RTI and PS ???s

[Heathermomster]

When a child struggles in ps, are they automatically placed in RTI or does the parent have to request that intervention in writing?  Is RTI part of the IEP or pre-IEP?

[ssavings]

RTI is a pre-IEP step. It's supposed to be automatic, but I didn't have a good experience with it occurring automatically.

That being said, my IEP advocate has told me that RTIs are not technically a requirement for a parent to request an evaluation and/or assistance from the public schools. 

I have the RTI forms that are used for my county (they were emailed to me by the private-school IEP coordinator for our county)... can possibly email them to you, if you want to look at them? 

 

[Heathermomster]

RTI is a pre-IEP step. It's supposed to be automatic, but I didn't have a good experience with it occurring automatically.

 

That being said, my IEP advocate has told me that RTIs are not technically a requirement for a parent to request an evaluation and/or assistance from the public schools. 

 

I have the RTI forms that are used for my county (they were emailed to me by the private-school IEP coordinator for our county)... can possibly email them to you, if you want to look at them? 

Thank-you for the offer!!

 

No, I'm trying to understand the ps intervention process.

 

ETA:  I take that back.  Yes, I would love to look at them, but only if it is convenient.  Thank-you...

[City Mouse]

RTI (Response to Interevention) is the process that the public school has to go through before the school can recommened a student be tested for special needs. This is supposed to be totally separate from a parent making a formal written request for testing. The length of time it takes depends on the school, teacher, and student. I would expect a minimum of 9 weeks but usually more.

 

The process came about because back in the early (or not so early) days of special education most schools had an abnormal high number of minority students identified as needed special education services based on the overal population of the school. Kids that did not speak English were identified as special Ed. Kids that were low income and did not have good educational opportunities when young were placed in special Ed. Kids from other countries who had never had the opportunity to attend school were placed in special education. Once the kids were identified, schools basically warehoused them and ignored them.

Basically, RTI is a process that the school has to go through to prove that the child has had adequate educational opportunites and that any problems are not due to lack of education.

 

That is why the parents of children who are homeschooled have to make that formal written request. The school will never request the evaluation because they have no way to document that the child was given adequate educational opportunity.

Unfortunately, many "regular" teachers do not understand the process. This is even worse at higher grades. Kids who attend public school their whole careers are usually identified for special education services in elementary school. A student who enrolls in public school for the first time in an older grade, or who starts out fine but has problems in later years, may have a more difficult time being identified. Also, the teacher as to be collecting data during the RTI process. Just saying the kid is in RTI doesn't do anything. If the teacher fails to collect the required data, then he or she has to,start back at the beginning.

 

At any time, a parent can always make that formal written request for an evaluation. Schools are not supposed to put off an evaluation for the RTI process if the parent has made that written request.

Unfortunately, schools do not communicate this to parents. Parents will talk to teachers and/or make a verbal request for testing and not know that a verbal request is meaningless.

[ssavings]

Thank-you for the offer!!

 

No, I'm trying to understand the ps intervention process.

 

ETA:  I take that back.  Yes, I would love to look at them, but only if it is convenient.  Thank-you...

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s97jd62csiffjjp/AADOyL4aETKMtcXtpE-uwq0fa?dl=0

 

That's the link to the forms via dropbox. Here, Tier 2 interventions are small group, and Tier 3 are individual interventions.

And, also, I've been told that in some places (including my area) RTI is not required if the parent requests an evaluation - it's required for a school to suggest an evaluation. 

[displace]

The main thing I don't appreciate about the RTI process is it doesn't look at a why behind the problem. So a child could have a LD, have teacher intervention at school plus home intervention for years before testing is done. The interventions help the child not fall too far behind, which is good, and delay testing. The school feels the intervention is working.

 

For us, without a diagnosis, I was just trying harder, not smarter. With a diagnosis I knew in 5 min the reading program at school was not only not going to work but it was harmful for him to learn to read. In another five min I was able to figure out writing all day was not only not helpful but also harmful. That's an exaggeration of course, backed by hours of research before diagnosis. But the minute we had the diagnosis I knew the programs the school used were not a fit.

 

We were in RTI for a calendar year. We went through many private Evals before leaving and he was still not close to school-initiated testing.

[Lecka]

I think you will need to find this out locally, to some extent. 

 

I have found that things are not done exactly the same as it is shown on the Internet. 

 

I did not know my son was in RTI ahead of time, I was told at the next parent-teacher meeting.  The kids separated into different reading groups, and his reading group happened to be with the reading specialist. 

 

I think this depends on the age of the child a lot.  I think with a younger child, they are more likely to give RTI a longer chance and be happy with incremental progress made in RTI.  But then when it gets to be 3rd-4th grade, they are more like "we have got to get this kid caught up or he will really fall behind."  

 

But I do think in general ways it is the same in different places, but for specifics, you need to find out.

 

I have heard other places that you get a note home if your child is in RTI.  I didn't get any note home.  But it is informal in its way, just kids going to different reading groups which are done by ability level.

 

Something that really surprised me -- when my son got to 4th grade, all of a sudden almost all the kids were in the same reading class, doing the same work.  Just a few kids were in advanced reading, and just a few kids were in remedial reading.  Through 3rd grade, kids were split up into a lot of small groups and working at different levels.  

 

So it seems that in our district -- they are very accepting of kids being in different levels and making their own progress through 3rd grade.  It is in 4th grade where it is more intensive with remediation (and the summer before -- I have heard good things about this summer reading program now).

 

But I went the home tutoring route, so I don't have so much personal experience.  My son was allowed to be part of the RTI math program and it was really good for him -- it helped him a huge amount with math facts.  It was an after-school program.  He did not qualify for it based on his scores or his overall math performance (he is good with concepts and story problems).  He did a math facts game and it got his confidence up, and I followed up with Reflex math.  The teacher in there was very nice, I was happy they had a spot for him.  

 

[ssavings]

I think you will need to find this out locally, to some extent. 

 

I have found that things are not done exactly the same as it is shown on the Internet. 

.  

 

I think this is absolutely true. There are huge, huge variations in the way things work - at the private school my son was at, they bumped him up an entire grade level without me knowing in advance (it was a mixed grade class, so he didn't have to change classrooms).

 

That being said, every child is provided certain protections under IDEA....  the school, from what I'm understanding, should be required to evaluate, if they are requested to do so. And within a reasonable time-period. 

[PeterPan]

Check your stare law. In our state RTI cannot delay the IEP if the parent requests. There are defined limits on the days of RTI in the IEP process. I provided documentation to demonstrate I had already done an equivalent process.

[ssavings]

The way I understand it in my area...

 

For a teacher to suggest an eval to the school and parents=RTI required.

 

If a parent requests eval = no RTI required.

[PeterPan]

They brought it up at ours.

[Love_to_Read]

At any time, a parent can always make that formal written request for an evaluation. Schools are not supposed to put off an evaluation for the RTI process if the parent has made that written request.

Unfortunately, schools do not communicate this to parents. Parents will talk to teachers and/or make a verbal request for testing and not know that a verbal request is meaningless.

 

 

This!  I know several parents who have gotten stonewalled at this stage of the process, who have tried to request an IEP and were told that the school had to do RTI first, because "that's how we do things here."

 

It has also been my experience that if you have a student with mild disabilities who is hard-working and/or above average intelligence, it can be very difficult to get the school to proceed with the IEP process...if the response to intervention is that the child isn't failing miserably, there is generally no motivation for the school to care whether the child actually thrives or whether the child passes by the skin of his or her teeth with extreme effort and time spent in tutoring that may not use methods relevant to the disability.

 

There are legal protections regarding the timeline on which an IEP must be processed after a written request, but I've heard people told things like, "We don't test for that until after ___ grade." "We don't test for that until the child has been in school for __ months/years." or "been in the RTI program for ___ months."  I honestly don't think that all of those responses were given after verbal requests.  I think parents have to be very aware of the difference in process for a written request by parent, and have to make it known that they know their rights to a full evaluation.

 

 

[ssavings]

They brought it up at ours.

My first attempt, too... just going off what my advocate told me.

[PeterPan]

Yes, the things LtR are saying are what the SN Coor kept saying at our meetings.  (We don't give SLD labels to K5ers, we normally do RTI first, we don't give IEPs and SLD labels to K5ers...  over and over and over.)  I really thought it was hopeless.  Nuts, even our psych told us we wouldn't get an IEP for him!  But I worked for hours upon hours creating documentation.  I collated board posts (yes, for real) as my data.  I journal on the boards basically, so you could see this trail of what I thought, when I tried it, what happened, what I tried next, how it worked, rinse repeat.  I gave him timelines of every program I had tried and I made it hard to miss.  I trimmed and snipped so it was easy to read.  Hours and hours to make all that documentation.  Total pain in the butt.  But in the end worth it.

 

Oh, did I mention I prayed a lot?  Like seriously, lots of prayer, because it's unheard of here.

 

Everyone told me, and I really think it's true, that the more informed you are going in, the less they'll try to snow you.  They really do snow games though, with their persistent oh we don't do that, etc. etc.  Always so nice and then stabbing you in the back when they can.

 

How did we get on that?  LOL  

 

Point is, when they say they would like evidence of instruction, response to instruction, and DATA, they mean it.  And ultimately, what blew our psych's mind at the ps was that ds was in level 2 of Barton at the time (or was it 3?) and still had huge discrepancies.  The psych said ds would attempt to read the whole page sample but then have NO comprehension, no ability to answer questions.  I took in the booklets I made of the Barton stories, where we had gone through the line by line, reading, rereading, drawing pictures, etc. to improve comprehension.  So I had physical evidence, journal evidence, a timeline, test scores, and had used multiple things over the years. 

 

I don't know that every school would require that.  I just knew they told me upfront I had an uphill battle because of his, and I felt like with our discrepancy (and the private diagnoses), we OUGHT to get those labels.  I tried to provide everything I could.

[ssavings]

I should start recording what we've done. 

 

[prairiewindmomma]

In my school district, in public school.....  A teacher typically initiates the RTI process. It is done prior to the IEP process.  

 

A parent who requests an IEP evaluation is often given the RTI song and dance.  I initiated the IEP process in writing, and about 80 days was spent in RTI. I had to bring out my calendar and physically count days in front of the coordinator to illustrate that they were running out of time and really did need to schedule evals in prep of the fast approaching deadline.  I jumped through all of their Tier 3 RTI hoops for them, which were painful and rather pointless, but my outside documentation was not something that they wanted to see at all.  They pretended to ask questions and listen, and I filled out a tree or two of paperwork, but the RTI hoops were what they were most interested in because that's what they understood. 

 

Another caveat I would offer is that sometimes in RTI focus can go astray where RTI heads in the functional behavioral assessment direction rather than properly vetting out the skill evaluation. I'm not saying that functional behaviors should be ignored, but in my district it's common to try to ignore the root cause of a number of issues because it's cheaper to not really remediate any of the fundamental educational weaknesses.

 

My final caveat is to remember FAPE is geared to the individual student. Here, in a district with limited intervention funds, there seems to be a triage effect going on.  Funding dollars are going primarily to the nonverbal/nonmainstreamable kids.  Those who are verbal and willing to stay in a classroom are getting short shrift. I am an outlier in my district as a homeschooler; it's been very interesting to see what is happening to all of my friends with LD or SN kids in school.  I know a number of recent graduates with 2nd grade reading skills.  :(

[queen620]

I didn't read all the comments so just sharing my experience.  
My then 3rd grader showed up at public school in November of his 3rd grade year.  (Long extenuating family circumstances and LD issues, I couldn't deal with!)  Anyway, when I dropped him off, I left a note for the teacher.  I then followed it up with a more official letter OFFICIALLY requesting RTI and testing to determine LD needs and possibly IEP.   At our school, once that is submitted in writing the teacher and necessary staff had 30 to acknowledge my request.   They had 90 days to have all testing done and final IEP determination meeting.   During that time, my son's teacher was AWESOME and was making a slew of "goodwill accommodations" but of course they weren't' legally binding.  

I also have a rising 8th grader, who was put in PS last year for 7th grade.   We went to the public school and enrolled him in May before the school year was done.  We walked in, with a very detailed and very new diagnosis-- less than 3 months old!   I laid the groundwork that based on my son's medical & educational diagnosis, he needed an IEP in place or nearly in place by the time school started.  BOOM-- we showed up several times during the summer to fill in a few tests that the PS needed.   We had his final IEP determination meeting within 2 weeks of school officially starting in the fall!     

Teachers are legally bound by federal mandates to be looking for LD needs (sorry can't remember the exact term).  HOWEVER, many teachers are just too overwhelmed and understaffed and under supported to see kids who fall in the in between.  Oh, my kids would stood out like a sore thumb, but kids shoe are more in the grey area will not get the services they need if parents aren't pushy.   Just my 2 cents!   Do everything in writing.   Send emails to several people at the school, not just child's teacher-- include curricula coordinator, principal, EC teacher--- don't skip anyone who might be in a position to step in and help.