NCLD advisory board member Dr. Donald Deshler talks about the National Research Center for Learning Disabilities (NRCLD) and its impact on LD identification across the nation.
A note from Dr. Sheldon Horowitz of NCLD
Once you've read this interview (and I recommend that you read it twice: once to wrap your mind around the big ideas and again to absorb the details) you will appreciate the enormous contribution Don and his colleagues are making to the field of learning disabilities. To help you unravel these complicated research issues and see how they apply to your everyday lives, see my discussion questions following the article.
You'll see how important the work of the NRCLD is, not just for students with LD but for all students who struggle to learn. Thank you, Don, for reminding us that student learning is a moving target. Schools are dynamic, ever-changing places, and everything we know (or think we know) from our research needs to be checked and rechecked against the reality of teachers and students in real (and often diverse) classrooms and communities. Read on!
NCLD: What is the NRCLD's mission?
Don Deshler
The mission of the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities (NRCLD) is to conduct research on the identification of learning disabilities; formulate implementation recommendations; disseminate findings; and provide technical assistance to national, state, and local constituencies.
Large variations exist in State Education Agency (SEA) requirements for identifying students as having a learning disability. Variations exist in prevalence, definitions, classification criteria, exclusion factors, existence of ability-achievement discrepancy requirements, methods to determine the discrepancy if one is required, and the magnitude of the discrepancy in order to meet the state eligibility standards. The data we have collected clearly indicate that there is no national specific learning disabilities (SLD) diagnostic system, but rather an amalgamation of SEA systems that have varying degrees of similarity.
NCLD
The report And Miles to Go by Dan Reschly et al. highlights the different practices currently being used by schools across the nation to identify students as having LD. What are some of the most significant findings from that paper?
Don Deshler
The study by Dan and his colleagues underscores the complex nature of the construct of learning disabilities from both a conceptual and policy standpoint. Finding improved ways of identifying students with
LD will not simply be a matter of coming up with a better "technical solution." It is equally important for us to understand the important role that such things as school and community contexts and values and biases of key stakeholders play in ultimately determining the types and numbers of students who are identified and how a given identification system will actually be implemented on the front lines.
NCLD
With this concentration on LD identification, how does the NRCLD see its efforts informing policy decisions during the next few years?
Don Deshler
We believe that the best education policy emerges when leaders consistently seek out and use quality data to drive their decisions. Larry Gloeckler, former Deputy Commission of Education in New York and member of the NCLD Professional Advisory Board has said: "In the past, we were too often making education policy decisions based on intuition or emotion around the issue at hand. The fact is that, when we look at accurate data about educational performance and use it with sophisticated analytical strategies, it gives us a clear picture as to what are the important issues to resolve and how we should be allocating our resources to resolve them."
The NRCLD is committed to providing policy makers with those kinds of data as well as a clear explanation of the contexts within which the data were collected. Data in the absence of an understanding of the context from which it came can be misleading or inappropriately understood. The NRCLD hopes to provide to the field a solid database that can be used to answer questions that will continue to arise as we refine our efforts to more effectively identify students for LD services.
NCLD
Response to Intervention (RTI) is a highly charged issue that, in lay terms, seems like a useful approach to learning more about how a student benefits from targeted instruction. What is RTI and why is this such a charged issue?
Don Deshler
Response to Intervention is a promising method of alternate identification that can both promote effective practices in schools and help to close the gap between identification and treatment. Basically, all RTI models are interested in evaluating how students respond when they are provided with quality instruction. If certain students struggle in learning and performing a set of targeted tasks, instructional modifications are tried and the progress of students continues to be monitored to determine their responsiveness to instruction. If students continue to experience difficulty in learning, the instruction provided to them becomes increasingly explicit and intensive.
One of the appealing features of RTI models is the fact that students remain in their general education classroom while their performance is continually monitored within the context of their grade-level curriculum materials and instruction. This approach is not a "wait to fail" approach as has often been the case when IQ-Achievement Discrepancy models are used. That is, generally students must struggle through several grades (third grade or beyond) until they demonstrate a sufficiently large enough discrepancy to qualify for specialized services.
There are still many unanswered questions, however, surrounding the application of RTI on a broad scale basis including such things as:
- What should be the cut-score(s) used to determine that a student is not responsive to intervention?
- What should an RTI model look like in a middle or high school science classroom (most of the research to date has been done in grades K-3 with basic reading and math tasks)?
- What other testing should accompany RTI measures, e.g., should measures of a student's cognitive abilities be taken to differentiate non-responders with LD from non-responders with mental retardation? If this distinction is not made, the LD category, in effect, could disappear or be dramatically changed in terms of its underlying constructs.
- Will it be feasible to mobilize general education teachers to embrace the RTI model? Its success, in large measure, is dependent upon their willingness to adopt a significantly different instructional role than they have traditionally played?
- Will it be feasible to apply RTI on a large scale and still maintain fidelity of implementation?
The list of unanswered questions is long and thus, concerns have been raised about the implications of these issues on the ultimate effectiveness of the model in determining the presence of LD in students across grade levels and skills areas.
NCLD
In terms of research, what do you think the diagnostic process is going to look like ten years from now and which avenues of research currently underway do you feel most optimistic about?
Don Deshler
I am optimistic that significant answers will emerge from the research that is currently being conducted on different ways to identify students as having a learning disability. Some of the brightest minds in our field are currently conducting research on issues surrounding LD determination (both in education and related fields, such as neuroscience). In order to resolve the broad array of yet unanswered questions, it will be necessary to have continued federal investments in assessment, learning, and policy research since the ultimate solutions to LD determination must address both the technical and contextual/values/biases factors that are always in play in the complex dynamic surrounding LD determination. As researchers work to refine existing RTI models and to address the many issues related to its implementation, it is imperative that they carefully seek to understand the practical constraints and realities confronting practitioners and parents. If these perspectives are not considered, problems of adoption and integration of any new model of LD determination can be significantly hampered.
Discussion Questions from Dr. Sheldon Horowitz
- Does the SEA (short for State Education Agency, also known as the State Deptartment of Education) where I live use the best approach to allowing students with LD to get special education services?
- How much of the responsibility for teaching students with LD should be shared with regular classroom teachers, and how might general and special education personnel better work together to discover (before any formal testing is done) a student's strengths and weaknesses, AND how he or she responds to focused intentional instruction?
Donald Deshler, Ph.D., is a member of NCLD's Professional Advisory Board, a professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas and director of the University's Center for Research on Learning (CRL). He is also a co-director of the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities (NRCLD), which focuses on the accurate and early identification of children with LD by reviewing and conducting research, disseminating information, and providing technical assistance linking research to practice.
