Introduction
and misidentification of students with learning disabilities. While approximately 4.5 percent of a general population may have some kind of specific learning disability (McFarland et al., 2018), many students without a specific disability have fallen behind and need intensive Tier 3 remediation. They should not need to be labeled special education to receive this help. 2. Using Tier 3 as only a regular education process: Too many schools and districts have built walls between their special education and regular education staff. If using our most highly trained staff is a key characteristic of intensive Tier 3 remediation, this would mean utilizing our highly trained speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists, school psychologists, and special education teachers to work with our neediest students, regardless of whether or not they have been identified with a specific learning disability. Not only is this desirable, it is legal under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA). Melody Musgrove (2013, as cited in Pierce, 2015), director of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) for the U.S. Department of Education, writes: Pursuant to 34 CFR §300.208(a), special education teachers fully funded by Part B (non-CEIS) funds may perform duties for children without disabilities if they would already be performing these same duties in order to provide special education and related services to children with disabilities. For example, a special education teacher is assigned to provide five hours of reading instruction per week to three students with disabilities consistent with those students’ IEPs. The IEPs provide that the students need specialized reading instruction that is at grade level but handled at a slower pace because of auditory processing issues. The school decides that, although they are not children with disabilities, there are two general education children who would benefit from this instruction. The special education teacher must prepare lesson plans for each of these classes regardless of the number of children in the class. She may do so and conduct the class for all five children because she is only providing special education and related services for the three children with disabilities and the two children without disabilities are benefiting from that work.
3. Applying the right medicine with the wrong intensity: Under this scenario, a school or team selects a scientific, research-based intervention program, but then administers the program in a way that lessens its intensity. Many times, not only are the duration and frequency of the intervention insufficient, the program is not used in a highly targeted way nor administered by the most highly trained individuals in the school.
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