Catching problems early, schools try to avoid special ed

[flashl]

TIGARD, Ore. (AP) — When her son Dylan was just 6 years old, Kristen Wahlmeier noticed that he had to be bribed to read: A surfing trip here or a pair of new shoes there before he'd pick up a book.

Worried as she watched him struggle, a gnawing fear crept into her stomach: Her only son, with big blue eyes and the jones for Star Wars, might be headed for a special education classroom.

Instead, teachers at his suburban Portland school intervened immediately, putting him into extra reading and vocabulary tutoring every day before school. It paid off.

Now, officials in districts across the country are rapidly adopting similar early intervention programs, hoping that steering a child away from expensive special education classes later will pay off for them, too, in cost savings.

USA Today

Duh.. Light bulbs. Wasn't this, in part, the purpose of NCLB?

[msongs]

1. why start with such big bribes first? hoo boy, how bout : "first read, then TV"?

in dealing with issues like this, a modification or reinforcement schedule is very handy but it is not so good to escalate the reinforcers by starting with such high value rewards. That leaves a person with nowhere to go but down at that point.

Msongs

[WildClarySage]

2. Are they also doing this with kids whose parents

are barely literate and don't care if their kids can or will do well in school? Or is this a squeaky wheel kind of practice?

[madeline_con]

3. RTI is the first step...

Response to Intervention aims to prevent unnecessary assignment to special education. With RTI, low-performing children are offered intense, individualized academic intervention. Student progress is monitored to see if response to this intervention yields adequate academic growth.



http://ira.org/resources/issues/focus_rti.html

[ChazII]

4. We have just started RTI this year. n/t

[ulysses]

5. no one seems to know what to do with RTI.

I've been sitting in on our 5th grade team's RTI meetings, and the whole thing is bollixed up - I've tried to offer tools to measure student performance, but they've opted to go with what they can pull off the web instead of a $450, research-tested curriculum based measure. Predictably, special ed referrals are down (which isn't a bad thing, necessarily).