News
Is Your Child Struggling?
2009-12-01Sharyn Lonsdale
Students in the public system right now are, whether they know it or not, in the middle of a revolution of sorts. It’s called Response to Intervention and it is changing the way we look at identifying students who struggle in school academically and/or behaviorally. According to Schwab Learning, the move towards RTI has been triggered in part by the fact that three million of the six million students who receive special education services under The Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA) are identified as having a specific learning disability or SLD.
Data, Data, Data!
2009-12-01Sharyn Lonsdale
School can be a numbers game that parents need to learn to play. The state says your school district is one of the best or worst in Florida. It even hands out grades to prove it. The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) results declare that this is the highest or lowest performing group of third graders since 2001. A math test shows that 90 percent of your child’s class has mastered the latest Sunshine State Standard benchmark and everyone has numbers to back up their claims.
What is Responsiveness to Intervention
2009-12-01KS Lawrence
In many schools today, when a student can’t keep up in class, that student’s only option for help is to qualify for special education services. However, if a student struggles at a school that uses the responsiveness to intervention (RTI) model, the school staff’s first thought is: Maybe this child isn’t getting the instruction that he or she needs to succeed. In other words, the student isn’t being “responsive” to the instruction. This doesn’t mean that the student isn’t trying, but most generally he or she isn’t understanding what is being taught by the teacher.
RTI 101
2009-12-01My child is struggling in school and I am just beginning the process of meeting with the school’s team. Can you give me some guidance on specific information I should be requesting to make sure I’m covering all the bases?
