An article in a Massachusetts newspaper in the winter of 2013, titled: “[Superintendent] Looking to Curb Sped Referrals,”¹ highlights a growing trend of school districts actively discouraging the referral of students for special education evaluations. The article quotes a local school district superintendent as calling special education referrals “a resource zapper,” and requesting that instead, parents ask their child’s classroom teacher to decide if any concerns they might have about possible disabilities are valid. If the teacher agrees with the parents, then the teacher can refer the parent’s concern to a panel of “teachers and special education staffers.” This panel then has the option to refer the child to a program commonly known as “Response to Intervention” or RTI. According to the superintendent, “[a]ll I’m asking is for parents to work closer with the classroom teacher and keep a dialogue open and wait for the teacher to go through the RTI process.”

What is RTI?

RTI is loosely defined in the regulations that accompany the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA² with the goal of screening all students early in their school career to identify any who are struggling and, through increasing levels of intervention, prevent the need for more costly special education services later. By applying the screening process universally, it represents an effort to make IDEA, which addresses the unique needs of individual students, more closely conform with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which attempts to raise standards for all students uniformly. IDEA-04 “permits” (not “requires”) schools to employ “scientific, research-based” techniques to help struggling students discovered in the screening process.

In other words, RTI is not the same as, nor a substitute for, special education. RTI does not provide for evaluations by qualified professionals to identify specific learning disabilities, and a student in RTI does not have an IEP to specify learning goals or the accommodations and modifications needed to achieve those goals. Although some schools may employ these techniques, there is no requirement to do so. Most important, there is no legal mandate for a school to provide agreed upon services, accommodations, or program modifications, as there is when a student is on an IEP. In fact, the US Department of Education makes it clear that a student in special education is also eligible to receive RTI services along with special education services.³ Schools, however, appear to regard RTI as a substitute for special education that is less involved, and of course, less expensive.

By contrast, IDEA has very specific criteria for determining eligibility for special education and who is qualified to make the determination.,sup>4 Once parents request an initial eligibility evaluation and give their written consent for the necessary testing, the school has 60 calendar days (by federal law, state laws may vary) to perform evaluations in all areas of suspected disabilities. These evaluations must be performed by qualified and knowledgeable professionals. There is no provision in IDEA for multiple layers of screening by people who may not have the training or qualifications to recognize or evaluate learning disabilities.

The worst part of this admission, however, is the knowledge that the superintendent is not simply doing this out of ignorance of the law. For years, the Department of Education has warned schools not to use RTI to deny or even delay special education evaluations. In a memo sent to all state special education directors in 2011, the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) wrote that “[t]he use of RTI strategies cannot be used to delay or deny the provision of a full and individual evaluation… to a child suspected of having a disability…”⁵ This memo followed a 2006 memo that stated quite clearly: “An RTI process does not replace the need for a comprehensive evaluation.”⁶ How can it be possible that the superintendent is not aware of this widely publicized policy at the same time he is promoting RTI as an alternative to special education evaluations?

Unfortunately, this school superintendent is far from alone. Other school districts are adopting this policy and many are announcing it publicly. A more recent article from another town’s newspaper begins with a headline that announces that the district’s special education program is to be “culled” of excess students, as if the students were a herd of over-reproducing deer. The article contains extensive quotes from both the district’s director of special education and a school committee member, explaining that students “must” be referred to a screening program that includes RTI before they can be referred to special education, a clear violation of the law.⁷ It is not clear from the article how the school administration was planning to remove students already in special education. That is a process that can only be done through extensive evaluations with objective data to prove that a previously identified learning disability no longer exists.