Special education teachers, do you think RTI will be used to reduce or eliminate special ed jobs?

Question

For those who are using Problem Solving Teams and Response To Intervention, what are the pros and cons? Are you being asked to see your most severe IEP kids with non-IEP kids in large groups and count that as your minutes? Do you feel this is effective and are your IEP kids making progress? Are your teachers referring struggling students to the PST team? In my school, the referrals have dropped off drastically.

Has your district begun to reduce special ed staff? In my school, K-2, half of the sped teachers are being let go. Meanwhile the district is hiring more psychologists and reading specialists to assist with RTI.

I believe that districts will use the 15% of sped funds they are allowed to spend on general ed students, to lay off sped staff and hire gen ed staff.

Answer 1

IMO, RTI is the same as what schools call the services they give thru their 'intervention team program'.  This is done by all public schools and was done before RTI came along.

I know that schools  do RTI first before they can do testing to see if a child can qualify for special education.

And I know that RTI is done to see if the child 'progresses' and if they do, they won't have a test done to see if they qualify for special education.

There are LOTS of problems with this.

1. If a SCHOOL wants to see if a child can qualify for special education, they are suppose to use RTI first.

BUT, if a PARENT wants to see if their child can qualify for special ed services, the school MUST do an eval to determine sped eligibility.   IDEA law states this.

2. The school can do RTI   'while' the evaluation to determine sped eligibiltiy  is being done,  but RTI can not be done FIRST or INSTEAD  of doing the sped eligiblity eval. This is, if a PARENT requests sped eligiblity eval.

3. If a school wants to see if a child can qualify for sped, they are suppose to do RTI first.

4. IDEA law does NOT state that RTI has to be done first before the PARENT requests an eval to be done for sped eligibilty, so doing RTI is illegal if done first or instead of an eval to determine sped eligiblity   when a PARENT requests to see if their child can qualify for special ed services.

5  RTI does not use the same specialized programs and services that are used for special ed children, because RTI is NOT special ed.  RTI uses the same methods that are used by the schools 'intervention team'.

6. Since RTI does not use the same methods, programs, etc that special ed uses, it does not accurately measure the progress or regression of a child.

7. And since RTI does not use the same methods as special ed, the child who is progressing with RTI will not be qualified to have an eval to see if they qualify for special ed services.

8. BUT after RTI is stopped   the child  will  regress again   because thru RTI,  the methods of special ed were not used to help the child.

9. The methods used thru RTI are not scientifically research based, are not implemented by teachers who are highly qualified and trained to help with a childs specific problems.

10. So the methods used will not correctly and accurately measure a childs progress/regression.

11. IMO, RTI is just stalling the inevitable and/or keeping children out of special ed who really need it.

Answer 2

It might depend on your district. I am a ssw and our district uses ICT (instructional consultation teams) from the University of Maryland. I am at a K-2 school and I have our PPI program as well. We don't have enough sped teachers. Our district has phenomenal sped numbers we could never let ours go.

ICT is our answer to RTI and it has slowed our referrals down, but that is okay. Our documentation is much more solid at this point. The number of referrals for ICT is ever growing. We like the SPED teachers to be an active part of ICT they are invaluable members.  

So I guess it depends on the district and the number of SPED students you have as well as the RTI program you use, they vary greatly.

I choose to see my gen ed and sped kids together, it works out well. Although high risk students are still seen individually. One of our sped teachers takes her students in small groups or goes into classrooms to work with small groups there, but she does not work with gen ed students unless they are really low and it works into her schedule. She does that is as a favor really, she is amazing.