Historical Seeds of the Three Tier Model
Concerns about the procedures for identifying students with learning disabilities (LD) began immediately with the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA; PL 94-142) in 1975. Within six years of the introduction of EHA Regulations, researchers had identified a number of problems with the procedures that had been codified as regulations for identifying LD (Ysseldyke, et al., 1983). A central issue has been the concern that the regulated ability-achievement discrepancy approach leads to the determination of special education eligibility for some students whose academic deficiencies are a result of a lack of effective instructional practices rather than a verifiable disability.
It is notable that legislators have not been unaware of this controversy. Indeed, even the original (and still current) language of the 1977 EHA Regulations reflects this concern:
A team may determine that a child has a specific learning disability if (1) The child does not achieve commensurate with his or her age and ability levels in one or more of the areas listed in paragraph (a)(2) of this section, if provided with learning experiences appropriate for the child's age and ability levels(S300.541).... A team may determine that a child has a specific learning disability if ... there is a severe discrepancy between achievement and ability that is not correctable without special education and related services (S300.543).
While the italicized phrases are often overlooked in practice, they appear to reflect an early understanding that students who are not provided with appropriate and effective instruction might look like students with learning disabilities. These regulations indicate that even students who display ability-achievement discrepancies may not be deemed eligible for special education if their deficiencies can be corrected without specially designed instruction (i.e., they can be corrected in general education).
In reauthorizing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1997, Congress apparently understood that these sentiments were being ignored on a national level. In the proceedings leading to the reauthorization, the House Committee noted the following:
The Committee intends that professionals, who are involved in the evaluation of a child, give serious consideration at the conclusion of the evaluation process to other factors that might be affecting a child's performance. There are substantial numbers of children who are likely to be identified as disabled because they have not previously received proper academic support. Such a child often is identified as learning disabled, because the child has not been taught, in an appropriate or effective manner for the child, the core skill of reading....The Committee believes this provision will lead to fewer children being improperly included in special education programs where their actual educational difficulties stem from another cause and that this will lead schools to focus greater attention on these subjects in the early grades (US House of Representatives, 1997).
These concerns led to the new requirement in 1997 that "a child shall not be determined to be a child with a disability if the determinant factor for such determination is lack of instruction in reading or math ..." (IDEA S614[b][5]). While this provision should have driven school evaluation teams to ensure that students had been carefully taught with evidence-based instructional practices, it is believed that practitioners at the local level have neither understood the full ramifications of this requirement nor have they implemented specific procedures for making this determination.
It is with this historic backdrop that Congress is now considering even more specific language that would clearly articulate to local education agencies (LEAs) its apparently long-held desire that evaluation teams distinguish students with verifiable learning disabilities from those who are deficient because of the failure of schools to instruct all students effectively, especially in the primary grades. The currently proposed language would not require an LEA to utilize an ability-achievement discrepancy approach, and would allow for a consideration of the student's response to intervention (RtI) as part of a comprehensive evaluation for special education eligibility. The RtI approach has been recommended not merely to revise the procedures for the identification of LD, but also to embed the identification process within the context of the provision of scientifically based instruction to all children (President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education, 2002).
The RtI approach has been conceptualized as a dual-discrepancy model (Fuchs, 1995; Fuchs & Fuchs, 1998), in which the student needs to not only be deficient in critical academic skills, but also show a low rate of learning in response to effective instructional practices. This determination would occur within the context of three tiers:
- Tier One: School-wide screening and group intervention.
- Tier Two: Identification of individual students who fail to respond to Tier One interventions, along with the provision of individually tailored interventions.
- Tier Three: Long-term programming for students who fail to respond to Tier Two interventions (e.g., special education).
This movement to establish effective instructional practices for students who may be otherwise referred for special education is properly contextualized by the contemporaneous national implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. As Grimes and Kurns (2003) indicated, the focus of all schools is now on the academic attainments of all students, not just those who are very deficient. The IDEA and NCLB laws can be seen as complementary efforts to establish effective instructional practices and significantly improved outcomes for all children.
The potential passage of the new special education provisions regarding LD begs the question of how schools will implement procedures for determining RtI. It is clear that if specific procedures are not promulgated, the RtI option will be ignored, as was the requirement to determine if a lack of instruction was a determinant factor in the student's assessed academic deficiency. In conceptualizing these procedures, a number of issues emerge. First, there seems to be a lack of clarity about what exactly is to occur in Tier One. In this paper, a proposal for what might optimally be accomplished in Tier One will be offered.
Second, Tier Two has been conceptualized as involving either the development of interventions targeted to an individual student through a team-based problem-solving process or interventions for groups of students based on standard protocols (Fuchs, Mock, Morgan, & Young, 2003). Grimes and Kurns (2003) have articulated a viable problem-solving model that has been in operation in the Heartland Area Education Agency. The "Iowa Model" articulates many of the critical features of the problem solving process that would support Tier Two interventions, and is particularly helpful in understanding the nexus between Tiers Two and Three, as students are considered for eligibility for special education based on information gathered in the first two tiers. Alternatively, McMaster et al. (2003) and Kamps and Greenwood (2003) described implementations of the standard protocol approach. An important issue with both of these approaches is the types of procedures and organizational changes that will need to be in place to ensure that scientifically based instructional practices can be brought to scale in general education. In this paper, essential procedural, logistic, and systemic factors regarding both school-based problem-solving teams and the implementation of formalized, protocol-like approaches will be discussed.
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