Language/Literacy screenings vs. evaluations

I hear the two terms 'screenings' and 'evaluations' used interchangeably all the time.  It leads to a lot of confusion about what has and hasn't been done for a child.

First, let's discuss screenings.  A screening is a quick snapshot of language or literacy skills.  These screens take about 5-15 minutes.  They look at key concepts and whether your child does or does not exhibit risk factors for those skills.  A screening is a fast way to determine if a child appears to be developing typically when compared with peers.  Screens do NOT diagnose.  They can't be used to determine whether a child is eligible for special education services.  Screenings don't look at every skill, just a few important ones and because of this, screenings can sometimes miss kids who actually do have language or literacy problems.

If you have concerns about your child, tell the speech-language pathologist about them so she can consider those concerns while she does the screen.  Your concerns may change the type of screening that is provided for your child.  A screening just tells us whether we should investigate things further using an evaluation.

Now, let's talk evaluations.  Evaluations are lengthier and comprehensive.  They look at many specific skills related to language and literacy.  Your child may be given formal standardized tests, informal tests, and even be observed during their play or classroom time.  The speech language pathologist may also want to look at examples of work, like writing or drawings, completed independently by your child.  An evaluation may also include a family history.  At the end of an evaluation you will be told either that your child's skills are typical or you will receive a diagnosis.  We use a diagnosis to help us explain the patterns of strengths and weaknesses found in the testing.  An evaluation is sometimes used to help determine eligibility for services in schools.  The information gathered will then be used as the basis for a treatment plan that is developed with you to help your child succeed.  

If you have concerns, it is possible to obtain screenings and basic evaluations for your child at your local public school free of charge.  If you prefer a private and comprehensive language-literacy evaluation, you can contact Educational Inspiration at educationalinspiration.com.

When RTI goes wrong

Response to Intervention (RTI) has been a hot topic in Oklahoma since about 2005, when the first schools began utilizing this method. If your child has been identified as requiring an intervention through RTI, you may have done some googling and found some rather unpleasant things written about RTI by other parents.  Now you are wondering if this is something you should let the school continue doing with your child or whether you should insist on the good old fashioned evaluation that used to be done when a child was suspected of having a disability.  The answer?  It depends.

The theory of RTI is based on a medical model and has excellent research behind it.  The idea is that if a child is showing signs of difficulty, we want to try to find what level of support he needs to be successful.  So, your child may struggle, but may not require a self-contained classroom setting with other special education children.  Maybe they just need a little help, not the whole enchilada.  So RTI begins with the least restrictive amount of help, say 15 minutes twice a week.  The teachers take data on whether this amount of help is successful.  If it is, then your child may continue to get that amount of help and catch up to peers. Success story, over and out.

If this small amount of help doesn't give us the results we want, we may increase the amount of extra help to more times a week.  We will add something more and continue to take data until we find the amount of help that your child needs.  Often, a child is successful with minimal extra help and the needs certainly don't rise to the level of needing special education.  Hooray and everyone is happy.

This is a grand idea in theory, but there are many variables that can make it very unsuccessful in schools.

Sometimes there is a lack of training for teachers and administrators regarding how RTI is supposed to work.  If you don't know why you are doing something, how do you know you are doing it right?  This is a problem.  Find out who on the staff was trained in the tenets of RTI.  If the teachers were trained on site that is a good way to get everyone up to speed, but at least a handful of teachers or administrators should have had in-depth training from a reputable person who is an expert in RTI.  There are many opportunities for RTI training in Oklahoma through the SDE.  If this hasn't happened at your child's school, this could be a sign that it is an unsuccessful RTI program setup.

Another problem is the belief that tutoring is the same as RTI.  Tutoring provides repetitive practice in order to gain proficiency.  Information may be presented in the same way it was presented in the classroom.  In contrast, RTI is supposed to use assessment to find the missing pieces a child doesn't have, zero in on them, and provide a specific, tailored intervention to fill in the missing pieces.  If the belief in your school is that RTI is the same as tutoring, this is a sign that it is not the program for your child.  RTI is an investigation into your child's needs.  It helps them while determining what methods are required for success and which ones don't work well.

Next, there should be good research supporting the methods used to help your child.  I see lots of use of Guided Reading and Leveled Literacy kits.  These are grounded in the Whole Language approach to reading.  They support the idea that exposure will teach them to read instead of explicit instruction in the rules of reading.  Teachers are often taught to use guided reading at their university programs, but it is not useful for struggling students.  Additionally, schools have fallen prey to the big companies peddling a shiny "reading cure in a box."  They plastered a sticker on it that says, "Great for RTI!" and the schools bought it because the sticker said it was what they needed and the teachers didn't receive the training to differentiate good help from not-so-good help.  If you speak to your child's teacher and they utter the words "guided reading," this is a sign that your child may not be getting instruction that is helpful for struggling readers. 

Another problem is trying to RTI an entire school.  This happens when the screening reveals that the majority of students aren't reading at grade level. If a school does not have at least 80% of their students reading on grade level, the problem is not the kids. The problem is the curriculum and methods being used.  Find out what percentage of the students are not at grade level.  If more than 20% are not at grade level, this is a problem.  It is a sign that curriculum in place at that school is not meeting the needs of most of the students.  This is a problem.

Finally, we have a problem with personnel chosen to provide interventions.  In schools with limited funds and/or staff, administrators sometimes turn to paraprofessionals or teacher aides for help.  Paraprofessionals and aides can be enormous support, but providing interventions should not be one of their duties.  If your child is struggling to read when provided with instruction from a certified teacher, how is providing more help from someone less qualified supposed to make things better?  The children struggling the most should be receiving help from the most highly qualified people in the building.  If your child is not receiving interventions from a certified teacher or specialist, request a change.

RTI is an excellent theory.  I have seen good schools make excellent strides in helping children when provided the right supports from administration and continued training over the years.  I have also seen what happens when training and administration support are not in place.  RTI quickly devolves into a tutoring program helping some, but not usually the children with the most significant difficulties.  The point of all of this is that RTI is a good idea and if done right, can be a great tool for helping your child.  Give it a chance.  Investigate the program the school has, asking the questions and checking into the points outlined in this article.  If the RTI program that your child is getting does not check out, make a written request outlining your concerns and asking that your child receive an in-depth evaluation for a reading disability.  The schools in Oklahoma are required to respond to your request in some manner within 10 school days.

Nicole Power received RTI training from a university professor in Oklahoma who has researched and published on the topic of RTI.  She has presented trainings in RTI across the state for many school districts and for the State Department of Education.  Ms. Power was an elementary RTI Coordinator in a public school for ten years.  

Questions to ask about your child's reading intervention

Last week we visited about DIBELS reading screens and what happens after the screening.  Typically some kind of intervention is put into place after it is determined that reading skills are below grade level.  So now you have met with the teachers and discussed the screening.  Then you and the school worked together to put a plan into place to improve reading.  But what if that plan has been in place for a month or so and things don't seem to be getting any better?  Now what?

You aren't alone.  Many parents are asking the same thing.  Here are some questions you can ask about your child's intervention.  These are very basic, but it is a good place to start to make sure things are beginning on the right track.

As with all things, presentation is everything. We want to build a partnership with the school and teachers. Most teachers and schools want to help.  Yes, there are horror stories out there about terrible schools and teachers.  It definitely happens and I have seen it happen.  But mostly there are incredible stories of caring teachers and parents working together to do what's best for kids.  So let's start with the assumption that everybody wants to do the right thing. Keep documentation of every phone call, letter, and conversation you have with anyone at the school.

• Is the reading intervention in addition to regular classroom reading instruction?  Your child should not be pulled out of regular reading instruction to get intervention.  They should get regular reading instruction and then get more reading intervention at a different time. Never allow the school to remove your child's recess, music, gym or other special time to provide academic supports. This turns help into punishment.  Things that your child may be particularly gifted at doing, such as music, are removed to spend more time on things that are very difficult.  Talk about a lack of motivation and a way to create anger issues.  It teaches the child to equate reading with missing out and this is never a good way to build motivation or trust in a child.  

• Who is providing the intervention?  Last week we talked about making sure your child is receiving reading intervention from certified or highly qualified personnel.  An aide or peer tutor should not be providing intervention, even if they are being "supervised" by more qualified personnel.  If the classroom teacher is providing good classroom instruction and your child is still struggling, how would a less qualified person make things better?  Some questions you might politely ask are...
• When was the last time you attended a training for reading instruction?  This gives you a great clue about how up to date their reading approach might be.  If they haven't attended any professional development except what they receive at their school site, they may not be ready to teach your child.
• Do you have any certifications specific to reading?  In Oklahoma a person can be a Title I reading teacher without any additional training.  A regular education teacher is qualified to teach Title I in Oklahoma, but that doesn't mean they have the skills to teach your child.  Ask them.
• Have you worked with children with this severity of reading difficulty before? If your child has a significant reading problem and the teacher doesn't have much experience, she may be unsure of how to best help your child.  Find out.
• Now, let me stress this next point as well.  If you find out that the person assigned to help your child is certified, but may not have a lot of experience or they haven't had tons of professional development, don't count them out quite yet.  If this person is driven to help your child succeed and wants to partner with you to seek out appropriate teaching strategies for  your child, they might turn out to be the best person to have on your side.  However, if they have no experience and they don't seem particularly enthused about getting any support or training, trust your gut and politely inquire whether there are other teachers with specific reading training.  

• Is the intervention frequent enough to be effective?  The more serious the reading difficulty, the more frequent the intervention should be.  So if the reading skills are a year or more behind, they may require interventions 4-5 times a week.  There isn't a rule of thumb for this and it depends on the skills being targeted, but if they don't seem to be improving, consider increasing the number of intervention sessions per week.

• Is the group too big to focus on your child's needs?  Your child may need more individualized help and the more kids in the group, the less likely this is to happen.  Research shows us that often times, instruction with a group of 3 is just as effective as 1 to 1 instruction.  Large groups happen when there aren't enough personnel to see all the children in small groups.  If you aren't seeing progress and your child is in a group larger than 3, consider requesting that your child be seen in a smaller group.

• Are the other children in the group having the same difficulties as your child?  If your child needs help learning the sounds of the alphabet and the other students are simply working on building reading speed, it will be more difficult for the teacher to take on those different needs effectively.  Make sure the other students in the group have similar goals.

• Is the intervention a good match for your child's needs?  This may be the most important question of them all.  For instance, if your child does not know all the letter sounds, the intervention goal shouldn't be to increase fluency (speed).  The goal should be to learn the sounds.  Often, a school has pre-selected programs for children who are struggling.  The problem with a boxed program is that it may or may not meet the needs of your child.  Make sure the program is addressing the specific areas of difficulty you found in the reading assessments.  The program should be phonics based, Orton Gillingham based, or a Structured Literacy program.  The program should not be based in whole language, like a Leveled Literacy or Guided Reading program because these programs do not explicitly teach rules of reading and phonics instruction is the weakest part of these programs.  Working on things that your child doesn't need or that they are not yet ready for will not result in progress.  

These questions make some good starting points for investigating why interventions are not working. If the answers to all of these questions were positive, there are many more reasons why intervention is not working.  There is more to come.  In the meantime, if you are concerned about your child and feel they may have a reading disability, or dyslexia, get help.  If your gut says something is wrong, follow your gut and make a written request for an evaluation by the school.  If you can't get help from your school, look at the possibility of getting a private evaluation.  If you have been patient with your school and your child has participated in at least 6 to 8 weeks of intervention sessions with little to no progress, then don't wait any more.  Seek help.  As always, if you decide to get a private literacy evaluation and are in the Edmond/Oklahoma City area, contact me at Educational Inspiration at www.educationalinspiration.com