RTI & Special Education: Developing Decision Rules to Define the ‘Non-Responding’ Student

Logical and consistent decision rules are crucial in evaluating a student’s response to intervention: they help the school district to decide in a timely manner whether a struggling student is a ‘non-responder’ to general education interventions and should be evaluated for possible special education services. This full-day workshop takes special education administrators, school psychologists, and other educators step-by-step through the process of developing consistent decision rules within a district for analyzing RTI data.


The training presents on the following topics:

  • The importance of using schoolwide screening tools with research-derived benchmarks to estimate ‘typical’ peer academic performance.
  • Recommendations for calculating ‘realistic but ambitious’ goals for general-education students on RTI intervention.
  • Guidelines for defining specific cut-points for the two elements of the dual-discrepancy LD model under RTI: (1) discrepant student academic performance relative to peers, and (2) discrepant rate of student progress despite appropriate interventions.
  • Preferred methods of visual and statistical analysis to be used when evaluating individual student progress-monitoring graphs.

The workshop also reviews common reasoning errors that can mislead schools in their decision-making about LD eligibility—and gives proactive strategies to recognize and avoid those traps. The training concludes with a checklist that schools can use to determine whether a general-education student has failed to respond to intervention and may require special education support.


As a result of attending this workshop, participants will:
  • select grade-wide screening tools to proactively identify students at risk for common academic concerns.
  • set up consistent procedures for monitoring the progress of students on academic intervention at a level appropriate to their Tier of intervention.
  • calculate ‘ambitious but realistic’ goals for student progress to evaluate the success of intervention plans.
  • establish specific RTI decision rules to assist schools in identifying students who are ‘non-responders’ to intervention because of discrepant academic performance and discrepant rate of progress while on intervention.