Discrepancy Versus Response to Intervention

Everyone seems to agree that a child with a Learning Disability is one who learns certain academic skills at a much slower pace, with much more difficulty, than is expected. Expectations for achievement are based on the assumption that most children are capable of learning grade level material. (Some, of course, will learn it more quickly than others.) The problem for identification is defining and measuring what is expected in a manner that is fair for all students and leads to improved learning.

The “discrepancy” approach—looking at the difference between results on measures of intellectual ability and tests of achievement—has been largely discredited by research, but no one agrees on a suitable replacement. On the one hand, many educators and researchers believe it is nevertheless imperative that school personnel obtain a reliable measure of a student’s cognitive ability in order to be sure that there are “processing deficits” in accordance with the definition of Learning Disability.
On the other hand, many educators and researchers believe that there currently exist no reliable measures of cognitive “processing deficits,” and that it is more valid to identify problems in specific academic skills relative to age or grade level tasks, and then determine if a child can learn better when given more specific instruction aimed at correcting those deficits. Only if the child then fails to respond to these targeted interventions should the child be labeled as Learning Disabled.

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