Commission on No Child Left Behind Publishes Report:
No Provisions for Early Childhood Education, No Provisions for Formative Assessments
In February 2006, the Commission on No Child Left Behind, an independent, bipartisan commission was formed to examine evidence about the effects of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and to develop recommendations for congressional use in the upcoming reauthorization of the Act which is under way in this session of Congress.
The Commission collected and analyzed extensive research in the form of: public hearings; roundtable discussions on key issues; on-site visits to several school districts; and consultations with experts, researchers, policy makers, administrators, teachers, parents and students to inform their understanding of the concerns and expectations of education systems across the country. The Commission’s efforts over the past year resulted in their presentation of some 75 recommendations to Congress on February 13th 2007.
While all of the Commission's seventy-five recommendations were widely considered to be instrumental in the United States' evolution towards establishing a truly equal and inclusive public education system, two recommendations were of key interest to many in the general and special education community"the improvement of early childhood education and the use of formative assessments in monitoring student progress.
While the current NCLB legislation encourages individual schools, school districts, and states to administer high quality instruction and offered new funding through Early Reading First and Reading First grant programs, it does not offer specific provisions for the improvement of early childhood education or for formative assessments in monitoring student progress in the general curriculum as part of Title I. Many education experts believe that the inclusion of these two provisions will be essential for comprehensive improvement of the nation’s education systems.
As it stands, IDEA has already stimulated the creation and implementation of problem-solving instruction approaches with its allowance of schools to utilize up to 15 percent of their special education funds to provide early education services to students who have academic and/or behavior difficulties, but are not classified as having a learning disability.
In its report, the Commission made several recommendations for the improvement of early childhood education, stressing the need for developmental screens and assessments, as well as instructional interventions at the preschool and kindergarten level. In addition, the Commission recommended that school districts be allowed to utilize Title I funding to implement a formative assessment system. It was further recommended that this system generate results promptly, thereby allowing timely interpretation and action by school districts and enabling both teachers and principals (and by extension, parents and students) to accurately measure a child's attainment of an individual state’s standards and plan appropriate action.
While many of the Commission's recommendations will impact public school students that are identified as having a learning disability (13 percent of the current enrollment have disabilities, six percent have learning disabilities), many argue that this population could be greatly diminished and better served by infusing (and eventually replacing) the current screening, assessment tools and procedures with the three-tiered general education instruction model, Response to Intervention (commonly referred to as RTI).
Why Response to Intervention?
Response to Intervention is a highly-effective approach to help identify struggling students and those most at risk for learning disabilities and to work with all students to ensure their educational success. While no single RTI model has proven effective in all settings, a successful implementation of the RTI model ensures that:
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Students who struggle with learning first receive high quality instruction in the general education setting;
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Instruction (to the greatest extent possible) is research-based;
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General education professionals and other teaching staff actively participate in student instruction and in collecting data on student performance;
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Student progress is monitored across the curriculum (not just on specific isolated skills);
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The shift to RTI will certainly vary from district to district across the country, and will require strong initial (and ongoing) supportive leadership from school administration, as well as a commitment of high quality instruction and professional talent-sharing by and within the education community.
Several models similar to RTI have been in existence for many years with varying names, such as the Teacher Assistance Team Model, Pre-Referral Intervention Model, Instructional Support Team Model, School-Based Consultation Team Model, Problem-Solving Model and others. For these schools, and others like them, system refinement will be the next step in the natural progression of their existing models, methods and practices.
For schools whose practices are more aligned with older, research-based approaches to instruction, the goal will be to build on the foundation of programs that developed as a result of the initial NCLB legislation. Programs such as the Reading First Initiative have similar RTI components in that they incorporate universal screening, research-based instruction for all, multi-tiered, research-based interventions for struggling learners, continuous progress monitoring and use of data on student performance to guide decisions about instruction and intervention. By utilizing the many inexpensive data-collection/management tools available to schools and training personnel to track student progress as part of the routine, districts can begin the shift toward the RTI model of instruction.
The Advantages of RTI
There are numerous advantages to a nationwide RTI implementation. Among them:
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The creation of meaningful instructional data that can be used in creating well-targeted, individualized, evidence-based instructional interventions for students considered to be "at risk" (students who do not respond to robust, high-quality instruction and intervention, whose progress has been monitored over time and may be determined to have a learning disability).
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Helps ensure that a student's poor academic performance is not due to poor instruction.
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Provides instructionally-relevant data and emphasizes effective teaching approaches rather than eligibility for special education classification.
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Decreases the number of students inappropriately referred for special education assessment and intervention.
One organization (among many) that advocates the implementation of RTI and the addition of RTI-specific language into the NCLB legislation is the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). The organization's executive director, Jim Wendorf, on behalf of NCLD and its supporters noted while presenting NCLD's comments to the Commission:
"The education of students with LD is the responsibility of the total education enterprise, not just special education. Students with disabilities are general education students first. Their disabilities define challenges to be overcome by all of education."
The Response to Intervention instruction model was not mentioned at any point in the Commission's report.
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