding RTI implementation (Burns & Ysseldyke, 2005; D. Fuchs et al., 2003; VanDerHeyden, Witt, & Barnett, 2005; Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003), which has direct implications for practice because potential implementation difficulties could significantly impede the use of RTI on a national level (Ysseldyke, 2005). In addition to differences between existing models, the use of RTI in school systems has been fervently debated (Burns et al., 2006; Chamberlin, 2005; Gresham et al., 2004; Hale, Naglieri, Kaufman, & Kavale, 2004; Marston, Canter, Lau, & Muyskens, 2005; Naglieri & Crockett, 2005; Tilly et al., 2005). From our perspective, hot debate can be productive debate to the degree that it stimulates meaningful research conducted using a variety of approaches (Odom et al., 2005). As RTI evolves, iterations are inevitable, and those iterations should be guided by empiricism, with a premium on child outcome data. Further, debate about RTI creates an opportunity to seek consensus regarding the purpose of intervention efforts in schools and the purpose of diagnosis. This series presents contemporary RTI research in theory, technical adequacy, implementation integrity, functional academic assessment, and practical implications. In the first article, Kovaleski poses key questions about the