Responsiveness to Intervention A JAodel for Implementing Responsiveness to Intervention

For decades, the major procedure for identifying children with learning disabilities (LD) has involved documenting a discrepancy between a student's ]Q and achievement. With this approach, however, identification typically occurs at fifth grade, so children must "wait-tofail" before intervention can occur. For this reason, along with technical difficulties associated with the IQ-achievement discrepancy (see Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003 for a summary), the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (P.L. 108-446) permits states to discontinue use of IQ-achievement discrepancy in favor of Response to Intervention (RTI) for LD identification. Advantages of RTI include earlier identification, a stronger focus on prevention, and assessment with clearer implications for academic programming (Vaughn & Fuchs). The premise behind RTI is that students are identified as LD when their response to validated intervention is dramatically inferior to that of peers. The inference is that these children who respond poorly to generally effective interventions have a disability that requires specialized treatment to produce successful learning outcomes. In this way, a central assumption is that RTI can differentiate between two explanations for low achievement: inadequate instruction versus disability. If the child responds poorly to instruction that benefits most students, then the assessment eliminates instructional quality as a viable explanation for poor academic growth and instead provides evidence of disability. Also, because most children respond nicely to validated intervention, RTI serves an important prevention function.