How will teachers determine which students need more intensive instruction?
Page 10: Assessment in Tier 3
Click on the movie to find out what happens in Tier 3 at Rosa Parks (time: 0:47).
Transcript: Tier 3 at Rosa Parks
As you learned previously, Jack did not respond adequately to Tier 2 instruction. Mrs. Hernandez and Ms. Washington think that he would benefit from more individualized instruction provided in Tier 3. The S-Team decided that Tier 3 intervention at Rosa Parks Elementary should be provided through special education, not general education. So Mrs. Hernandez has requested a special ed evaluation for Jack. Mr. Johnson, the school psychologist, will administer an abbreviated evaluation. Mr. Johnson will then provide the evaluation results to the IEP Team who will use the information, along with Jack’s Tier 1 and Tier 2 progress monitoring data, to determine if Jack has a learning disability or another disability and requires special education services.
As you discovered on an earlier page, Jack did not respond to Tier 2 intervention. Because Tier 3 at Rosa Parks Elementary is special education, his first-grade teacher, Mrs. Hernandez, referred Jack for a special education evaluation.
Mr. Johnson, the school psychologist at Rosa Parks, met with Jack to begin an abbreviated evaluation. First, hearing and vision screenings were conducted. Because the results of these screenings were normal, Mr. Johnson administered several subscales of an intelligence test along with adaptive behavior scales. He also referred Jack for a speech and language evaluation. At the same time, Mr. Johnson asked Mrs. Hernandez and Jack’s parents to complete a behavior checklist.
The results of the intelligence test and adaptive behavior scales indicated that Jack has average intellectual ability, ruling out intellectual disabilities (ID) as the reason for his struggles with reading. The results of the behavior checklist indicated that Jack’s behavior is within normal limits, ruling out an emotional or behavior disorder as the reason for his inadequate reading progress. The speech and language evaluation revealed no difficulties for Jack. The IEP team reviewed Mr. Johnson’s report and Jack’s progress monitoring data and determined that Jack has a learning disability and qualifies for special education services.
Epilogue
Using the response-to-intervention approach, students like Jack who have learning disabilities are identified in the early grades and receive the individualized instruction that they need, as opposed to being identified in the third grade or beyond and missing out on early intervening services. Likewise, students like DeJuan, LaToya, Ryan, and Megan who struggle with reading in the early grades also receive reading intervention to keep them from falling further behind.
Mrs. Hernandez is pleased with the results of the RTI process and feels that all of her students are receiving the instruction or intervention they need to be successful readers. As was determined by the S-Team, all the first-grade teachers, including Mrs. Hernandez, administered a second universal screening near the end of the fall semester (winter universal screening). She and the other teachers used the results of this screening to identify those students who had begun to struggle, and they will repeat this process when Mrs. Hernandez and the others administer a third universal screening at the end of the spring semester to document students’ levels of performance at the end of the school year.
