Charter Schools Have a Great Opportunity to Serve Sped Students Well

In the spring of 2012 the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a study concluding that charter schools enroll a lower percentage of special education students than traditional public schools.  The latest is that the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights has deployed “several broad compliance reviews” to address enrollment as well as legal […]

What’s New in Schools? – It’s Called RtI

In this budgetary climate your school district has probably been very busy implementing some big changes – and one of the biggest directly affects how all students will be taught reading and math, but particularly impacts if and when the learning disabled get special education services. That change is known as “RtI” (Response to Intervention) […]

RtI – the details

RtI is a 3-tiered process of increasingly intensive research- based instruction which is part of federal law (IDEA 2004). At the end of the process (Tier 3), students who are still struggling in reading, math and/or behavior will be eligible for special education services (an “IEP”). The theory of RtI, which is to catch struggling […]

Response to Intervention: Misused to the Detriment of ASD Students?

The implementation of RtI (Response to Intervention), a new way to identify students as learning disabled, may result in delay or failure to properly identify students as eligible for special education services, and in my experience some school districts have been overbroad in their application of RtI – causing students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), […]

If RtI Isn’t Working for Your Child: Knowing Your Legal Rights

Response to Intervention (RtI) is a 3-tiered process of research-based instruction, which is part of federal law (IDEA 2004). Before RtI, in order to get considered for special education services (an “IEP”) the main thing your struggling learner needed was a psycho-educational evaluation (conducted by a private or public school psychologist). The evaluation needed to show […]