Five points of agreement among experts on SLD identification

CRITICAL ISSUES IN RESPONSE-TO INTERVENTION,

COMPREHENSIVE  EVALUATION, AND SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITIES IDENTIFICATION AND INTERVENTION: AN EXPERT WHITE PAPER CONSENSUS

http://www.iapsych.com/articles/hale2010.pdf

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.