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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote] Who told you that? That's absolutely not in IDEA. It sounds like your school district is illegally withholding evaluations.[/quote]

NP, but that’s what the child study process looks like in every district I’ve worked in. They require teachers to br8ng data to the table of the interventions annd supports they have tried. Even if a child is fast tracked to an evaluation due to the kind of alarming situation described here, it takes about two months from the referral for the evaluation to complete all the testing and meet again to come to a decision.[/quote]

I'm not surprised it happens, I'm just saying that's not in IDEA. Every parent of a child with special needs will tell you school districts regularly drag their feet.[/quote]

I think when you are hit with a lawsuit, jail time or fines because you broke a law, you don’t really care if it was because you failed to follow federal law or state law. RTI is mandated in many states. [/quote]

Well, not in Maryland. And I'm pretty sure not DC. I'm less sure about Virginia.

Where do you teach? Is it required there?

I think the claim the pp was making is that pre-referral interventions (which, again, are different than RTI) are common in school districts, not that they're legally required.[/quote]

http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/ld/the-legal-dimension-of-rti-part-ii-state-laws-and-guidelines

As explained in more detail in Zirkel (2011), most state law provisions for RTI in both the mandatory and permissive categories are, per the foundational provisions in IDEA, exclusive to the determination of SLD. However, a handful of state laws extend RTI to other IDEA classifications.

“Second, a few states—Colorado, Connecticut, and Maryland in descending order of clarity—seem to suggest the use of RTI globally via their guidelines.”

The PP is interested in blaming school systems for SPED issues.  They don’t want a legislative body or state department held accountable. I don’t know why. [/quote]

You're conflating RTI as a concept with pre-referral interventions. Maryland, in particular, encourages RTI as a concept for helping students, but not as a required pre-referral intervention before assessments for disabilities are done.

I would certainly support holding legislative or regulatory bodies accountable, but I don't know what you're trying to hold them accountable for, given they don't actually require what you've been suggesting.[/quote]

“ Although many schools continue to use the pre-referral process, more and more are shifting to the RTI approach to identify students with learning disabilities. As of now, RTI is implemented mostly in the primary grades; however, its use is expanding and it appears that an increasing number of middle and high schools will also eventually shift to implementing RTI.”

https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/preref/cresource/q1/p01/

[/quote]

And again, where in Maryland law or regulation is RTI as a pre-referral intervention required before as assessment can be done? If that's there you should be able to point to something. [b]Your problem is apparently with your school district's policies, which are almost certainly intended to prevent students from getting IEPs[/b].[/quote]

Well, if you see minority parents who were upset that their kids were getting over placed in SPED programs as “preventing students from getting IEPs” then I suppose you could frame it that way. RTI was established because of parental concerns/lawsuits that minority kids were being over identified.   When the MSDE guidelines call/allude to RTI to be used across categories (see this link (84 pages you can read) and the previous one), that is who the complaints should go to.

Again, IMHO RTI shouldn’t be used for violent kids.

https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/OCP/Publications/TieredInstructionalApproachRtI062008.pdf

The thing about federal laws is that they need the gray areas filled in.  We need to tweak this.  You (or someone else) were very upset that IDEA may be “threatened” but it definitely needs work.  States fill in the gray and it needs more nuance for kids like these.  [/quote]

[b]You really don't want specific processes and evaluation methods engrained in federal law[/b]. You generally don't even want that in state law. Your complaint is all apparently with your school district's procedures. Neither the federal government nor the state require, or even recommend, withholding assessments as you work on educational strategies. The rather old guidelines you posted on apply RTI in Maryland say quite the opposite.

So unless you want very prescriptive federal laws, changing IDEA isn't going to address your complaint. Your school needs to fix their procedures.[/quote]

It is always easier to blame those who have less power in the situation.  Federal law and MSDE regulations are murky to escape any sort of accountability, that will be placed on the schools/district (according to you) parents of the kid (according to others) and the teacher.

Perhaps if the law was more prescriptive, it wouldn’t be necessary for folks like you to claim the need to “fix school procedures.”  But that would require lawyers. Lawmakers and policy stakeholders to take a stand and bear responsibility.   [/quote]

The school has the power. Look at what happens in due process complaints-- the schools literally always win in Maryland. Courts defer to them, and parents hold the burden of proof despite having far, far fewer resources.

I really don't understand why you'd want federal lawmakers determining special education procedures and evaluation methods rather than local schools.[/quote]

Here is an updated version from 2020 about RTI: https://marylandpublicschools.org/programs/Documents/Special-Ed/MITP/about/SchoolDisciplineBasics.pdf

This isn’t coming from the schools, it IS coming from state entities.  I think those entities need to hear about the realities of their policies.  This isn’t individual schools making these choices in a vacuum.  It comes from above.  You are hung up on going from federal law, to an individual school in every comment.  There are many layers in between that you continue to ignore.  Clearly I am not going to change your opinion, maybe someone will be able to use this information to help advocate at the state level to enact different policies for violent kids. 
[/quote]

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