Dynamic Assessment as Responsiveness to Intervention; a Scripted Protocol to Identify Young At-Risk Readers

“Instruction” Is the Test Many teachers, administrators, and policy makers are currently discussing Responsiveness to Intervention (RTI) as a method of providing both early intervention to at-risk learners and more valid identification of children with learning disabilities (LD). RTI is viewed by many stakeholders as more valid than traditional methods of identification because it guarantees in principle that all children participate in scientifically validated curriculum and instruction. Hence, practitioners working within an RTI framework are expected to reduce the likelihood that untaught or poorly taught nondisabled students are misidentified as disabled. With classroom teachers using scientifically validated curricula and instruction, all children, or at least most children, should get the education they need without having to “wait to fail” when RTI is implemented well. RTI as a method of disability identification has been legitimized in the recently reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 and in accompanying Regulations that were released in August 2006. The Regulations prohibit states from requiring use of IQachievement discrepancy, and they encourage implementation of RTI (cf. Yell, Shriner, & Katsiyannis, 2006). The essence of RTI as a method of disability identification is that instruction becomes the “test”—as much a test as the Wide Range Achievement Test or Stanford-Binet. In other words, instruction is the test stimulus and the student’s level or rate of performance is her response. Just as commercial publishers, such professional groups as the American Psychological Association, examiners, and others worry about the validity of test instruments, practitioners using RTI need to be concerned about the validity of their instruction. Choosing scientifically validated curricula and academic programs that address at-risk students’ needs and implementing them with fidelity are necessary to ensure the validity of the RTI process. If practitioners choose invalid or unvalidated instructional programs or implement validated instructional programs without fidelity, a child’s nonresponsiveness can become impossible to interpret.

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