RTI's Role in Traditional Testing and Assessment

By David F. Bateman, Shippensburg University, PA

In my previous post, I promised to raise questions about RTI and not necessarily answer them. I thought about it some more and as I start to raise questions I want to make sure the background for the questions remains.

First, there is still a role for traditional testing and assessment even when the RTI model is adopted. The IDEA definition of specific learning disabilities (SLD) still contains “rule out” requirements.For example, the identification of SLD can only be made when it can be demonstrated that the child’s learning problems are not primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities; mental retardation; emotional disturbance; limited English proficiency; or environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage. Furthermore, IDEA’s regulations require that the identification of a disability must result from an evaluation that is sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the child’s special education and related services needs, whether or not the needs are commonly linked to the disability category in which the child has been classified. 

Taken together, both of these requirements will have the effect of causing multidisciplinary teams’ continued reliance on results from standardized tests, behavioral observations, interviews, and curriculum-based measures obtained for the purposes of ruling out or identifying other comorbid disabilities and satisfying the requirement for a comprehensive evaluation that does not rely upon one evaluation method. 

Questions: Does this allow for the use of RTI, or are districts still going to have to complete a full-battery of standardized testing? Should districts complete a full battery of standardized testing? What does this do to the child who is awaiting services? What does this do to a parent's claim that the district knew or should have known a child had a disability, yet spent additional time testing the student just to make sure the student was eligible, while all along the student was demonstrating they were eligible?

Since IDEA's SLD definition has been changed only minimally with its reauthorization, it is largely understood that a SLD involves a disorder of one or more basic psychological processes of learning.Hale has advocated that the RTI model be combined with cognitive assessment methods for SLD identification and that such a blending represents best practices for school psychologists.¹Under such a paradigm, non-responders at Tier 2 who move to Tier 3 levels of intervention would need a comprehensive evaluation prior to SLD identification. However, Hale points out that Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions could occur in a regular education or a special education environment “[d]epending on the child and environment.” Also according to this model, all students progressing to Tier 3 would receive comprehensive cognitive testing “to determine why the child did not respond, and what we should do next.” ²

Questions:  What should we do next?  How fast should we move a student through the various levels? If a student has classic LD (whatever that is), should we go straight to a multi-disciplinary evaluation? Similar to the question above, what if a student takes three years to go through the three tiers, having problems at each tier? This student would have probably been evaluated in a more timely fashion using the discrepancy model with a potential compensatory education claim by the parents.

[1] 34 C.F.R. § 300.306(a)(2).

[2] Indeed, this quote from Hale’s article cited at Fn. 23 infra is supported by the Department of Education comments preceding the IDEA 2004 regulations: “RTI is only one component of the process to identify children in need of special education and related services. Determining why a child has not responded to research-based interventions requires a comprehensive evaluation.”  Page 46647