School Psychologist Roles in Special Education Pre-Referral Screening

Introduction: The Role of School Psychologists in Special Education

One of the critical roles of professionals in schools is to manage activities related to children's placement and referrals under special education. In practice, school psychologists are responsible for evaluating children to determine who qualifies for such special services. The process takes different directions depending on the perspective involved. On many occasions, the nature of a teacher's perception determines the validity of the referral process. A common question concerns the standards schools use to measure the referral process's effectiveness — or whether it meets the threshold to proceed. Responses are often drawn from teacher self-reports, which in turn raises questions about their accuracy and consistency. This matter causes mixed reactions (Vanderheyden, Witt, & Naquin, 2003).

School psychologists offer numerous services focused on helping youth and children achieve social, academic, emotional, and behavioral effectiveness. In doing so, they engage in mental health initiatives and educational services for youth and children, and they collaborate with educators, parents, and other professionals to maintain a supportive social environment. Their role requires applying expertise during collaboration and consultation, guiding decision-making through data-based assessment, and engaging students in areas including socialization, academic skills, learning, and mental health.

School psychologists enhance competency in children and families by promoting effective learning, offering secure learning environments, responding to crises, nurturing appropriate behavior, and improving collaboration. These services are based on careful consideration of diversity in learning and development, professional practices, research programs, and ethical and legal domains. School psychologists are approved by educational agencies bestowed with regulatory authority to assess the credentials of potential professionals. They work in both private and public education settings (National Association of School Psychologists, 2010).

Every student begins their educational journey with certain needs. The most fundamental is professional guidance from educators to help them understand the surrounding world. Children with special needs, however, require professionals who understand their needs beyond what a standard classroom can offer. During this phase, the educator, counselor, parent, or other involved parties may observe challenges that special students face in acquiring an education. Recognizing the academic discrepancies these students face — and their unique emotional, behavioral, and developmental characteristics — helps educators determine what support is required (Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities, 2013).

Some of the challenges students with special needs face can be addressed through persistent engagement between parents and teachers. One method involves formulating a plan of action that incorporates the best strategies to measure a child's progress. Nominated teachers compile work samples and keep relevant assessment data for students displaying unique needs. This documentation is vital because it enables the teacher to monitor progress. Pre-referral interventions aid in the identification, development, and implementation of various educational strategies. These interventions are informed by documentation gathered from the classroom. Problems must first be identified before proceeding to special education consideration. It is a formal process that first offers temporary accommodations to students. Pre-referral interventions are carried out by a Student-Centered Team, known variously as a student support team, instructional support team, intervention assistance team, teacher assistance team, or early intervention team. The team comprises guardians or parents, teachers, administrators, nurses, and counselors. Other participants involved in the student's education may also be included. General education teachers first present all relevant information about the student to the team, after which the group proceeds to develop potential solutions.

The Pre-Referral Process and RTI Framework

Response to Intervention (RTI) offers three intervention levels for students facing difficulties. Level 1, often called Tier 1, uses general education instruction and relies on high-quality information drawn from the standard curriculum. RTI projects that approximately 80 percent of the student population will respond positively to behavioral systems and the core curriculum. Students who do not respond proceed to Tier 2, which provides targeted remediation or supplemental instruction to enhance performance. This level is expected to result in improvement for approximately 15 percent of students. If no notable improvement is recorded at Tier 2, students advance to Tier 3 for more intensive and individualized interventions. The principal goal of both RTI and the pre-referral program is to enable students to achieve academic success without entering a special education program. If all preliminary interventions fail to produce the desired outcomes, students are assessed for possible enrollment in special education.

Interventions in the general classroom are intended to determine the student's abilities and identify potential candidates for special education. Students proceed into the program only if they show no signs of improvement or when school personnel recommends evaluation. Referrals for these determinations are governed by the opinion of nominated school personnel (including counselors, teachers, and other key players), the decision of the legal guardian or parent, and the views of other key parties active in the child's life or education.

The official referral process begins by determining eligibility. Once a referral is granted, the school seeks consent from the parents before beginning the active evaluation process. IDEA recommends that the evaluation be nondiscriminatory and multi-factored, and that a report be submitted to the school district within 60 days of the referral date. The report is then examined by a multidisciplinary group of experts. Standard team members include:

Educational Diagnostician (also called Psychometrist or, in some cases, School Psychologist): has the skills to conduct educational assessments covering behavior, achievement, and intelligence quotient (IQ). Special Educators: qualified to evaluate behavior and achievement alongside informal observations. General Educators: provide relevant documentation about each student's current status. Legal guardians or parents: play a critical role in informing the team about the student's personality, behavior, and interactions with their environment. Associated service providers (such as therapists, audiologists, and mobility specialists): provide specific information about the condition being assessed. Medical doctors (including optometrists, psychiatrists, and ophthalmologists): determine the degree of disability and thus the student's eligibility for special education (Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities, 2013).

The RTI framework entails a comprehensive approach to providing services and adapting interventions for learners' challenges. RTI can be applied in special education decision-making, system-level planning, and data-guided compensatory interventions. It requires identifying behavioral and academic needs, facilitating collaboration, gathering teacher input, and ensuring students make educational progress. RTI is best applied in general education settings and can be used to categorize struggling or disabled children through unique intervention and assessment procedures. Parents with a clear understanding of the RTI system can also guide their children and gather important information about special education options (National Association of School Psychologists, 2006).

RTI incorporates the following activities and conditions: enhanced behavioral and instructional support; scientifically and research-based initiatives guided by professionals who understand student difficulties; continuous student progress monitoring; maintenance of student data documentation; structured documentation ensuring interventions are executed with integrity, fidelity, and appropriate intensity; collaborative decision-making by school staff; written documentation describing the essential structure and components for parents and professionals; and parent notification with associated documentation.

Because RTI plays a preventive role in schools, it covers dynamic student instruction to enhance behavior and academic skills. The education system must deploy collective resources to meet student requirements. Common problems addressed include behavioral and learning challenges. Efforts are supported by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004), which provides financial flexibility to local education agencies (LEAs). Early Intervening Services (EIS) help minimize unnecessary referrals and excess identification. LEAs can commit more than 15% of IDEA resources to provide behavioral and academic supports. LEAs also enjoy significant flexibility and may utilize up to 50% of received federal funding to promote RTI activities and the professional development of non-special education staff (National Association of School Psychologists, 2006).

Research indicates that students who fail to achieve even under high levels of instruction may exhibit a disability. RTI can help rule out learning disabilities rather than relying solely on the discrepancy model. IDEA 2004 provided the following provisions: (a) LEAs may utilize students' responses to scientific instruction in the evaluation process, and (b) in identifying a disability, LEAs must verify whether children show discrepancies between intellectual and achievement abilities.

The U.S. population's growing diversity presents challenges for school psychologists regarding cultural responsiveness and the prevention of behavioral, health, and academic problems. These challenges require psychologists to develop awareness, skills, and knowledge to serve a dynamic population. The Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) preventive platform provides school psychologists with opportunities to serve communities and schools, including establishing programs that promote children's interaction with their environment (Proctor & Meyers, 2014).

Creating programs through the MTSS platform adds features such as data-driven decision-making, universal screening, and problem-solving procedures. Psychologists' multicultural knowledge and skills enable them to lead culturally responsive prevention programs in diverse school communities. Cultural considerations include gathering stakeholder input, developing programs based on traditional cultural concepts, using culturally relevant interventions, and applying recursive methods to ensure cultural relevance. These competencies give school psychologists a powerful position to lead prevention programs (Proctor & Meyers, 2014).

In educational environments, school psychologists often face practical and administrative barriers not common in research settings. Even when practitioners are informed about empirical evidence supporting various procedures, they may struggle to implement them due to resource and time constraints (Kratochwill & Shernoff, 2004).

Literature Review: History, Disproportionality, and RTI

Since the Response to Intervention model was introduced in 2004, one of the greatest challenges in education has been training personnel to meet its new requirements. School psychologists can support RTI and improve learning for all students — from school-wide program design to specific intervention programs (Barker, 2011). Their expertise in child development, social and emotional development, and learning makes them effective members of school intervention teams.

There is evidence that RTI with the support of school psychologists can give every student the academic assistance required to learn effectively (Burns, Appleton, & Stehouwer, 2005). RTI's fundamental principle is that schools should not wait for students to fall significantly behind before offering help. Instead, schools should provide directed and systematic interventions to all learners as soon as a need is identified.

Before the implementation of RTI, schools used the Student Support Team (SST) process to offer support to students and teachers through a collaborative team approach with key stakeholders. SST was created because collaborative approaches are effective when developing plans for students with learning disabilities, providing a valuable tool for building effective educational programs (Barrio & Combes, 2015).

Student Support Teams are most effective in schools where teachers are responsible for all students and can engage in collaborative problem-solving. The process involved basic steps focused on individual student needs, program efficiency, and communication. Before and during the first meeting, team members collected relevant information about the student's past and present educational and behavioral performance from sources such as parents, official school records, and anecdotal records. The team would then meet to evaluate this information and determine whether additional data was needed. An individual educational plan tailored to the student's strengths and weaknesses was subsequently developed.

All team members participated in suggesting and supporting the implementation of plans and strategies, and a timeline for follow-up was established. The educational plan was then put into effect for a defined period, and supplementary data was gathered as needed (Barrio & Combes, 2015). Regular meetings were held to discuss student progress. If the plan needed to be changed, alterations were made during an SST meeting.

Ongoing monitoring and evaluation formed a significant part of the SST process. If the educational plan proved successful and no disability was identified, the team continued to monitor progress and decide when to reduce classroom supports. If a disability was discovered, the team would recommend psychological testing and subsequently hold a meeting to discuss special education eligibility (Barrio & Combes, 2015).

Many schools struggle to benefit from RTI because they mistakenly view it as simply a new method of qualifying students for special education by redirecting efforts to general education interventions before sending struggling students to traditional special education testing and placement.

Gravois and Rosenfield (2006) analyze the problem of disproportional representation of minority students in special education. Although recommendations have been made to address the problem, two key challenges remain unresolved. First, the full extent of the problem has not been defined. Second, no school-level interventions have yet adequately addressed it. Disproportionate placement is defined as representing a certain group of learners at a different rate than their presence in the overall school population would suggest.

The problem can manifest as overrepresentation or underrepresentation of a group when comparing their placement in special programs to their share of the general population. Gravois and Rosenfield (2006) focus specifically on the overrepresentation of minorities in special education and their underrepresentation in gifted and talented programs. African American students are particularly affected.

The number of Black students identified for special education is disproportionately high compared to their white peers. According to Gravois and Rosenfield (2006), African American students identified as mentally disabled are placed in special education at roughly twice the rate of other racial groups. State Department of Education data analysis is provided to support this claim.

The literature on disproportionality addresses three themes. The first is cultural differences in teacher perceptions and practices regarding minority learners, with the argument that some minority students are referred to special education as a way of managing cultural differences rather than genuine learning disabilities. The second theme concerns bias in assessment procedures used when selecting minority students for special education services. The third theme addresses the effectiveness of pre-referral processes in meeting students' academic needs before special education placement is recommended.

According to Gravois and Rosenfield (2006), Instructional Consultation Teams (I.C. Teams) should be deployed in problem-solving processes to ensure quality instruction and intervention. The consistent application of the I.C. Team model has led to decreased total referrals and reductions in special education placements. A study of I.C. Teams demonstrated that their implementation resulted in decreasing risk indexes, odds ratios, and composition indexes for the assessment and placement of minority students compared to schools that continued using traditional pre-referral processes.

According to Aspiranti et al. (2019), RTI is an intervention method applied to offer academic services to learners, with two main purposes: to offer a preemptive service delivery model, and to determine suitability for special education services under the classification of a specific learning disability (SLD). As states begin requiring RTI data as part of SLD identification, changes to eligibility requirements are representing a paradigm shift in many school districts.

RTI was introduced with the re-authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, which gave states the option of determining whether a student responds to scientific, research-based intervention before classifying them as needing special education. A child is eligible for special education under this framework only if academic performance remains poor after intensive intervention. Powers et al. (2008) outline the training and professional development requirements for school psychologists to successfully implement an RTI model.

Kratochwill and Shernoff (2004) identify issues related to evidence-based practice and how the school psychology profession can contribute to developing and disseminating evidence-based interventions (EBIs). Five assumptions are discussed to help practitioners integrate EBIs into practice: where sufficient information exists, intervention should require an evidence-based approach.

RTI can be used broadly across schools as a problem-solving method that shapes instruction and influences intervention choices and special education eligibility determinations (Batsche et al., 2006). Although many schools have adopted RTI due to IDEA 2004 regulations, practitioners recognize that full implementation will require ongoing professional development for school teachers and psychologists at all tiers.

There has been a significant change in how children's education has been viewed since the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Fagan, 1992). In the past, school psychology drew from a mixture of disciplines, and being a guidance counselor was considered an added advantage. Concurrently, the emergence of compulsory education in the 19th-century United States brought challenges including the plight of poor and working-class children, resulting in the enactment of child labor laws that paved the way for the beginning of school psychology (Merrell et al., 2006). As the school system expanded and stronger laws concerning special education were introduced, laws governing compulsory education significantly changed public education between 1830 and 1930 (Fagan, 1992). These changes created a need for psychological services for children in school — specifically, experts who could identify and address undiagnosed disorders.

In the 20th century, children were considered vulnerable and in need of protection. Demand increased for education services for children requiring special education, creating a need for training beyond standard teaching (Eisner, 1963). From 1817 to the beginning of the Civil War, many residential schools for disabled and orphaned students were established across various states (Kirk, Gallagher, & Anastasiow, 1993). Before 1850, relatively few public schools provided special education to children and adults with special needs. Schools created awareness of individual differences among children (Herron, Green, Guild, Smith, & Kantor, 1970). The first children placed in special classes were cognitively impaired; these classes were funded by state boards of education and included psychologists who conducted psychological examinations.

During the late 1890s through the 1900s, emphasis on providing special education and health services increased (Merrell et al., 2006). In 1899, William Healey established a clinic for the Chicago juvenile court within the public school system, and by 1910, mental clinics were established specifically to address juvenile delinquency — paving the way for today's programs for students with emotional and behavioral issues.

Lightner Witmer developed the concept of applying psychology to meet teachers' needs, focusing on individual psychological principles and the observation and analysis of typical and atypical childhood behaviors (Fagan, 1992). G. Stanley Hall later established the child study movement that shaped modern school psychology. He created a clinical facility serving administrators, teachers, and parents and used child study questionnaires to highlight common issues in schools, while Witmer's services focused on individual children (Fagan, 1992).

William James opposed the idea that psychology could dictate teaching methods. He argued that teachers could not simply apply science directly to classroom situations. However, he acknowledged that school psychology could provide principles to guide instruction, prevent serious educational mistakes, and offer intellectual support to teachers making academic decisions (Berliner, 1993).

School psychology was ultimately established in response to the lack of specialized services for children who differed significantly from their peers. As schools became more child-centered, individualized services were needed to address differences in learning (Herron et al., 1970). U.S. school boards began employing school psychologists to serve special education students, and as demand grew, the need to define school psychology's duties and scope became apparent.

The school psychologist's role in the RTI model includes developing interventions for students, conducting early screening, monitoring progress, providing professional development for teachers, and assuming leadership roles to support RTI implementation at a system level. School psychologists play a significant role in RTI teams by interpreting data and helping general and special education teachers make well-informed decisions (Aspiranti et al., 2019).

Traditionally, the school psychologist was viewed primarily as a "tester." The RTI model has expanded this role to include consulting, counseling, direct and indirect involvement in prevention and intervention programming, and supporting school staff through data-based decision-making and progress monitoring (McIntosh et al., 2010).

School psychologists are trained to investigate, identify, and analyze systems approaches for addressing students' academic and behavioral needs within an RTI model (Canter, 2006). They are also regarded as leaders in mental health assessment, home-school collaboration, and school-agency collaboration, forming an integral part of the special education and intervention team (Burns & Riley-Tillman, 2009; McIntosh et al., 2010). They also help parents understand the RTI model and its implications for their child (Canter, 2006).

Primary functions of school psychologists include improving cognitive and academic abilities, promoting mental health and life competencies, data-based decision-making, and systems-based services (Ysseldyke et al., 2006). In Tier 1, school psychologists can serve on district curriculum committees, consult with teachers on instruction planning and delivery, and help administrators select reliable and valid assessment tools. In Tier 2, the primary role remains similar — providing assessments, assisting in data-based decisions, and helping identify areas requiring intervention for struggling readers. In Tier 3, school psychologists address learning difficulties for individual students, applying knowledge of intensive problem-solving processes and individual interventions.

Despite this broad preparation, schools often underutilize school psychologists' expertise in RTI. Although trained to offer assessment, intervention, and consultation, school psychologists tend to focus disproportionately on eligibility-related assessment activities rather than on intervention and consultation. A more equitable division of time across all three functions would enhance their contribution to RTI (Aspiranti et al., 2019).

There is growing concern among teachers and school psychologists about how the problem-solving approach of RTI affects their professional roles. A school psychologist must now join their understanding of psychology and education to provide the broadest range of services, working in collaborative environments that support academic competence as well as social and emotional development (Little, 2013). However, the role remains incompletely defined, and the shift from psychometrician to active problem-solver requires readiness for change and ongoing additional training (Little, 2013).

The earliest research on school psychologists' roles was conducted by John Edward Wallace Wallin (1876–1969), who found that participants were poorly trained and providing limited services — primarily testing to assign children to educational groups (Fagan, 1992). School psychologists may still lack the skills required by the RTI model, such as problem-solving, consultation, and systems implementation (Reschly, 1996). Reluctance to move beyond traditional roles further restricts effective practice.

In most states, individuals without teacher certification can still obtain credentials in school psychology, provided they complete additional coursework in education curriculum, school organization, and classroom observation. School psychologists trained before the RTI era should engage in continuing professional development to acquire the strategies needed for successful RTI implementation. Standards for school psychologists must encompass a broad service delivery model, strong communication skills, and competencies in systems analysis and change.

Although some school psychology training programs have begun to adapt, very few have fully restructured to meet RTI's new demands (Curtis & Batsche, 1991). Training programs need to promote assessment processes that guide the evaluation of interventions, problem-solving, and student needs outside the classroom. Professional development will increasingly need to incorporate evaluation of scientifically researched, evidence-based instruction (Hawkins et al., 2008).

According to a survey by Little (2013), most school psychologists expressed willingness to support RTI implementation in their schools. However, some felt they were not an essential part of their school's RTI team. This finding suggests that even when school psychologists are skilled and capable of contributing to RTI, they may doubt their own importance in the process.

According to Canter (2006), school psychologists can contribute substantially to RTI implementation but must be open to change and additional training. RTI implementation brings significant changes in role expectations, including more data collection and analysis and less traditional assessment. Approximately half of general and special education teachers surveyed were involved in implementing RTI, while roughly a third of counselors, administrators, and special education directors participated — indicating a continued need for collaborative teaming professional development across all stakeholders.

Research by Hosp and Reschly (2002) found that school psychologists spent at least half their time on eligibility-related activities — a mismatch with their preferred role distribution. The same study revealed uncertainty among psychologists about whether they possessed the skills needed to provide quality services. Conversely, some respondents viewed school psychologists as the best-prepared professionals to lead RTI implementation given their assessment training.

According to Lose (2008), the greatest challenge and benefit of RTI depends on its implementation. Successful implementation relies significantly on leadership practices and support from both administration and school psychologists. However, Rafoth and Foriska (2006) found no direct link between administrative support and effective teams, suggesting that school-level principles, rather than administrative behaviors alone, determine successful implementation.

RTI has become an important part of school communities nationwide, whether implemented at the national, state, or district level. Effective implementation results in a positive impact on individual students (McCook, 2007). Although RTI implementation varies across states, its impact on student success depends heavily on the appropriate interventions provided to at-risk students before referral to special education. Hence, analyzing the role of school psychologists in ensuring educational access for all students remains essential.

Conclusion and Recommendations

After the thematic analysis of the literature review, it is clear that school psychologists' role in the pre-referral screening process is indispensable. The themes identified show that school psychologists function as leaders: they design and conduct assessments to distinguish students who should be admitted to special education programs. They possess appropriate assessment tools and an understanding of students' social and emotional needs, and they recognize that if these needs are unmet, students may underperform academically. Without their support, the pre-referral program and its effective outcomes would not be achievable. Their transformative leadership infuses a visionary perspective into meeting school psychology goals and supports the collaborative efforts of pre-referral teams. They must be recognized as accredited stakeholders in the RTI process. A further theme identified through the thematic analysis was an obstacle inhibiting the full execution of school psychologists' roles — one that warrants further attention and specific recommendations.

The thematic analysis revealed that school psychologists face issues related to cultural and linguistic discrimination, inadequate training, and cultural insensitivity within assessment tools. If these issues are resolved, the quality and integrity of pre-referral screening will improve. It is important to address them so that professional development can be fulfilled and school psychologists' effectiveness in the pre-referral process can be certified.

This research suggests that these issues should be resolved as quickly as possible to make pre-referral screening more effective. In an era when technology has streamlined many processes, equipping psychologists with the latest tools and mechanisms is essential to enable transparent assessments for all children. This is especially important for culturally diverse students, whose social, emotional, and psychological needs require specially adapted assessment approaches.

Recommendation for reducing bias in pre-referral screening: Emphasis should be placed on alternative assessment procedures that include informal methods for evaluating CLD students. These measures offer credible, nondiscriminatory data and can describe what tasks students are capable of performing — not only what they lack. Curriculum-based assessments should document students' linguistic styles so that further interventions, especially at Tier 2, can be designed accordingly. Bilingual assessment should be incorporated for linguistically diverse students as an alternative to standardized testing. This would target areas where students with languages other than English need additional support, and RTI intervention curricula could be designed to provide better classroom instruction for these students. If teacher training is required to support this approach, it should be provided.

Recommendation for addressing cultural insensitivity toward ethnically diverse students: Best practices for CLD evaluations should be adopted based on recognized guidelines (Villegas-Gutierrez, 2015, p. 43). Formal and informal assessments should be conducted in both the student's proficient language and English. Although this may take two to three times longer, it better captures the sociocultural factors affecting learning. In this manner, homogenous pre-referral screening methods would no longer overshadow students' true abilities or lead to their overplacement in special education — a concern frequently raised by African American parents across the United States.

Recommendation for effective training of school psychologists: District-wide professional development aligned with state cultural competence standards should be pursued. While psychologists receive standard curriculum training during their formal education, it is ongoing professional development that shapes practice. Training that incorporates gender, social, and racial factors could transform psychologists' perceptions and improve their assessments of children from demanding circumstances. Professional experience should be shaped in line with state requirements and the distinct needs of CLD students at each grade level. Collaboration with higher education community members would also support deeper engagement with cultural competence training programs, ensuring that pre-referral screening is applicable and equitable within local contexts.

This research has several strengths and limitations. The primary strength is the use of thematic analysis, which provided flexibility in deriving themes from diverse literature. The flexibility in extracting themes enabled deep engagement with secondary data across studies of varying methodological backgrounds. Both older and more recent studies were included to present an overview of how perspectives on school psychologists' roles have evolved — and, in some cases, how challenges have persisted unchanged. The issue of over- and under-representation of ethnic minority students, particularly African Americans, exemplifies a concern present in early studies that remains relevant today.

Limitations include the broad scope of the scoping review, which incorporated many studies regardless of methodological design or assessment approach. A larger review team would be needed to more rigorously scrutinize all included studies and strengthen reliability. The inclusion of studies predating the year 2000 may also be seen as limiting currency; however, these older studies were included because they directly addressed the research question and provided relevant historical and conceptual context. The literature review was intended to provide an overview of the research question through a scoping review methodology, rather than a synthesized meta-analytic result. Thematic analysis was therefore used to extract the maximum number of relevant themes across all included studies.

Future implications of this research include eliminating barriers to school psychologists' effectiveness in the pre-referral screening and RTI process. Standardized testing for minority students should be replaced with better assessment techniques suited to diverse ethnic populations. Cultural and language barriers should be minimized to help CLD students engage more effectively with pre-referral screening. These implications could extend to policy-making at the local, district, and state levels, where best practices could be redesigned with appropriate testing tools for CLD students. The apparent absence of district- and state-level policies that adequately address CLD student assessment has directed school psychologists to rely on traditional practices that are incomplete. Governments at all three levels should develop strategies that equip school psychologists with a clear set of rules and best practices for these populations. Newly designed practices would improve measurement accuracy and address the issue of over- and under-placement of diverse students in special education. Future training sessions — organized within schools or at state-designated locations — would ensure that school psychologists are equipped with current methods for assessing the social and emotional needs of CLD students. If up-to-date assessment practices are provided to school psychologists, their role as influential stakeholders and leaders in pre-referral screening and RTI will be greatly strengthened.

Batsche, G. M., Eliott, J., Graden, J. L., Grimes, J., Kovaleski, J. F., Prasse, D., & Tilly, W. D. (2005). Response to intervention: Policy considerations and implementation. Alexandria, VA: National Association of State Directors of Special Education, Inc.

The study's goal is to assess the level of intervention programs targeting preschool children, especially in regions with poor education standards. A sample of 129 children aged three to six years residing in a Brazilian state ranked second-lowest on its human development index was selected. Children were assigned to a control group and an experimental intervention group, with items such as intelligence, phonological awareness, vocabulary, naming, and memory assessed before and after the intervention. Results indicated improvements in rapid automatized naming and vocabulary for the experimental group in post-intervention tests. Prior to intervention, intelligence levels and vocabulary results were at 25%, while phonological awareness was approximately 26% for the experimental group.

Burns, M. K., Appleton, J. J., & Stehouwer, J. D. (2005). Meta-analytic review of responsiveness-to-intervention research: Examining field-based and research-implemented models. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 23(4), 381–394.

In this research, a meta-analytic assessment was conducted on four large-scale RTI models complemented by additional smaller models. Unbiased estimates of effect (UEE) were computed for 24 identities. Results showed higher UEE values in earlier RTI models compared to university faculty-implemented models, though both demonstrated strong effects. UEE values for systemic results and student achievement exceeded 1.0. The UEE student value was nearly half the value of systematic outcomes for RTI models, recording 0.47 in systemic tests and 1.14 for outcomes. Non-responders accounted for 19.8% (SD = 12.5), while the average was 1.68% (SD = 1.45) of the entire student population in special education. The article also discusses implications for future research.

Burns, M. K., Griffiths, A., Parson, L. B., Tilly, W. D., & VanDerHeyden, A. (2007). Response to intervention: Research to practice. Alexandria, VA: National Association of State Directors of Special Education.

This publication compiles research on traditional LD diagnostic practices and RTI. The authors identified the 25 most important articles for each topic and annotated the five most seminal articles per topic to summarize findings in an accessible format. While the authors aim to provide a comprehensive resource for both traditional and RTI approaches, the primary objective is to respond to concerns about an insufficient research base for RTI.

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This report examines implementation outcomes over three years (2007–2010) for a Florida Problem Solving/RTI (PS/RtI) project. A collaboration between a university and the Florida Department of Education supported training and technical assistance for the PS/RtI structure. The research covered the effects of implementation across different regions serving as demonstration sites. Results indicated notable professional development across pilot program schools, and a three-stage implementation model was used to ensure fidelity. Stakeholders were categorized into those primarily responsible for PS/RtI implementation, those supporting infrastructure development, and those involved in tier delivery.

Elliot, J., & Morrison, D. (2008). Response to intervention blueprint: District-level edition. Alexandria, VA: National Association of State Directors of Special Education.

This article defines RTI as offering advanced interventions tailored to student needs, enabling progress monitoring, and promoting data-driven decision-making. RTI data are used in remedial, special education, and general decision-making to create an integrated, data-based system. "Blueprint documents" assist in the development of RTI structures, building on NASDSE publications. Three blueprints address state, district, and building levels of implementation, with the district-level blueprint specifically outlining the components of a district strategy to support RTI across schools and individual projects.

Kratochwill, T. R., & Shernoff, E. S. (2004). Evidence-based practice: Promoting evidence-based interventions in school psychology. School Psychology Review, 33(1), 34–48.

The authors provide an overview of evidence-based practice issues and school psychologists' duty in developing and disseminating EBIs. They argue that an intervention should carry the evidence-based designation when information on context-based usage demonstrates efficacy under conditions of implementation and evaluation in practice. This framework — called EBI reciprocal effect — extends the developmental agenda from experimental research to practical application. The authors also address professional development for practitioners, researchers, and trainers in identifying, reviewing, and disseminating EBIs, and suggest competency-based training in graduate programs as well as cross-disciplinary courses on EBIs.

Sugai, G., & Horner, R. H. (2009). Responsiveness-to-interventions and school-wide positive behavior supports: Integration of multi-tiered approaches. Exceptionality, 17, 223–237.

This article presents a perspective on the defining features of RTI and its application in school-wide positive behavior supports (SWPBS). The original objective of interventions has grown from an outcome- and screening-based approach to one targeting student decision-making. The authors describe SWPBS's evolution, including behavioral support and the creation of a positive social culture in schools. They conclude that the RTI approach provides an excellent framework for guiding improved assessment and intervention decisions. SWPBS is presented as an example of applying foundational tools to challenge traditional methods targeting behavioral change in classrooms. The researchers also offer a self-assessment protocol for school leadership teams to build an integrated set of interventions that are relevant, durable, and effective.

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