It is vital that we have common language when making decisions about whether a student qualifies for SLD services. Beginning July, 2020, I-SS will no longer use the discrepancy model to make these decisions for SLD placement. In place of IQ testing, I-SS will begin looking at Rate of Improvement (ROI) in determining if a child has made adequate progress. In order to make these decisions, we need to have common language.
Insufficient Progress:
Given multiple sources of data, teams will consider how long it will take a student to close the achievement gap based on student’s actual rate of improvement. Students may be considered to be non-responsive or to be demonstrating insufficient response under the following circumstances;
A. A rate of improvement that is the same or less than that of same-age or grade level peers which will not result in closing the gap in a reasonable period of time (1 1 /2 or more years)
B. A rate of improvement, on instructional level, that is greater than that of same-age or grade peers, but will not result in closing the gap in a reasonable period of time (1 1 /2 or more years)
Inadequate Achievement:
When analyzing mulitple data points, a pattern of inadequate achievement exists across tiers and academic standards that is prohibiting the student's grade level success, The student’s performance on progress monitoring data is significantly discrepant from same-age peers. Significantly discrepant is defined as at least two times discrepant from average performance -OR- around the 10th percentile or below in comparison to local and national norms. Other data will also be collected to show a pattern of inadequate achievement and might include: benchmark assessments, EOG data, norm-referenced achievement tests, grades, etc.