FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 3, 2007
Contact: Kathleen Whitmire
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National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) Launches Response to Intervention (RTI) Action Network

NCLD Receives Major Grant from Cisco Foundation to Promote Systemic School Reform and Improve Student Outcomes

New York, NY-Today, the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) announced the launch of its new Response to Intervention (RTI) Action Network. The RTI Action Network is a multi-year effort with the goal to facilitate and support the development, replication, scalability, and sustainability of RTI as a means for systems change to improve educational outcomes for all students, including children who are at risk for learning disabilities. The Cisco Foundation is supporting the initiative with over $2 million in grant funding to NCLD.

Effective implementation of RTI requires school reform based on collaboration among general education, special education, and families to achieve an integrated approach to responding to struggling learners. RTI is a multi-tiered approach providing services and interventions to struggling learners at increasing levels of intensity. It delivers high quality, research-based instruction and interventions in general and special education that is matched to individual student needs, and guided by performance data for each child.  The model combines a tiered delivery of interventions with ongoing monitoring and data-driven decision making for better outcomes and higher success rates for all students. According to James H. Wendorf, NCLD's Executive Director, RTI will significantly improve current practice: "RTI holds the promise to provide students who struggle to learn the support they need as soon as they need it instead of waiting until they fail."

"Cisco believes research based solutions for students, educators, and parents, especially Internet-based applications, are critical to building an equitable society in which all children have the best possible opportunity to succeed," said Mike Yutrzenka, Executive Director, Cisco Foundation. "NCLD's RTI Action Network represents an important step towards ensuring that schools are up to the challenge of educating our nation's children."

A key component of the RTI Action Network will be a comprehensive, interactive Web site, the "go-to" site ensuring that frontline educators and families have access to the resources they need to implement the essential components of RTI for the ultimate benefit of children who struggle to learn.  The Web site is anticipated to launch in late spring of 2008. It will provide information needed by educators and families to take action, and opportunities for networking with our nation's leading RTI experts as well as peers.

Leading this initiative for NCLD will be Kathleen Whitmire, Ph.D., who has joined NCLD from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), where she was the lead professional responsible for promoting RTI to the ASHA membership. According to Dr. Whitmire: "The RTI Action Network will be based on collaborative, cross-disciplinary partnerships with leading national organizations whose constituents have a stake in how students are served in our public schools at the local level─principals, classroom teachers, special education teachers, related service providers (e.g., school psychologists, speech-language pathologists), reading specialists, and parents. The program will focus on school reform, accurate identification of students with learning disabilities, and the involvement of parents in the RTI process." Also joining the RTI Action Network team as Associate Director is Elaine Niefeld. Ms. Niefeld joined NCLD from the International Dyslexia Association, where she served as Director of Publications. She previously served as Publisher and Editorial Director at Brookes Publishing. 

The National Center for Learning Disabilities, Inc., is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that the nation's 15 million children, adolescents and adults with learning disabilities have every opportunity to succeed in school, work and life. NCLD provides essential information to parents, professionals and individuals with learning disabilities, promotes research and programs to foster effective learning, and advocates for policies to protect and strengthen educational rights and opportunities.

For more information on NCLD, please visit us on the Web at NCLD.org.

For more information on Cisco Foundation, please visit http://www.cisco.com/.