The focus on response to treatment is a welcome departure from the IQ-achievement discrepancy approach to classifying students as learning disabled because of the latter's "wait-to-fail" approach and statistical shortcomings. The papers discussed in this session provide cautions and suggestions for how to implement the response-to-treatment approach. David Francis' paper argues for frequent monitoring of progress rather than a single assessment time point for making reliable classifications. Debbie Speece agrees. She points to the disappointing accuracy results of early screening and argues that growth matters. Speece recommends we "view screening as a three-legged stool that incorporates not only individual differences at the screen and outcome but also development conceptualized as rate of learning" (p. 12). Joe Jenkins finds several good candidates for screening measures but no single best measure because of local differences in criterion measures and their performance levels, and in tolerances for over-identification and under-identification rates. At the local level, Jenkins feels it critical that screens don't miss anyone requiring secondary intervention and that progress be monitored.
These are excellent points and I'd like to build upon them by addressing three areas:
- The purpose of early screening could be identifying students not-at-risk so that instructional objectives can be established for students potentially at-risk.
- Monitoring progress in mastering the alphabetic principle is reflected in item-based learning.
- Response-to-treatment is multi-level and contextualized.
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