Status Update
By White House Initiative on Education Excellence for Hispanics
Twitter Town Hall meeting with Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012, at 3 p.m. EST. We’ll be listening to you via @HispanicEd. You can also keep up with the webpage http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/list/hispanic-initiative/index.html
Advocate, participate, aks and support!
I wanted to highlight the following article from Education Week back on October 13, 2011 print issue. The article written by Anthony Rebora provides information on the issue of overrepresentation of students of color in special education and what we can do to address the issue. He interviews some leading researchers including
Janette Klingner a professor of education at the University of Colorado and co-author of Why Are So Many Minority Students in Special Education?: Understanding Race & Disability in Schools
Edward Fergus-Arcia, deputy director of New York University’s Metropolitan Center for Urban Education
Elizabeth Kozleski, a professor at Arizona State University and a principal investigator with the Equity Alliance
H. Richard Milner IV, an associate professor of education at Vanderbilt University and the author of Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There: Understanding Diversity, Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in Today’s Classrooms
Amanda VanDerHeyden, an education consultant and researcher
Claudia Rinaldi(myself 
. Assistant Director of the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative (www.urbancollaborative.org)
The author does a great job summarizing a variety of education fields working on this issue and provides solid recommendations to begin looking at the program. I hope he does a follow up article in the near future.
Here is the link:
http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2011/10/13/01disproportion.h05.html?
Here are great links to webinars and handouts that show how curriculum-based measurement (CBM) tools, including DIBLES for ELLs
http://www.studentprogress.org/library/Webinars.asp#ELLReading
Another good guidance simple piece by our leading researcher in the field of special education— Sharon Vaughn:
http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/diversity/englishlanguagelearners
Another by Jan Habrouck leading researcher in CBM— with a case study
http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/13026/
This website has some tools— look in the list of tools
http://www.interventioncentral.org/cbm_warehouse
Plus 1 tool from Louisiana that I like for any grade and 1 guide from the Center on Instruction on teaching ELLs.
Here is a great video to gear up high school staff to consider RTI/PBIS/MTSS at the high school level http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtTKuBZ-nvY
The district website also has great resources and information on implementation. They also have dual language schools who are implementing so this is great resource in this are. Here is the link to the school district http://www.ttsd.k12.or.us/.
If you have a great example to share please send it along!
Here is the abstract from my most recent article in the Journal of Education. Reference:
Rinaldi, C., Higgins, A.O., & Stuart, S. K., (2011). Response to intervention: Educators’
perceptions of a three-year RTI collaborative reform effort in an urban elementary
school. Journal of Education, 19(2), 43-52.
ABSTRACT
What are educators’ perceptions of the adoption and effectiveness of the Response to Intervention (RTI) model in their own schools? Over a three-year time span, the authors interviewed educators at an urban elementary school about their perceptions of an RTI model, tracking the model’s development and the effectiveness of the implementation. The study was conducted through a university-school partnership that involved these elementary school educators from the initial planning through the implementation of the model while providing the professional development that was required to support the model. While the educators initially viewed the model as an administrative directive, they began to assume responsibility for the model’s implementation during the second year as they considered themselves change agents and problem solvers for their school. During the third year, with continued administrative support and evidence of the model’s effectiveness, participants engaged in the additional development and growth of the model and assumed responsibility for the model’s sustainability as part of the school change process. Results suggest that RTI’s collaborative structures, related professional development, and co-shared leadership supported the implementation process and contributed to the effectiveness of the model. Implications for practice are discussed.
Free downloads on RTI and English Language Learners by Dr. Julie Esparza Brown
Module entitled:
1. Prereferral and Instructional Strategies for English Learners
http://mast.ecu.edu/modules/psell/
2. Practitioner Brief: A Cultural, Linguistic and Ecological Framework for Response to Intervention with English Language Learners
http://www.niusileadscape.org/lc/Record/150?search_query=
3. Practitioner Brief: RTI for English Language Learners: Appropriately Using Screening and Progress Monitoring Tools to Improve Instructional Outcomes
http://www.rti4success.org/resourcetype/rti-english-language-learners-appropriately-using-screening-and-progress-monitoring-too
4. Placemat to Accompany Brief:
http://rti4success.org/resourcetype/rti-considerations-english-language-learners-ells
5. Webinar Archive: RTI for English Language Learners: Appropriately Using Screening and Progress Monitoring Tools to Improve Instructional Outcomes
http://www.rti4success.org/webinar/rti-english-language-learners-appropriate-screening-progress-monitoring-and-instructional-pl
As showcase in NPR: “NPR is dedicating the next few days to a series entitled Two Languages, Many Voices: Latinos in the U.S. about bicultural Latinos and their impact on education, technology, religion and entertainment.
I am proud to be one bilingual, bicultural educator!
Click here to read more
http://www.spanglishbaby.com/2011/10/npr-welcome-to-west-liberty-the-first-majority-latino-town-in-iowa/
As a Hispanic myself, I am to happy to say, I contribute to the wonderful life of the US. Our growth is clearly also a sign that we don’t want to go home and that we will continue to grow. We want the American Dream like everyone else and we make it happen every day! To see how Latinos are represented in the US click on this link
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/10/141130042/interactive-how-latinos-are-reshaping-communities
I want to share this latest resource brief posted on the National Center for Response to Intervention on RTI for ELLs. Here’s the link: http://www.rti4success.org/
This brief, authored by Drs. Julie Esparza Brown and Amanda Sanford, provides a framework for using Response to Intervention (RTI) with students who are English Language Learners (ELL) from Hispanic backgrounds. It examines the characteristics of these students; defines the RTI process; and then models how students’ linguistic, cultural, and experiential backgrounds can guide appropriate screening, progress monitoring, and goal setting that will help promote English literacy. The brief concludes with a case study that provides specific recommendations for how to apply screening and progress monitoring with ELLs.
My most recent articles was just published in the International Journal of Whole Schooling
The focus of the article is learning from teachers’ what is their perceptions of their implementation of a Response to Intervention (RTI) model. We conducted interviews about teacher perceptions of an RTI model during the second year of its implementation at an urban elementary school. Results were quite interesting and promising in this qualitative study and suggest that teachers’ perceptions of the RTI model grew more positive during the second year, compared to the first year of the model’s implementation.
Teachers told interviewers that the RTI model improved the special education referral process, progress monitoring practices, and the overall collaborative planning structures in their school. As part of the interviews and findings teachers also discussed the unique issues of referral of English language learners (ELLs). We also presented implications for practice.
We have another article coming in September on the teacher perceptions of implementation of RTI in year 3. It is schedule to come out in the September/Fall issue of the Journal of Education (Boston University). I will post on it as soon as it is available.
We would love your comments!