Evaluating for Specific Learning Disability When Tier 2 Fidelity Is Unclear
Jordan, a seventh grader, was referred to the school psychologist after 12 weeks of Tier 2 math intervention. Jordan's computation slope is 0.15 digits correct per week against a goal of 0.40; on the state's universal screener Jordan is at the 8th percentile. The math teacher reports 45% homework completion and says Jordan 'is capable, just not trying.' Attendance is 94%, vision and hearing screens are normal, and the home language survey lists English. Tier 2 logs show the intervention was delivered an average of 1.8 times per week although it was designed for three. Jordan's mother has now submitted a written request for a full and individual initial evaluation. The state uses an RTI framework and does not require an ability–achievement discrepancy. Cognitive testing from a private evaluator lists a full-scale IQ of 98.
1. Does the team conduct the evaluation? Identify what must happen before and alongside it.
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Yes - the evaluation proceeds. A parent's written request starts a procedural clock, and consent cannot be withheld because the team would prefer more intervention data first. The team may propose additional general education data collection, but it cannot substitute that for responding to the request. Refusing or stalling on the grounds that 'Tier 2 wasn't finished' invites a complaint and loses on the timeline alone.
That said, the evaluation must be built to answer the right question. The data currently support two competing hypotheses: (a) a disability affecting math, or (b) an inadequate test of intervention, because Tier 2 was delivered at roughly 60% of designed frequency. The team's job is not to pick one in advance but to design an evaluation that discriminates between them. That means evaluating fidelity directly - interviewing the interventionist, reviewing logs and schedules, observing a session - and assessing instructional match in the general education classroom. Excluding other causes is part of the eligibility analysis under any framework: attendance is adequate, sensory screening is normal, language is not a factor on the available evidence.
The private IQ of 98 should be accepted as one data point, not as an anchor. In an RTI state, the number's main use is to rule out intellectual disability, not to compute a discrepancy the state does not require.
2. The math teacher's 'not trying' comment will go into the record. How would you respond, and what would you actually investigate?
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I would treat 'not trying' as a hypothesis to be tested, not a conclusion to be argued with - and I would say so explicitly to the teacher, because a documented teacher attribution that a student is unmotivated tends to follow the child through eligibility decisions.
What to investigate:
- Instructional match. Jordan is at the 8th percentile. For a student performing that far below grade level, the assigned work is likely to require skills Jordan does not have, and avoidance is a predictable response to tasks that are too hard, not evidence of low effort. I would look at the actual assignments, the reading demand of word problems, and the error pattern - procedural errors versus place-value or fact-retrieval errors point in different directions.
- Opportunity to respond. A classroom observation would tell me how much practice Jordan actually gets and whether the 45% homework completion is a completion problem or a can't-do-it problem.
- Engagement conditions. Ask Jordan. Students at this age can often report precisely why they avoid math.
Then I would reframe with the teacher: effort and ability are not the only two explanations; task difficulty and missing prerequisite skills are a third, and they are the most actionable. This keeps the teacher as an ally in the evaluation rather than a defendant in it, which matters because the teacher's cooperation determines the quality of the classroom data.
3. Describe the evidence you would want in the eligibility report and how you would write the decision so it is defensible either way it comes out.
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The report should make the reasoning visible so a reader can follow it without the author present. Components:
- Present levels from multiple sources: screener, slope, classroom work samples, and a standardized math measure - not slope alone, since slope has measurement error.
- Fidelity and intervention history: what was delivered, how often, by whom, with what training, and the discrepancy between design and delivery stated plainly.
- Exclusionary factors addressed one by one: attendance, sensory, language, social-emotional, and lack of instruction. Each should have a sentence explaining what was checked.
- A statement of the team's reasoning linking the data to the eligibility criteria used in this state, with the competing hypothesis named and addressed.
If eligibility is found, the report should note that the fidelity gap limits the strength of the response-to-intervention conclusion and that the IEP must therefore include the intervention components that were missing. If eligibility is not found, the report must still produce a written explanation to the parent and a plan for what will change in general education. The defensibility comes from documenting the fidelity problem honestly rather than papering over it - a report that claims a clean intervention trial when the logs show otherwise is vulnerable precisely where it looks strongest.