Using RTI within a Comprehensive SLD Evaluation: A Review of a State's First Year Efforts

The Idaho State Department of Education (SDE) recently revised its SLD identification policy to include a requirement to document a student's response to intervention coupled with a comprehensive evaluation. To implement this policy, the SDE is using multiple implementation drivers. In this article, we describe how and why the new policy was developed and review baseline data from the first year of implementation. The review of first year implementation efforts indicates a need for wide-scale support, particularly in the areas of progress monitoring, academic achievement and psychological processing assessment. The SDE's action plan resulting from this process is presented and implications for continued implementation are discussed.