Responsiveness-to-Intervention Symposium

December 4-5, 2003 * Kansas City, Missouri

The National Research Center on Learning Disabilities, a collaborative project of staff at Vanderbilt University and the University of Kansas, sponsored this two-day symposium focusing on responsiveness-to-intervention (RTI) issues.

The presenters, discussants, and participants assembled represented the wide diversity of individuals with a vested interest in LD determination issues. Advocates, instructional staff, researchers, and state-level education officials brought their collective and considerable expertise to the discussions.

Renee Bradley, Special Assistant in OSEP's Research to Practice Division and NRCLD's project officer, presented the following remarks to kick off NRCLD's Responsiveness-to-Intervention Symposium.

Opening Remarks

Renee Bradley, NRCLD Project Officer, OSEP

Renee Bradley Good morning. I'd like to take an opportunity to welcome you. I'd like to thank a few people up front. First, to the NRCLD staff, thanks for organizing this event. I have been very fortunate and consider myself honored to be able to work with that group. Thanks to the presenters and participants, and also to the Regional Resource Center (RRC) staff. The RRCs are doing some special work with the NRCLD. For those of you who aren't familiar with the RRCs, Lou will go into a little bit more detail with that this afternoon [see transcript, Lou Danielson's luncheon address], but I wanted to give a special thank you to you all this morning too. And thanks especially for the patience and flexibility and dedication that the RRC folks have shown over the last year. I think we've gathered up some of the best and the brightest to participate in this discussion. You're all busy people. Besides the stacks on your desk, it's actually holiday season, so I think it's even more difficult to get away.

As I was trying to think of some quick opening remarks to kick us off, I had two things pop to mind. One was a quote describing advice that was given to a young Native American as he was being initiated, and the advice went something like this: "As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm: Jump. It's not as wide as you think." And so this popped into my head with a little bit of an edit: "As you go through your day, you will see a great chasm: Jump." I think we have daily challenges in special education, especially in today's climate of reauthorization and everything else that is going on. The second one that came to mind is a really funny cartoon of two men sitting way on top of the scaffolding that surrounds a skyscraper. They're looking down at the tiny, little ant-like cars going back and forth. One says to the other, "Frank, sitting up here, looking down, when life closes in on you and things get really tough, do you ever get the feeling, do you ever think, well maybe, should I, should I... should I push someone off?" So, during your day and your discussions, you might want to keep that cartoon in mind as we move through the symposium.

We are really doing important work over the next two days. The work we're doing with LD identification and response to intervention not only affects the 50 percent of the kids with disabilities that have learning disabilities but will also affect all children with disabilities as it moves along. The OSEP/LD initiative has been going on for about three years, during which I've been really proud of the leadership role that OSEP has taken. We've put more time into learning disabilities and the issues that surround that in the last couple of years than we have any other disability group. One of the challenges that we have, especially recently, is working under the spotlight. Those of you who have done stage performances know that if you're under the spotlight, it's hot. Everybody else might be freezing, but under that light, it is very hot. I think the NRCLD staff really deserves a tip of the hat for continuing to work as hard as they do. In this time of exciting change, the NRCLD has been very flexible in adjusting to the times we're working in and being under that spotlight.

This is the first topical symposium that the NRCLD will sponsor during its grant cycle. Our plan for these events is to select an issue or a topic, and then invite some of the best thinkers on that topic, commission papers, have people respond to the papers, discuss the papers, and hopefully through this, we will continue to add to the knowledge base and move forward on some really important issues. When we talk about moving forward, we're not just talking about moving forward as far as our research; we're also addressing the research-to-practice continuum. So, is the research there? What do we know? What do we still need to know in order to meet our end goal, which is to implement this in schools in an efficient and high fidelity manner? Doug will talk a little bit more about the other things that the NRCLD is doing, but these symposiums, I think, will have a major impact as we move along with this grant.

Before I turn it over to Doug, I wanted to just issue a challenge to us. I think it's far easier to be a critic, to sit back and focus on the negative, to identify all the reasons why something can't move forward. I used to run a summer camp, and we had about 20 paid full-time summer camp staff members. They were college students, and we had about 1,000 kids that we were responsible for on the ocean, so there was a lot of responsibility there. We had lots of challenges that faced us. One of the agreements that we came to was at staff meetings, you couldn't bring up a problem without a potential solution; no solution, no discussion. That really did help make our time together much more productive. We weren't saying that you can't have healthy arguments or healthy debate; we were just saying that you need to move from offering criticism toward offering solutions. I believe the same agreement might be useful for all of the symposiums that we'll take on through the NRCLD. I think that's the hardest part of what we do, finding solutions to often complex challenges. None of our challenges that are put forth seem to be easy. For example, right now, we're dealing with AYP and No Child Left Behind and LD identification. Those aren't simple challenges at all; they're very difficult. So, how do we get into a mode in which we're being more creative and listening to varied opinions and experiences? The results of creativity and collaboration are far better than the results of continuing to work on our own. We're really moving from a problem-identification role, which we can all do really well, to a problem-solving role.

We are moving forward on changing the way we identify students with learning disabilities. This is not a debate of whether we're going to identify children with learning disabilities in a different way or not; that debate has ended. The current debate is how we're going to do it differently. That is one of the most important considerations in our time here today--how can we do it differently? Let's commit to making the best of our time together and take advantage of the talents, experiences, and knowledge that we have in this room. I hope that tomorrow afternoon, all of us can look back and answer a couple of questions affirmatively: Was our time together well spent? Were my contributions helpful in moving us forward in this discussion? And are we farther along than we were as we began our discussions?

Again, I would like to thank you for being here. I'm drawing on my behavior roots, so I'm going to praise you ahead of time for the great work that you're going to do over the next two days. It is a jam-packed agenda, so we'll move along and keep on time, and I think that we're going to be really proud tomorrow afternoon when we leave here.

The symposium was made possible by the support of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs. Renee Bradley, Project Officer. Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S. Department of Education.