Pre-Referral Assessments and K-5 Certified Special Education Teacher Role in RTI

Clinical Field Experience Paper
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Part 1: Pre-Referral Assessments
I engaged and collaborated with a certified special education teacher (Mrs. Kathryn Roth) in a K-5 grade setting with respect to the pre-referral process. Mrs. Roth noted the value of the pre-referral assessment as a preventive strategy tailored to address struggling students’ behavioral and academic problems in the classroom setting. With respect to her role in the Response to Intervention (RTI) process, Roth affirmed that she was tasked with implementing, differentiating, and intensifying critical evidence-based as well as contextually-viable social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) practices to achieve the needs of all the learners (Simonsen et al., 2021). Mrs. Roth also noted that she recorded and interpreted information from the RTIs based on the key concepts and crucial understandings identified that she anticipated her students would be able to do after completing each unit.
Concerning the criteria and distinguishing factors of RTI Tier 1, RTI Tier 2, and RTI Tier 3, Mrs. Roth noted the need to administer three pre-assessments to understand better each child’s learning profile, clustering, and comparison. After evaluating the pre-assessment data, she placed the learners into one of the three tiers based on their conceptual and procedural understanding of the addition and multiplication of fractions. Specifically, students not performing per K-5 grade were placed in tier 1. In some instances, a learner’s needs are not achieved with tier 1 interventions, thus prompting the teacher to guide them for tier 2 interventions. Similarly, the student should receive tier 3 interventions if tier 2 interventions are unsuccessful following process tracking.
With respect to developing and administering tier 1 assessments and interventions to students, Mrs. Roth noted that the students considered to be lacking critical skills central to adding and multiplying fractions were provided more tangible, hands-on practice and examples to support their ability to develop a conceptual comprehension of fractional concepts. Tier 2 students demonstrated a basic understanding of fractions and needs relatively fewer steps and directions compared to the tier 1 cluster. In addition, tier 2 students still failed to demonstrate advanced understanding in dealing with fractions and were given the opportunity to practice competencies to foster their capabilities as well as to make connections between their ideas. Students in tier 3 demonstrated an advanced understanding of computing fractions, needed an additional challenge, and were provided activities to assist them in making valuable connections among diverse fields (Turnbull, 2019).
The RTI information was employed in making eligibility, program, and placement decisions for students with disabilities based on each student’s needs. Based on the scientific research-based intervention, Mrs. Roth was able to prevent and limit academic failure in her mathematics class by bringing the students to K-5 grade level achievement. In addition, the ability-achievement difference model was employed to establish whether a learner qualified f...