School principal partners with regional resource center: Cooperative effort to improve education
Reprinted with permission of
Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services Magazine, Fall 2008
Kathy Griego did not anticipate starting a relationship
with the Mountain Plains Regional
Resource Center that would benefit her
school, the regional center, and other schools nationwide.
Nor did she know that the data she and her
staff collected at Trailblazer Elementary School in
Colorado Springs, Colorado, would later be used in
forming national policy. She just wanted to involve
general education in the process of deciding which
students would be referred to special education.
As a former special education teacher, she was
sure that some of the children she had seen in her
classroom were capable of learning outside of a special
education setting. Perhaps learning difficulties or behavior
problems brought students to her, but she became
convinced that with help, many of her students
could learn in a general education setting.
A decade ago, when she became the principal of
Trailblazer Elementary School, she was able to hand
pick staff members who shared her vision. Together
they resolved to fi nd out why children were being referred
to special education. The idea behind Griego's
vision, which she would later hear called "Response
to Intervention," was to ensure that children were
referred to special education only when it was appropriate.
It was a goal that was soon to become part of
the 2004 Reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act.
The same questions were being studied at Utah
State's Mountain Plains Regional Research Center
(MPRRC). Under the traditional system, a child
could experience a lot of failure before being referred
for special education or further evaluation, said Carol
Massanari, MPRRC co-director. Response to Intervention
(RTI) instead determines which children may
need some extra help early in their educational experience.
It also determines at what intensity the help is
needed. It ensures that lack of instruction is not the
cause of a special education referral.
The concept was being proposed as a change for
the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
reauthorization, but before the updated law went into
effect, policy makers wanted some data from schools
that had tried it out. They turned to the Regional
Resource Center Network, of which the Mountain
Plains Center is a member, and asked for information.
This request turned into a national study coordinated
with the National Research Center on Learning
Disabilities (NRCLD). Through this study the
MPRRC, in turn, looked for schools that were
practicing the critical features of RTI. They found
a few, including one in Colorado Springs. That's
how the MPRRC met Trailblazer Elementary.
Griego and her staff members had amassed data
on the effectiveness of their system, which used a
three-tier approach to determine what level of intervention
their students needed. They shared their
data with the MPRRC. The center passed the information
on to the NRCLD as part of the study,
which eventually resulted in informing national
policy.
After the law was on the books, the MPRRC
began helping states develop their own guidelines
for putting the updated law into practice. The center
shared information with states, and also with Griego.
The MPRRC has helped to connect principals
who have been using response to intervention strategies
with those who want to learn more. The sharing
of ideas between her school, the MPRRC, and other
RTI experts nationwide helped Griego and her staff
focus their efforts even more.
"I was able to bring a
lot more back to the staff in terms of refining our process,"
she said.
~JoLynne Lyon, CPD
