CRITICAL ISSUES IN RESPONSE-TO INTERVENTION,
COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION, AND SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITIES
IDENTIFICATION AND INTERVENTION: AN EXPERT WHITE PAPER CONSENSUS
This paper (written in 2010) is a concise summary of a survey conducted
among 58 American experts in SLD, cognitive/neuropsychological assessment
of high incidence disorders including SLD, SLD educational
intervention, and/or legal issues in SLD. Experts who have primarily advocated
ability-achievement discrepancy or failure to respond-to-intervention for SLD
identification purposes were not included
in the survey. The survey's goal was to affect
SLD public policy and practices in the United States.
Here are the survey's results, with my additions in orange.
In order to better understand the expert agreements, you need to know
about IDEA 2004, the discrepancy model, the RTI model, and Flanagan's SLD
definition. These concepts are explained
in the presentation "Learning Disability – the story of a definition"
which is available here.
The experts agreed
on five points:
1.
Maintain the SLD definition (IDEA
2004) and strengthen statutory requirements in SLD
identification procedures. Meaning, that the IDEA 2004 definition
criteria should be more rigorously followed. Many participants (82%) felt strongly that the definition should not be amended to
include any child exhibiting low achievement.
The experts believe that low achievement alone is not a suitable
diagnostic indicator for SLD.
2. Neither ability-achievement discrepancy
analyses nor failure to respond-to-intervention (RTI) alone is
sufficient for SLD identification.
3. The most empirically and clinically sensible
way identify SLD is to identify a pattern of psychological processing strengths
and weaknesses, and achievement deficits consistent with this pattern of
processing weaknesses.
This agreement reflects Flanagan's approach to SLD
identification, in accordance with CHC theory.
In CHC terminology, that means identifying the child's strong/average and weak cognitive abilities (of the following
abilities: fluid ability, comprehension-knowledge, short term memory,
processing speed, long term storage and retrieval, visual processing, auditory
processing), identifying low achievement in reading, writing and math, and
linking the weak cognitive abilities to the low achievement domains.
4. An RTI model could be used to prevent
learning problems in children, but comprehensive evaluations should occur for
SLD identification purposes, and children with SLD need individualized
interventions based on specific learning needs (based on their cognitive processes strengths and
weaknesses), not merely more intense interventions designed for
children in general education (as
proposed by the RTI model).
Most experts thought that both RTI model and a
comprehensive assessment of cognitive processes are important in SLD
identification and intervention.
The experts were concerned that the RTI model
could turn into a "wait to fail" model, like the discrepancy
model. Instead of designing an
intervention that fits the child's specific difficulties, the RTI approach advocates
administering a more intensive intervention when the child does not respond to
the first intervention. The experts
argue for more flexibility in RTI implementation. When the child does not respond to the first
intervention, it might be advisable to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of
psychological processes to see whether the reason for the lack of response is
SLD and if so – to plan a specific intervention that will suit the child's
needs – rather than to intensify the existing intervention.
5. Assessment of cognitive and
neuropsychological processes should be used not only for identification, but
for intervention purposes as well, and these assessment-intervention
relationships need further empirical investigation. Meaning, that more research is needed to determine which reading,
writing and math deficiencies are caused by which low cognitive abilities,
whether cognitive ability training can improve achievement in reading, writing
and math, and which kinds of training is effective.
No comments:
Post a Comment