Responsiveness to Intervention: 1997 to 2007

Abstract

The OSEP Uaming Disabilities initiative In 1997, during the process of reauthorizing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA), the National Joint Committee on Learnitig Disabilities [NJCLD) wrote a tetter to the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs [OSEP) expressing concern that neither early nor accurate identification of specific learning disabilities [SLD) was occurring [NJCLD, 1997). The activities that followed the response from OSEP to the NJCLD letter have becotne known as the Learning Disabilities, or LD, Initiative [Bradley & Danielson, 2004). The LD Initiative began as a comprehensive attempt to bring researchers, professional organizations, advocacy groups, educators, and other stakeholders to a consensus regarding the identification and implementation of improved procedures for SLD identification. The goal of the LD Initiative was to improve the process and ensure accurate and efficient identification of students with SLD. Reliance on the use of the discrepancy approach to determine eligibility for special education services had resulted in students with SLD not being identified until they had experienced multiple years of failure. Additionally, this approach provided teachers little information on which they could base instructional decisions. The purpose of this article is to provide: [a) a brief description of tbe conclusions of the LD Initiative and the impact these conclusions have had, [b) an overview of the new regulations regarding response to intervention [RTI) and the identification of children with SLD, and (c) information about current technical-assistance activities. Early in the work of the LD Initiative, RTi emerged as a concept worthy of investigation. One of the original consensus statements from the collaborative work on the LD Initiative stated: