Prior to reading:
I think that Rosa Parks Elementary school is using Special Education services to help struggling readers after they have fallen behind their peers to the point where Special Education services are needed. They have a team formed to help support struggling learners, but the services seem to be coming too late for many of the students.
School personnel are dissatisfied with this process because they note that many students as early as first grade struggle with reading, but do not receive the support they need to encourage their reading skills. This leads students who struggle early on in school to continue struggling throughout their school careers, and eventually qualify for special education services if they fall far enough behind. The school personnel are also frustrated because students who actually do need special education services are often not identified until third or fourth grade, by which time they have already fallen far behind their peers.
The RTI approach could be used by a school to help struggling readers as well as to help identify students who truly need special education services. By using a tiered approach, RTI allows children who need extra support in an area, such as reading, receive it, without being placed into special education if they do not need it. If the tier 1 interventions are unsuccessful in helping a student in reading, then more intensive strategies can be applied in tiers two and three before the student is qualified to be placed into special education.
When choosing an approach to adopt, a school could consider what areas the students struggle most in, and work to support the teaching of those areas for all students. The school could also consider the possible effects of identifying children’s needs earlier on their success in different subject areas. After considering the instructional areas, the school could then consider the personnel needed to transition to a new approach, and develop a method for putting the new approach into effect.
To help struggling readers, the S – Team could propose universal interventions for all classrooms to support reading instruction from the start. From there, more specific interventions could be designed for continuing difficulties in reading. The team could also collaborate on developing intervention strategies that would be appropriate for different age and culture groups.
Post-Reading:
One major disadvantage of the IQ discrepancy model is that it recommends special education only if a great enough discrepancy between IQ scores and reading scores is present. This prevents struggling students who need special education from receiving it if there is not a great enough discrepancy between their IQ and reading scores. Though the discrepancy may not be as great as that of other students, they may still benefit from special education services. The discrepancy model also places some students in special education who many not need those services; though there is a discrepancy in their IQ and reading scores, they may benefit from less-intensive intervention that would not require special education services.
While there are many benefits of implementing the RTI model, there could also be difficulties that could come along with that implementation. Putting an RTI model into effect would require more training for staff members to increase familiarity with the research-based instructional methods and assessment procedures critical to the model. This could not only present challenges due to the amount of time it would require, but would also require changes in familiar teaching practices that some teachers may be hesitant to adopt. Establishing the model uniformly throughout the school could also prove to be challenging, especially at the beginning of the implementation as transitions took place. Though there are challenges, I feel that implementing an RTI model could be a positive choice to help all students.
