Complete Coverage

Some Parents Remain Leery of RTI's Benefits

Nine-year-old Ian Tomanelli, a 4th grade student at Marlborough Elementary School in Marlborough, Conn., pauses in his home. Because of his continuing problems with reading and writing, Ian became a candidate for a version of response to intervention being tried out in his school district.

—Christopher Capozziello/AEVUM for Education Week

Some say the approach delays help to students

By Maureen Kelleher

Eleven years ago, John Tomanelli and his wife, Doreen Johnson, settled in Marlborough, Conn., “specifically for the education,” as Mr. Tomanelli said.

But, for their youngest son, Ian, Marlborough Elementary School didn’t turn out to be all they had hoped for. Diagnosed with speech and language delays in preschool, Ian had made sufficient progress by the middle of 3rd grade for the district and his parents to agree to end special education services for him. But Ian, now a 4th grader, continued to struggle in reading and writing, and in September, Marlborough educators decided he was a candidate for the district’s Scientific Research-Based Interventions program, Connecticut’s version of the “response to intervention” educational framework. His intervention was daily small-group reading instruction with his teacher.

That wasn’t enough to meet Ian’s needs, according to Ian’s parents, who say the boy continued to struggle. They didn’t know when the school would take its next step to help their son and, without the due process provisions available to them in special education, they weren’t sure what their next...