Hello and welcome to this episode of What in the World is Dyscalculia.
I'm Dr. Honora Wall and I will be your host in this episode of What in the World is Dyscalculia.
Also sometimes called Dyscalculia. You can say it however you like just as long as you are talking about it.
And this podcast is put on by Educalc Learning.
You can find out more about the training we offer to educators and the online math courses we have for people who have Dyscalculia at www.educalclearning.com.
And today I want to talk about a great article I read by researchers Hudson and Mackenzie.
The name of the article is Evaluating the Use of RTI to Identify SLD.
A Survey of State Policy, Procedures, Data Collection, and Administrator Perceptions.
This was published in Contemporary School Psychologist Journal.
And you can find the PDF of the entire study on the Dyscalculia Training and Research Institute website.
That is www.thedtri.org.
And I feel like this is such an important conversation for educators, administrators, and parents to have.
Because there's a lot of confusion especially when a student is in the process of going through an RTI or we're trying to determine whether or not they have an SLD.
The first question for a lot of people is what in the world do all of these letters stand for?
So to clear some of that up, RTI stands for Response to Intervention.
Many places also refer to it as MTSS, Multi-Tiered System of Support.
They are the same thing.
So whether you are calling it RTI or MTSS is the same process and the same program.
The point of using an RTI or MTSS model is to already vary the instruction and the intensity of interventions to try to help students who might just be a little developmentally behind.
Or they just are having trouble with a concept or there's something external that is impacting their success in school.
And the idea is that starting with Tier 1, what we're doing all the time in regular Gen N classrooms every day, that should be sufficient for the majority of students in the class.
And when it isn't, then we look at Tier 2 support.
And these different tiers are designed within the states and within the school districts based on the local Learning Education Association, your LEA, or whatever your state is calling it, whoever is the educational agency supporting schools and school districts.
And that is part of the confusion, which I'm going to talk about in a second.
So Tier 2, now we're looking at giving some extra support.
We might be offering extra tutoring to students or we might be doing a little more in the classroom having an interventionist or a specialist come in one or two days a week if possible to sit with the student.
And if that isn't working and we're not seeing the kind of growth that we want as far as academic achievement goes, then we're going to look at Tier 3.
And Tier 3 can be anything from taking the student out of the classroom to have reading or math instruction in a small group or one-on-one setting.
The frequency can vary.
Sometimes the number of days or number of minutes is listed in your IEP or 504 plan.
Sometimes it isn't.
And that is that sort of loose interpretation that the article discusses, in which I've definitely seen speaking with educators and parents across the country.
Now, the issue of federal oversight is important because the IDEA Act oversees the requirement to provide equitable education to all students.
However, I want to make it clear that the question of federal oversight versus states' rights, if that could not have been ironed out by Hamilton and Jefferson, I'm definitely not taking a crack at it here.
This is a much larger conversation and there's different interpretations in each state.
Good, bad, or indifferent, that is the reality.
And that's something that's important for you to know.
Based on where you live that can impact the type of service, what it's called, the amount of intervention time, or the type of accommodations given, all of that can vary.
So these are conversations to have with your schools to see what's available and keep that in mind too.
We all want to offer as much as we possibly can, especially for struggling students, especially if we are considering a specific learning disorder or if we have a diagnosis for a specific learning disorder, math learning disability, also called dyscalculia, that's the official name.
But we want to give as much as we can to help students succeed.
Within that wish is the reality that some school districts have psychologists on staff and some don't.
Some psychologists have time to take on more students and do more evaluations and some don't.
Some places are rural or smaller communities or they're geographically distant for some reason, or they might not have the availability of funds or personnel to offer the same kind of services.
You might be at a private school that may or may not address learning disabilities.
You may be homeschooling because you feel that your needs are not being met in a brick and mortar school.
So there are lots of different things that impact your experience with an RTI or MTSS system.
And that's exactly what the researchers found as well. They tracked data from a number of states, more than half the states in the country responded to their survey and responded to their questionnaire.
And we're involved in their research.
And the results show that the experience for RTI is different everywhere you go. There's not a lot of consistency.
So that's not good, bad or indifferent on its own either. It's simply something for parents and educators to talk about.
If you have a strong interest in this field, you should definitely be at your school board meetings.
You should be voting for your school board members. You should be asking school board candidates how they feel about these issues and what they know about the RTI process in your area.
You should be contacting your local education agencies and contacting the state and asking what are the requirements, what are the guidelines, and what can you do to change them if you don't feel they're adequate.
And they might be adequate. They might be the best available and that's a personal conversation.
But that can also take a long time. And I think that's where a lot of parents get frustrated with the RTI system because they feel that their child has been put into an RTI or an MTSS,
or they've got all these letters being thrown out and minutes being spent and they have a meeting twice a year at the school, but they're not seeing a lot of improvement for their student.
And some of that can come down to the interventions and accommodations we give to students who have dyscalculia.
As an educator and as a parent and as a student, you might need to do a lot of self-advocacy in this area so that you can get the assistance that is appropriate for those learning differences.
Now the article that I read was simply summarizing, comparing and contrasting the process in the system, whether or not schools are required or if they are allowed to use only an RTI method to identify learning disorders,
or if they are either required or allowed to also use some cognitive information which comes down to those neuropsych evaluations, which if you've been listening, you know I love those,
they're expensive and they can be hard to get, but they are the gold standard because they look at so much more than just performance in one area.
They look at a lot more information and they can only be administered and interpreted by a psychologist, someone trained in that kind of testing.
Now the rest of us can read a neuropsych evaluation. If you can get your hands on some, I highly recommend you do because there's a lot of information in there that is very helpful for our students.
But going back to the RTI model, this article was compiling data to see what states did. Did they have a requirement? Did they allow for it to be a possibility?
Or did they refuse to include that kind of extra evaluation? And that is up to the states. They can decide.
So if you want to know what your state is doing, you should contact your schools and contact your State Department of Education and ask these important questions, start getting some important information.
Because everywhere you go, it's going to be different. Now once a student is in this process of an RTI, Response to Intervention Program, then what?
And that's also a big question and the article points out that the answer to then what is, you guessed it, different everywhere you go.
It is up to the states. Sometimes it's up to the local education agency that the state has given the authority to make decisions about what the interventions and accommodations are going to look like at the different tiers of support.
So you have a lot of questions to ask when you're researching this. And I feel like that's something I've seen in social media support groups for people who are looking for more information.
A person will log in and say, oh, you know, my student just got this diagnosis or my child is struggling with this and we're trying to get this.
And I'm wondering what should we ask for? What is, what's normal as far as getting support from the school? And the first response is always someone saying, well, where do you live?
Because that has a huge impact on what the answer is.
So sometimes an RTI is used to avoid the cost and expense and time of getting a more formal comprehensive and cognitive evaluation because the purpose of an RTI or MTSS model is to offer the interventions at the front end and then make sure everyone is increasing their performance and getting a stronger foundation.
Of course, we know with dyscalculia that's just not what happens for our students. 9 times out of 10. We just aren't seeing the kind of growth that we really should be able to see because honestly, the correct interventions and accommodations are so simple.
I rarely see an IEP or 504 that lists those best accommodations. Having guided notes, worked examples or a reference sheet for all quizzes and tests all of your assessments, including oral assessments, not just written assessments.
That's another gray one. And of course, using a calculator slash multiplication list slash one to 100s chart, whatever is most appropriate for the grade level and the content.
But those external tools are critical for students with dyscalculia the same way. Wearing glasses is critical if you have a vision problem. There needs to be an external tool that will make a huge change. Then your students can really access the content.
I will say I'm seeing more listings of calculator use in a lot of IEPs and 504, which is a great change, but I still want to see more teachers training students. How do you use this tool? How do I know if you're using the calculator the right way? I'm handing it to you.
But how do you know what buttons to push in what order? How do you test whether or not it's working properly for this content? And that can be a trick. Don't assume that the external tool is going to work right away.
That would be like handing a person a new set of contacts and then walking away. If they've never put in or taken out a pair of contacts, they're going to need a little supervision and they're going to need you to talk them through how to do it.
I've never done it. I have no idea how to put contacts in or take them out. I'm sure I would do it wrong and have a lot of questions the first couple of times.
I know working with students that having them test that calculator is super important. Just saying something as simple as, okay, we're working on square roots. Let's find the square root of 16. Try finding it in your calculator.
Tell me what buttons you're going to push. Tell me what you get from your answer. And pausing a moment to really get that figured out. Now the student can use that tool appropriately.
But anywho, going back to my article that I was reading, the article did not get that intense into the different accommodations that may be offered and it wasn't really looking specifically at dyscalculia. It was looking at the process overall.
And the process definitely brings up more questions than answers. Again, going back to it being state specific and whether or not the state has given the authority to a local education agency or if the schools are doing something different at a district level.
And again, depending on what kind of school you're at. So to recap, kind of get all of this information together, if you're feeling confused or frustrated about the services provided to your child or what you can offer to your students, you should know that you are not alone.
And you should know that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just something that needs to be discovered. It needs a little more question and answer period so that you have the right information for where you live.
If you change schools or if you move or if you're brand new to this experience, ask questions. Do you use an RTI? Do you call it an MTSS? What exactly does that mean? What's involved in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 support levels?
That's what we call them. Tier 1, 2, and 3. Tier 1 is what's already happening for every student in all classrooms. Tier 2 is where we're doing a little more because we see the student is struggling.
Tier 3 is a little more intensive. We might be tracking the number of minutes or days that services are provided. If you're going to provide services, you need a person who can do it and who that is their job and they have time for that.
So hiring, staffing, all of these are questions that are going to be site specific. And if you're not getting answers that work for you or for your students or children, then go to those school board meetings, be involved in asking questions of your school board candidates, talk to people at the state level, and have those conversations so that you can get the right services that you need.
Don't be frustrated or overwhelmed by the process. We're simply asking some questions and getting information and then seeing what's best for your student. And of course, if you notice over time that you're not getting the results you need for your student or for your child, then keep advocating.
Keep asking. Discuss those interventions and accommodations. Try to get as specific of an answer as you can for what the services are that are being provided in your area and at your school. And if you have questions about that, please reach out to me, Honora at educalclearning.com.
That's H-O-N-O-R-A. Or reach out through the non-profit, Honora at the-D-T-R-I dot org. And I'd be happy to get you some information that you can share with your administration, share with your coworkers, or share with your school teachers about the interventions and accommodations for dyscalculia.
The more we can offer the right services, the faster we're going to see improvements. And whether or not you get an official evaluation, you can always get services for your child.
Simply a matter of what's available where you live, what's commonplace, what are the standards locally, and then knowing more about how that meets your individual needs.
So anytime we talk about RTIs or MTSS or anything else having to do with special services, it's a complex conversation with a lot of different variables.
Don't get overwhelmed. Just stay curious and keep asking questions so that you have the best information.
And thank you for listening to this podcast. I'm going to have the PDF of this article posted on the D-T-R-I dot org so you can read all of the details about this survey, or this research study, and what the researchers found.
And if you have any other questions about dyscalculia, please reach out. I am happy to give you information and help in any way that I can.
Also, make sure you check us out on social media. You can find EDUCALC Learning or the D-T-R-I on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on TikTok. You can find our websites, and of course, our podcast, What in the World is Dyscalculia.
I'm Dr. Hanora Wall, and thank you for listening. I will see you next time.