The Illinois State Board of Education has just issued a draft policy on the implementation of Response to Intervention procedures for children suspected of having Learning Disabilities AND OTHER DISABILITIES.This draft has many problems and in some areas omits important elements and safeguards of the IDEA. ISBE is requiring school districts to have their Response to Intervention procedure in place no later than the 2010-2011 school year.   It is also troubling because it was developed by a small group advising ISBE and was not disseminated to the general public for input.   The groups involved in working on the draft were invited to respond to Kathy Cox at ISBE by March 31.  I would highly encourage concerned parties to response to Kathy as well, by March 31, at 217-782-5589 or kcox@isbe.net.

        Although the proposed requirements have a number of important elements, there are many aspects about it that are highly problematic and potentially illegal.

1)    ISBE invites school districts to use the pre-intervention RTI procedure for diagnostic purposes not only for children suspected of LD but for all disability categories. 

2)    ISBE's procedure makes no mention of the IDEA definition of a learning disability, which requires a determination that the student has a neurological processing disorder.

3)    ISBE's procedure has no mechanism for even making a determination of whether the student has a neurologically based processing disorder and makes no mention of the role or value of psychological test data in making these determinations.   Pyschological and neuropsychologcial evaluation is completely omitted from the process. 

4)    The requirements require the provision of scientifically-based instructional methods.  This requirement goes somewhat further than IDEA, which requires a determination that EFFECTIVE REGULAR ED INTERVENTION HAS BEEN PROVIDED, BUT DOES NOT REQUIRE SCIENTIFICALLY BASED INTERVENTION AS A THRESHOLD FOR THE ELIGIBILITY DECISION ITSELF.

5)    ISBE narrows the scope of benchmarks to which the student's performance can be compared, focusing on comparison to age, standards and peer group performance, and omitting the IDEA option of comparing the student's performance to their own intellectual development.

6)    The proposal goes further in implying that it is inappropriate to look at gaps in the student's performance in comparison to their own strengths, which is contradictory to the explicit language of IDEA.  (p.8)

7)    ISBE allows for assessment of the student's progress in comparison to local norms and state assessment data, without consideration of how the student performs in relation to national data, which is most reliable.

Please circulate this memo to other interested parties.

Matt Cohen

December 2006 ENews from Matt Cohen

ENews Letter concerning new IDEA regulations & updates.

Article discussing new post-secondary program called College Living Experience, which is geared to students with learning and emotional disorders.  Various quotes from Matt Cohen in the article. 

June 2007 Newspaper Article written from a conference that Matthew Cohen presented for the Family Resource Center for Disabilities on June 2, 2007, Evanston, IL.

Complete copy of Federal Register Part II, Department of Education,  34 CFR Parts 300 and 301 - Assistance to States for the Education of Children with Disabilities and Preschool Grants for Children with Disabilities;Final Rule.   Released Monday, August 14, 2006.  (Warning: It is 307 pages long.)

Helping Parents Understand Their Rights in Special Education.  An interview with Matt Cohen published October, 2008 in the NAMI Beginnings magazine (National Alliance on Mental Illness).