Curriculum Committee Minutes
12/16/08
Present:
Absent:
Elissa Casio, Dean Vallas, Joseph Phelan, Marvin Kreps
Deirdre Burns
Items Discussed:
1. Response to Intervention
Marvin provided an extensive handout on this topic at our last meeting for our review in
preparation today’s in-depth discussion. The following highlights were discussed:
 New SED requirement that by July 1, 2012, all school districts have a Response to
Intervention program in place as part of the process to determine if a student in
grades K-4 is a student with a learning disability in the area of reading.
 The goal of this new requirement is to provide earlier intervention in an effort to
decrease the # of students being classified as “special education students” and
being diverted into a special ed program outside of the general ed classroom.
 This movement is in response to the rate and pace of national trends for the
numbers of students being classified as special education students.
 The focus is on being responsive and preventative in an RTI model, as opposed to
AIS, which is reactive by its design and implementation following passage of
NCLB legislation.
 Regular classroom teachers will be required to provide early intervention,
regularly assess students mastery and learning gaps, maintain data on individual
student performance, as well as successes and weaknesses of attempted
intervention strategies the teacher has utilized in order to address the individual
students’ learning deficiencies.
 The RTI model is already being used successfully in many places throughout the
US.
 Our current initiatives including the universal teaching of Every Day Math at
CLS, the implementation of the AUSSIES literacy instructional program,
Differentiated Instruction training and consultation work / support of classroom
instruction are all initiatives that have Rhinebeck Schools on our way to meeting
this new unfunded mandate.
 The RTI model will be looking to rule out any instructional problems to
determine whether an actual specific learning disability exists in the student.
 Monitoring is frequent / curriculum driven/ behavioral issues also documented/
several tiers of intervention / data collected by the general classroom teacher is
required to be presented to the Committee on Special Education if failure of
progress with classroom interventions results on a referral to the CSE.
 Much greater detail available in handout provided by Marvin. Updates will be
provided as additional implementation strategies are determined.
Next Meeting: 1/20 @ 12:30.
Submitted – Elissa Cascio