Volume 19: No. 8, September 2005

CPTA Calls for More Research on Disability Status Assessment
by Marianne Ernesto

On September 6, 2005, APA provided comments to John H. Hager, Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, U. S. Department of Education in response to a call issued June 21, 2005 for public comment on Proposed Rulemaking to implement the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA).

Members of APA’s Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessment (CPTA) were instrumental in crafting the section of APA’s letter to Assistant Secretary Hager which dealt with the Assessment for Determining Disability Status. In addition to providing specific recommendations to the Department (see below) members of the Committee also addressed issues relating to identification of specific learning disabilities (SLD), particularly the utilization of the Response to Intervention (RTI) model and the IQ/achievement discrepancy criterion.

While the Committee whole-heartedly supported the Department’s “efforts to encourage the states to include a process to determine whether a child ′responds to scientific, research-based intervention′,“ they noted several challenges to the widespread implementation of RTI and did not recommend that RTI be used as the sole criterion for determining SLD. Instead, they noted the need for a comprehensive psychological and educational evaluation for individuals who do not respond to intervention to rule out alternative causes before making a determination of SLD. Members of CPTA also stressed the need for continued research to support the use of the (RTI) model, and called upon the Department to take action to ensure adequate training and technical support for those who implement RTI.

Regarding the issue of the utilization of the IQ/achievement discrepancy criterion to

determine SLD, Committee members re-affirmed that “research as failed to support the continued use of IQ/achievement discrepancy for classification and informing remedial instruction,” but cautioned that Departmental guidelines should “clarify that the proposed regulatory provision specifically authorizing states to prohibit use of the IQ/achievement discrepancy measure, do not encompass other promising cognitive processing models for assessment and intervention.” As was suggested with RTI, members of the Committee called on the Department to acknowledge the need for, and to support, additional research “focusing on cognitive processing/ability approaches, as well as on approaches that combine RTI and cognitive processing.”

The following are highlights of the Committee’s recommendations to the Department of Education on behalf of APA:

In determining whether a child has a learning disability, APA supports a comprehensive psychological and educational evaluation to rule out alternative causes for functional impairments in academic achievement.

APA urges the Department to allow Individualized Education Program (IEP) teams to use a variety of assessment tools and strategies.

APA strongly recommends that the Department specifically require local educational agencies (LEAs) to demonstrate that any assessment procedure they use to identify students under IDEA is reliable, valid for the purposes for which it is intended, unbiased, and implemented in the child’s primary mode of communication, whenever possible.

APA also recommends that the Department support research and technical assistance to guide LEAs in responding to the requirement of demonstrating adequate reliability, validity, and absence of bias.

APA encourages governmental and other agencies to adopt evaluation, identification, and eligibility regulations that result in accurate and consistent definition of the construct of learning disabilities.

The complete text of APA's letter to John H. Hager, Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Service, U.S. Department of Education.