The Predictive Utility of Kindergarten Screening for Math Difficulty (Report‪)‬

Prior to the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), an IQ-achievement discrepancy was the major approach for identifying learning disability. This identification procedure is problematic for children in kindergarten and first grade, however, because students in the early grades have not had sufficient exposure to academic instruction to accrue a discrepancy. Other possible problems include the "wait-to-fail" nature of this approach (Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003) and the possibility of identifying students as having a learning disability without eliminating poor instructional quality as the reason for poor learning (Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003). A response-to-intervention (RTI) approach represents a major alternative approach to identifying learning disability, as reflected in the 2004 reauthorization. Implementing evidence-based academic interventions and documenting response to intervention are major features of RTI (Marston, 2005). Students progress through increasingly intensive levels of a prevention system, and only those students for whom standard forms of instruction are deemed insufficient receive formal evaluation for special education services (Fuchs et al., 2007). Although IDEA allows for identification of learning disability within an RTI framework, many questions remain unanswered concerning the implementation of this approach (Mastropieri, & Scruggs, 2005).