Helping Special Education Kids

¶ … Responsiveness to Intervention

Delivering adequate resources to children with learning differences is not some haphazard undertaking. On the contrary, it requires a predetermined plan and the sufficient combination of a number of different entities in order to achieve success. A Responsiveness To Intervention (RTI) plan is necessary to adequately combine a variety of different resources and approaches to aiding a student with his or her particular learning difference. RTI plans involve service delivery on a variety of levels to account for the critical phases of development in the lives of students which include not just their cognitive developments, but their emotional and even social development as well. These plans require sufficient coordination of those resources in a streamlined approach so that ultimately, the student is able to benefit from them. This document will create a service-delivery model for a fictional special education student named Justin. Justin appears congenial on the whole, and has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He has demonstrated some proficiency in his academic study, and would likely benefit from a multi-tiered plan to address his learning difference.

Eligibility Criteria

Justin is eligible to receive services for students with learning differences -- as well as a variety of different accommodations -- based on the fact that he has been diagnosed with ADHD. Students that can demonstrate that they have a clinical learning difference (that which was previously referred to as a learning disability) are allowed to have certain accommodations in the classroom. Also, these students frequently have additional resources and accommodations outside of the classroom to aid in their learning process. According to Justin's background file, on April 11, 2005 Justin received a referral for ADHD based on the assessment of an individual known as Ms. Psychologist. Such a referral means that Justin should have an Individual Education Plan (an IEP), and that he is eligible for accommodations to counteract the affects of ADHD and enable him to access the same sort of quality of education that students have without such a diagnosis. Justin is due these accommodations because he has been formally diagnosed as having a learning disorder by a licensed practitioner in this field.

Assessment Tools

On the one hand, it is vital to utilize a variety of assessment tools for the determination of performance levels for Justin. Involving more than one measure of assessment is critical to ensuring that evaluators are able to form an accurate analysis of the learner's abilities to perform academically. The Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement is one such instrument that will be deployed to determine the performance level for Justin; the Oral and Written Language Scales is another. These tools assesses the learner's capacity for language arts. However, they stratify the various facets of language arts in extremely nuanced and targeted ways that provides a substantial degree of insight more than other tools do. They have separate measures for reading, writing, and oral comprehension of language, all of which are useful helping Justin in this area of academic. In fact, a previous assessment utilizing this instrument yielded information that Justin requires more assistance in this subject than in others -- and certainly much more so than he does in math.

Assessment Tool Justification Based on Research

Research indicates that the Woodcock Johnson III is suitable for assessing Justin in multiple ways. The sampling for this test did include students with disabilities (Navarro, 2010, p. 6), which is important. The validity of this instrument is assessed in terms of content, construct, and concurrent; these various categories of validity are in "the moderate to high range" (Navarro, 2010, p. 6). Statistical data for various facets of the reliability of this instrument are deserving of merit as well. Research indicates that coefficients of median reliability are at .80, and that hits stat increases to .90 and above for items that are clustered (Navarro, 2010, p. 9). Reliability testing for the Oral and Written Language Scales "supports the use of the OWLS -Written Expression Scales as an early norm-referenced measure to reliably gauge...English Writing skills" (Harrison et al., 2011, p. 319).

The Role of a Multidisciplinary team in the development of a Special Education Service Delivery Model

The role of a multidisciplinary team in the development of a special education service delivery model is to address the various ramifications of Justin's learning disability. As previously mentioned in this document, such a learning difference can manifest itself in cognitive, emotional, and social ways. A multidisciplinary team then addresses these various elements of the impact of this condition on the student. Furthermore, it does so by compelling each of the individual team members to focus on one of those components, or on a certain domain of one of those components. It is critical for them to do so in a way in which they are also aware of some of the other components and the effect that they are producing on Justin and on their particular work with him. By synthesizing these various aspects of working with Justin, team members should be able to provide a learning gestalt in which the sum of the parts of the team is exceeded by the impact it has on this student.

The Role of Culture in the Model

The role of culture in this model is of extreme importance. Essentially, that role is based on flexibility. The various members of Justin's multidisciplinary team must be flexible enough in their culture to account for the fact that Justin is a fairly young boy who may be from a foreign socio-economic or racial/ethnic culture than there own. Still, they must find a way to include him in their respective cultures. Were just from an affluent, Eurocentric culture, the way that services were administered to him and the cultural traits of that administration would very than if he were the minority child of a single mother struggling in the inner city. The same quality of service is expected (and necessitated) in either case. However, the way that those services are implemented depend very much on the ability of the team members to account for any potential cultural discrepancies (Stanley, 2015, p. 3) between their cultures and Justin's, and to accommodate Justin in this regard to the delivery of their services.

The Role of Stakeholders in the Model