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intervention (RTI) like targeted individualized interventions and regular progress monitoring are occasionally missed due to the lack of fidelity to best practices and recommended guidelines based on evidence-based instructional strategies. As a future director of special education, I would ensure that RTI is responsive and responsible, first by developing standard procedures for progress monitoring. Research on specific learning disability shows that the tiered structure of RTI can be especially helpful but only when RTI is defined specifically because vagueness leads to inconsistent and unreliable results with children (Hauerwas, Brown & Scott, 2013). There is no "clear national definition of what specific RTI data a local multidisciplinary team must have in hand to make a determination of" specific learning disabilities (Hauerwas, Brown & Scott, 2013, p. 102). Stahl (2016) also found that schools "were implementing RTI on their own without the support of a research team or external funding," leading to the lack of fidelity to professional standards of competency (p. 659). Therefore, I would ideally like to work in the realm of public policy in education to help evolve federal standards for RTI that could help educators better implement research-based practice.Another important issue in increasing the use of effective progress monitoring and the use of research based instructional strategies by classroom teachers would be to mobilize both human and fiscal resources. As Stahl (2016) points out, schools need to be made more accountable for their resources allocation strategies. I would make sure my school not only followed the best practices evident in recent research on RTI and cognitive science but also to follow best practices for accountability and professional standards. Stahl (2016) recommends distinguishing differentiation from intervention, allocating resources according to student need, and tracking tier movement at the grade level, all of which are feasible interventions in any particular school.
References
Hauerwas, L.B., Brown, R. & Scott, A.N. (2013). Specific learning disability and response to intervention. Exceptional Children 80(1): 101-120.
Stahl, K.A.D. (2016)....
Response to intervention. The Reading Teacher 69(6): 659-663.
2. The practice of RTI does offer a glimmer of hope that special education is shifting from an almost begrudging compliance with regulation towards outcomes-based education. Quantifying results and encouraging school and educator accountability are critical for performance outcomes. States have inconsistently applied the principles of IDEA and RTI in particular. With an ongoing issue related to lack of accountability for resources allocations and lack of formalized reporting methods to the Department of Education, it is difficult to track the effectiveness of specific special education programs. States need to surrender some of their control over education in order to better standardize a federal policy or program of effective reporting.
Research shows that there is a clear need to differentiate between special education spending and spending in the mainstream classroom environments, allocating resources according to student needs within the RTI framework (Stahl, 2016). Also, Koegel, Koegel, Ashbaugh & Bradshaw (2013) point out that the heterogeneity in inclusive classrooms presents unique challenges for accountability and resources allocation. Education administrators can develop creative methods of accounting on a student-by-student basis to provide statistics and data that can be used to assess the efficacy of specific interventions and especially those that are related to the RTI strategy being used. However, performance outcomes remain critical. Educators need to have a cohesive method of reporting their students' performance throughout the stages of RTI, ensuring that resources are being allocated effectively and that individual students are responding to the methods being used. When those methods are proving ineffective on a case-by-case basis, then they can be altered until the student responds and shows improvement. The RTI framework offers tremendous long-term benefits for both individual students and schools in general, but only an outcomes-based strategy will help improve resource allocation.
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In their study, "Thinking of Inclusion for All Special Needs Students: Better Think Again," Rasch and his colleagues (1994) report that, "The political argument in favor of inclusion is based on the assumption that the civil rights of students, as outlined in the 1954 decision handed down in Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down the concept of 'separate but equal,' can also be construed as applying to special
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