A Critical Practice Analysis of Response to Intervention Appropriation in an Urban School

Abstract

This qualitative case study focuses on factors mediating an urban school’s enactment of Response to Intervention (RTI). Over one school year, we (a) observed weekly RTI meetings, (b) debriefed observations weekly, (c) interviewed RTI team members, and (d) examined procedural documents. Analyses included post-observation debriefing and coding fieldnotes and interview transcripts; categorical meaning and themes were coded recursively. Informed by critical policy studies research and theory, findings indicated limited supports and minimal technical understandings of RTI. Educators appeared to replicate pre-RTI special education eligibility determination processes, manifested in scripts about student diagnoses based on minimal “interventions” and deficit-laden representations of students/families. Findings highlight challenges with urban schools’ RTI enactment and justify future critical qualitative research regarding learning in schools shifting practice under policy directives. Although the study focuses on RTI as a case-in-point, findings have implications for future research that utilizes critical practice approaches to analyze ways local contexts mediate policy enactment.

Keywords

policy response to intervention critical theory

Response to Intervention (RTI) emerged in the early 2000s out of critique in the special education field about the definition of and process for diagnosing learning disabilities (LDs; Fletcher & Vaughn, 2009). RTI is a framework for providing instruction for all students and interventions for those struggling academically, as identified through ongoing progress monitoring, most often in reading (Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003). Intervention intensity varies within the three or four tiers of RTI frameworks. In Tier 1, all students receive evidence-based general education instruction and progress is monitored based on improvement rate expectations. Those not improving at this rate move to Tier 2 and receive more intensive interventions in target skill areas in small groups. Those not making expected progress move to Tier 3 for more intensive interventions, which often results in the provision of special education (Artiles & Kozleski, 2010). In four-tiered frameworks, the Tier 4 is usually conceptualized as special education.

RTI is conceptualized in two ways. In standard protocol models, instruction and interventions reflect research-based strategies, and students’ response is monitored and determines movement to increasingly intensive tiers of standardized interventions. In problem solving models, educator teams select interventions based on interpretations of student progress. Common to both models is reliance on interventions tested in experimental research and progress monitoring informed by curriculum-based measurement (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Stecker, 2010).

The Promise and the Pitfalls of RTI

The 2004 Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) included RTI as an option for local education agencies (LEAs) to consider in determining special education eligibility. Due to its focus on early intervention, RTI has been recognized for its potential to address injustices in the distribution of educational opportunities for historically underserved students (Artiles, Bal, & Thorius, 2010). The common logic was that RTI’s emphasis on high-quality instruction for all students and early evidence-based intervention for struggling students would curb overrepresentation of students of color in special education resulting from inadequate opportunities to learn rather than actual disabilities. However, recent RTI scholarship has not supported this logic, questioning whether; high-quality instruction, and thus, opportunities to learn, are actually provided for all students in Tier 1 (Thorius & Sullivan, 2013); interventions are evidence-based (Artiles & Kozleski, 2010); the evidence base is robust and representative of all students (Thorius & Sullivan, 2013); and progress monitoring and interventions are sensitive to the responsiveness of various student groups (e.g., English Language Learners; Artiles, 2005).

Relatedly, scholars have raised concerns about local application of RTI, noting research has not sufficiently evidenced reduction in disproportionality or delivery of high-quality instruction and evidence-based interventions to underrepresented racial and linguistic groups (Artiles & Kozleski, 2010; Thorius & Sullivan, 2013). Bouman (2010) found increased rates of special education disproportionality for African American students in California districts where RTI was implemented over a 5-year period, despite decreases in overall LD eligibility for all racial groups. Others noted disproportionate rates of students from minority linguistic or racial groups in RTI’s second and third tiers (McKinney, Bartholomew, & Gray, 2010). Despite origins as a policy intended to improve students’ opportunities and supports, disparities remain in academic improvement and reduction in special education referral rates across student groups and local, state, and regional contexts where RTI has been enacted (Hartlep & Ellis, 2012; Hughes & Dexter, 2008). These concerns point to a need to understand the ways RTI is implemented in local systems, particularly those in which such inequities remain intractable. We contend RTI is context sensitive and requires systems aligning existing demands, investments, and resources (Kozleski & Huber, 2010), ranging from competing initiatives to organizational history of policy negotiation (Thorius & Maxcy, 2012).

A Critical Framework for Analysis of RTI Appropriation

In recent decades, U.S. education policy has increasingly emphasized efficiency, learning outcome standardization, and accountability measures that prioritize test scores over broader concerns for students’ development (Maxcy, 2011). Too often, analysts and policy makers underestimate the complex environments of policy enactment and expectations educators face as they react to multiple policy demands (Ball, 1997). Consequently, we adopt a critical practice approach (Levinson, Sutton, & Winstead, 2009) to study RTI implementation in an urban school. Critical practice approaches draw on notions of practice as constituted through interdependent socio-cultural processes joining policy with cultural, historical, individual, and contextual factors (Artiles et al., 2011; Thorius & Maxcy, 2012).

Critical Practice Approaches to Policy Analysis

Educational policy scholars argue that the study of policy as practiced is critically important (Levinson & Sutton, 2001), as is attention to power and policy’s dynamic nature along its trajectory. In our view, analysis must also center on equity. This is relevant as the origins of special education policy emerged from socio-political concerns (Artiles et al., 2010). Critical practice inquiry into local policy enactment allows exploration of equity concerns precipitating and growing from policy development.

A critical practice approach asserts that policy is never simply implemented. Rather, it is interpreted, negotiated, and appropriated by multiple actors in educational environments (Brown, Maguire, & Ball, 2010; Levinson et al., 2009). This positions educators as key actors in the policy process, rather than implementers or recipients (Hodgson, Edward, & Gregerson, 2007) and shifts inquiry to the relationships between policy and local use. Oakes, Welner, Yonezawa, and Allen (2005) asserted local policy actors create a new version informed by their histories, contextual circumstances, and institutional and historical forces. Understood this way, each school operates in a local “zone of mediation” (ZOM) that signals and channels cultural patterns from the macro-level educational and political system (Oakes et al., 2005).

The “ZOM”: A Critical Practice Framework for RTI Analysis

Applying structural theory to analysis of disproportionality patterns, Sullivan and Artiles (2011) suggested special education research consider Welner’s (2001) ZOM as a theoretical tool to analyze how local policy appropriation may actually produce inequitable outcomes out of equity-minded policy (e.g., RTI) because such policies stimulate intensely rooted issues of power, privilege, status, and difference on the basis of race, language, and class. Welner (2001) theorized four intersecting forces create a ZOM shaping reform in local schools: (a) Inertial forces refer to cultural practices of schooling in local contexts, including understandings and routine practices developed over time; (b) Technical forces reflect operational functions and organization of schooling, including resource (e.g., time, personnel) allocation; (c) Normative forces reflect engrained beliefs about people including “such matters as conventional conceptions of intelligence and deep-seated racist and classist attitudes and prejudices,” (p. 93); (d) Political forces stem from actors’ concerns as affected by power imbalances across educational systems. Our analysis highlights inertial, technical, normative, and political factors shaping the ZOM in and through which RTI was carried out in an urban elementary school.

By focusing on RTI as a particular example of special education policy widely yet variably adopted in the United States since its inclusion in IDEA 2004, we hope to have responded to critique of special education research as approaching and analyzing policy implementation as a “solely technical endeavor” (Artiles et al., 2010, p. 256). Accordingly, and informed by the ZOM as a theoretical tool, we consider the role of culture in teaching, learning, and in the “construction(s) of school success and failure” (Artiles et al., 2010, p. 255) subsumed within RTI’s instruction and intervention distribution. Furthermore, with concern for this special issue, we foreground qualitative methods as tools to collect and analyze data in ways that identify, describe, critique, and challenge current paradigms and practices that are inequitable or present enduring challenges to the field of special education (Trainor & Leko, 2014).

Method

Overview

This interpretive case study of RTI implementation in an urban elementary school explored the following question: What inertial, technical, and normative factors shaped the ZOM within which local actors implemented RTI? Ethnographic methodology informed multiple observations within a bounded system of weekly RTI meetings—where educator teams and sometimes families decided how to carry out RTI—as the study’s primary unit of analysis. Methods included weekly paired observations, debriefings, and analysis of RTI meetings, and later in the study, focused analytical sessions. We also conducted interviews and focus groups with school staff, which enabled us to check our analysis where indicated in our findings (Carspecken, 1996).

Site and Participants

The study took place in a Midwestern, urban, public elementary school during the 2010–2011 school year. During recruitment, district leaders recommended the school as its most advanced RTI implementation site. The school served 450 kindergarten through sixth-grade students, up from 284 in 2006. The student body was 38.5% Black, 37.2% White, 19.6% multiracial, and 4.2% Hispanic. Eighty-eight percent of teachers were White and 12% Black. Eighty-five percent of the students received free/reduced-price lunch, and less than 3% were learning English as a new language. The percent of special education students grew from 11% in 2006 to 16.1% in 2010–2011.

Study participants included the principal, three leaders of the RTI teams—Kate, Ruth, and Ann (pseudonyms)—and team members, including classroom teachers, two special education teachers, and a school psychologist. Although 12% of the school’s teachers were Black, there was only one Black related service provider on the RTI teams and the remaining participants were White English-speaking females and one White English-speaking male. Kate, Ruth, and Ann attended nearly all of the RTI meetings, whereas other members rotated in 8-week cycles. Kate, the primary leader, had the additional duty of collecting referral forms, assigning students to teams, and ensuring the RTI process was carried out. According to staff, family members of students were invited to attend all RTI meetings (our own data suggested that this was not always the case, which we discuss below).

Researchers

Our research team is comprised of one male and three female members. Two are faculty, one in special education, and the other in educational leadership and policy studies (ELPS). Two graduate students, an ELPS doctoral student and a school psychology master’s student, complete the team. One is Black and three are White (faculty and one graduate student).

Data Collection and Analysis

Data collection and analysis occurred concurrently over the 2010–2011 school year and involved (a) paired participant observations of 22 weekly meetings within which as many as three RTI educator teams simultaneously engaged in decision-making processes to address teacher reports of students’ difficulties, (b) weekly peer debriefing sessions immediately following observations, (c) weekly analytical sessions to review data and engage in emergent coding, (d) focused analytical sessions using deductive coding, and (e) multiple individual and group interviews with the three RTI leaders, the school principal, and the school psychologist, resulting in approximately 6 hr of interviews in total.

Participant observations

Research team dyads alternated weekly RTI meeting observations, sitting slightly away from the tables in the teachers’ lounge where teams met and taking notes that included verbatim speech and comments on movement, speech, and artifact use (Carspecken, 1996; Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). Observations allowed examination of how RTI was used and factors appearing to shape team decision making as they determined student placement in intervention cycles, chose/selected interventions, monitored progress, and determined suitability of student referrals for special education eligibility consideration.

Peer debriefing and team analysis sessions

In qualitative research, validity is increased through co-construction mechanisms interwoven into every step of the inquiry process (Morse, Barrett, Mayan, Olson, & Spiers, 2002). To increase the credibility of the fieldnotes, pairs met immediately following each observation at an off-site location to share notes and debrief the session. During these sessions, notes were fleshed out as the pair read each set aloud. Further, all researchers met once weekly, 1 to 2 days following that week’s observation to review data, moving from the data to a macro perspective and establishing questions to be addressed in future data collection. Because we entered the field with an established framework—mapping the ZOM—our discussion moved between inductive and deductive analysis (Bruce, 2007).

Individual and group interviews

Individual interviews with Kate and the school psychologist, and group interviews with Kate, Ruth, and Ann alongside the school principal provided insight into school- and district-level understandings of state and federal RTI-related policy, district-delivered directives to local schools, and practitioner experiences and beliefs about students and their families influenced the local RTI process. To clarify terminology, and learn more about RTI professional development, researchers conducted a group interview with the three team leaders and principal and one interview with the primary RTI leader, Kate (not audio-recorded). We also conducted an individual interview with the school psychologist. Interviews that were audio-recorded (all but one, noted above) were transcribed verbatim.

Intensive analytical sessions

The research team worked collaboratively and individually after each observation and at strategic points throughout to engage in coding. The team engaged in a 6-hr analytic session mid-way through the observation period, within which we displayed fieldnotes, and collectively identified key events across meetings. Next, each researcher coded notes by the team-determined key event categories. The codes for key events were brought back to participants for member-checking (Carspecken, 1996).

Once a more significant set of data had been collected and patterns began to emerge in our weekly analytical sessions—often referred to as saturation in qualitative research (Bruce, 2007)—we met to generate a list of codes representing the inertial, technical, and normative factors shaping the ZOM. Once these codes were established, team members mined their own data for examples, counterexamples, and any missed codes.

Results

A Typical RTI Team Meeting

Through our analysis of discourse across all meetings, we determined two types of RTI meetings and subsequent events occurring as patterns across each. In an “intake” meeting, the team reviewed a referral from a student’s teacher of record (TOR) and determined interventions to address TOR concerns. In a “data review,” the team considered data on student interventions and determined next steps. All meetings were scheduled from 8:00 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. and took place in the teacher lounge, where photocopiers, a refrigerator, phone, and supplies were used by the school’s teachers during meetings. Three of the four tables were surrounded by chairs and used for meetings, whereas the fourth held food for school staff. Each meeting was in essence, three meetings-within-a-meeting, as each leader facilitated discussion at a different table. What follows are descriptions of both meeting types, abbreviated from fieldnotes. Representations are not outlying examples of such meetings; rather, the quality of the process and dialogue emerged as patterns across the 22 meetings we observed. All dialogues are verbatim. Narrative in italics reflects researcher description from fieldnotes with content added to provide clarity for the reader. We present these before our findings related to the research question.

Intake meeting

Key events across intake meetings included pre-meeting, strengths and challenges, goal-setting/critical questions, pick-a-strategy, and progress-monitoring plan.

Pre-meeting

8:02 Kate and another RTI team leader, Ruth, are at the same table today. The TOR and another team member are also present.

Kate:

I don’t see any parents up front.

Ruth:

(Laughs.)

Strengths and challenges

Ruth:

What are his strengths? Let’s start there.

Ruth:

Do you have a marker that works? Mine don’t work. TOR leaves, returns with markers.

TOR:

He’s very, let’s see. He’s very cheery, happy. He likes being at school. He, I don’t know if this would be considered a strength, but he really likes to please adults. He’s so darn cute.

Ruth:

Um, does he have any academic strengths at all?

TOR:

He somewhat grasps, like when we read a story he somewhat follows it . . . comprehension. He tries to be academically involved.

Ruth: So that’s participation!

TOR:

Yeah, just put participation. 8:12. Ann arrives and sits down. Looks at who the student is. “He’s so cute!”

TOR:

Yeah, we got that.

Ruth:

What was I going to put? (The three start talking about how the student likes to hug teachers and other students. Ruth starts writing down “interventions” on a chart paper.) Since he’s already got intervention with Ms. S, should I put it on here?

Ann:

No, since we already have it. Let’s do challenges. He falls asleep on the bus before and after school.

Ruth:

Is he medicated?

TOR:

No, I think it’s just a matter of at home. Where there might be drugs.

Goal-setting/critical questions

Ann:

Is the main thing you want to work on academics?

TOR:

Yeah, well he still can’t write his name.

Ann:

I’m pretty sure we DIBELED (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Literacy Skills) him since then.

TOR:

He couldn’t even answer the question I was asking to help him do the work. I said color and he was talking about shapes or something.

Ruth:

Maybe they speak Spanish at home!

TOR:

(Laughs.) I looked it up in his cume folder and I don’t remember. His father died. The team members shuffle through papers, looking at his academic cumulative folder.

Ruth:

His initial sound fluency was 2 in August, and in October, a 9.

Ann:

About what’s normal for kindergarten? Ruth checks her laptop, but never responds.

TOR:

I don’t think she herself (the student’s mother) is educated. Teachers have a conversation about how the mother just had another child. Ruth consults a form used at all intake meetings titled Critical Questions and that lists goals from which team members choose.

Ruth:

How about RE1N2? Goal. Knowing the names of the letters upper and lower case?

The team agrees, and that they should set an 8-week time frame to work on this goal.

Ann:

I can collect some baseline data today. We can go from there ’cause we need baseline data.

TOR:

And then do we want to do one on sound as well?

Ann:

I would say no for this. It’s better to focus on one and if you want to do that, unofficial.

Ruth:

Yeah, you can still work on it and take data on it, but we should have just one.

TOR:

I’ll progress monitor him, too. 8:30, another newcomer to the table. 8:33, another.

Pick-a-strategy

Ann:

Now we just need to think of the interventions to get him to that goal. She asks about what supports he receives twice a week for 30 min with a sixth grader.

TOR:

We could do it every day if it’s just for a few minutes. I have that letter game Elizabeth got me. It’s geared toward 3 or 4 year olds, but . . . that would be good for the sixth grader to track him on that. (Switches to address the person who joined at 8:33) Have you met him?

Newcomer:

I’ve probably yelled at him? (Laughs).

Progress-monitoring “plan.”

Ann:

We have to keep track of data as far as how he’s improving. Once a week? Is that too much? (Directs TOR to keep track of letter names).

TOR:

No. (Jots note).

Ann:

Do you want to do another intervention?

TOR:

One time a day with a sixth grader is good because we’re not one-on-one that much.

Ruth:

I think I’ll leave it for now and then we can look at it at the data review.

Ann:

Let me finish this up and I’ll come back to you (TOR) and I’ll stop by and we’ll get it all set up. Meeting adjourns at 8:40. At other table, they discuss whether a child needs a “higher dose of Adderall” for ADHD. Principal suggests TOR could tell the family, “You might mention it to the family doctor and say, I have Joe’s report you can fill out and give to the doctor.” At the third table, the discussion turns to another student, who TOR shares was recently suspended.

TOR:

Was supposed to bring a parent when came back. Didn’t. Just sat in ISS.

Another teacher: A man came in with mom and did the talking.

TOR:

He’s probably her pimp. (Laughter.) They close their paperwork. Meeting adjourns at 8:42.

Data review

Key events across all data review meetings included pre-meeting, current interventions and data, and decision points.

Pre-meeting

7:58 a.m. Three of the four tables are set up for separate meetings on three students. On the tables are papers and folders with student names written on them. The RTI leader, Kate, the Principal, the second-grade female student’s TOR, the school psychologist (SP), and another teacher/team member are present. Kate explains they are at the second stage of review and that interventions have been done.

TOR:

Mom came by yesterday and wanted to know if we could do this another day.

Principal: Why?

TOR:

I don’t know. I was in the hall with my kids.

Current interventions and data

Kate:

As this is our data review, let’s go over our data. Kate explains the student received math intervention 7 min daily, for 4 weeks, until the teacher providing intervention changed positions. Kate asks what happened next.

TOR:

She did it for 4 weeks. Kate asks again what happened next.

TOR:

It was never restarted. The teacher responsible for gathering student progress data shares scores from weekly quizzes she administered to student. The principal goes to another table.

Teacher 2: 100%, 0%, 10%, 10%. TOR shares she’s also collected data from the student’s math scrimmages and it is similar, but does not share any additional information.

TOR:

There is no motivation whatsoever. She is like a bump on a log. She just wants to sit there and do nothing. I cut spelling words down to 10. I have the data. 16, 32, 8, 24, 32, 12 out of 40.

Kate puts chart labeled “Intervention Action Plan,” transcribed from chart paper used at the initial intake on the table. I taught her finger spelling. Did you ever see her doing (to TOR)?

TOR:

No.

Kate:

She does it for me.

Group hypothesizes the student does not retain information. TOR says she was from another district: “Mom was adamant she was tested” and “they were ready to put her in special ed.” TOR says student has been referred to special education and is being evaluated. SP confirms.

Teacher 2:

Is she pretty equally low in reading and math?

TOR:

Let me look what her SRI scores are real quick. Her grades are all Ds and Fs. 8:20. Another team member arrives and sits down.

Kate:

We’ve got 10 to 15 more minutes to decide how we want to move forward.

TOR:

I don’t see that she’s made any gains. A discussion about what more they can do ensues, including reading in a small group facilitated by fifth-grade readers. The TOR reminds them she has cut down the student’s spelling words.

SP:

That’s not really an intervention.

TOR:

It’s not?

Kate:

My intervention is finger spelling and teaching lessons to get an idea of her retention.

8:24. Another team member arrives with a therapy dog, and joins the group. Principal rejoins.

Principal:

Mom signed consent (for special education testing) at parent teacher night?

TOR:

Yeah.

Kate:

Let’s continue 30 minutes small group reading, but it’s not all 30 with her.

SP:

I’ll document that. For intervention we think of things to improve skills. It’s not . . . TOR cuts off SP, reflecting back to an earlier question about how she grades the student’s spelling, complaining that reducing the point value of each word “is a gimmee.” The group decides math intervention is no longer necessary. Kate asks TOR about how she monitors progress.

TOR:

I take grades. I use scrimmages. Do we need to meet again if she’s going through testing?

Decision-points

SP:

We could even do it informally in a month or so. I just need to get all the data. SP reiterates she needs to know every intervention.

TOR (whispering):

She’s not motivated. She is not a happy child. She’s a miserable little person.

SP:

We’re going to do some behavior stuff and see how she comes out.

Kate:

Do I need to get any more frequency?

SP:

No. Are we getting another special ed teacher? The group starts talking about staffing issues; they’ve lost two special educators already this school year. Kate changes the subject back to data collection in the form of tallying attendance and student progress on scrimmages. All but TOR and Kate start to leave, get up from their chairs, and talk about their plans for the day.

The ZOM for RTI Appropriation

Related to our central research question—What inertial, technical, political, and normative cultural–historical factors converged within an urban school thereby shaping the particular ZOM within which RTI was implemented?—a number of forces intersected within this school to create a ZOM within which RTI was appropriated.

Inertial forces

Inertial forces are characterized by “habits, routines, customs, and practices that are found within most organizations and which, over the years, take on a life of their own,” (Welner, 2001, p. 56). Notably, the routine of the pre-existing special education eligibility process appeared to be replicated under the auspices of what was locally considered to be RTI. Another locally engrained custom shaping the ZOM included the practice of retaining students at grade level. In both cases, RTI meetings and descriptions of between-meeting interactions with students/families carried out in the name of intervention, appeared to function as necessary precursors to considering students as disabled, retain at grade level, or both. To this end, discourse reflected concerns with written strategy lists to be applied with students and little attention paid to how such strategies were to be carried out, or to progress-monitoring plans.

Meetings functioned as a parallel to traditional processes for referring a student for special education eligibility assessment. In other words, it appeared RTI was appropriated to replicate rather than displace traditional special education eligibility processes, which is counter to RTI’s original intent. In nearly all meetings, artifacts of these sedimented processes were observed in educators’ cultural scripts focused on diagnoses of students as educationally disabled (i.e., learning disabled) or medically disabled (i.e., Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD]), prior to or after minimal, and often sporadic and non-research-based interventions were applied. An exchange during a data review meeting exemplifies this finding:

TOR:

With as many interventions we’ve had in place, I think this might be time to do testing. It’s like he’s not retaining information. I’m at that point where we’ve done intervention after intervention . . . It’s not sticking. It’s not his fault. My daughter’s neurologist said . . .

Principal:

I think some kind of test—just to see.

TOR:

I should have plenty of data.

In this instance, data consisted of decontextualized scores on curriculum-based measures called “scrimmages” administered as a list of words to be read by students, similar to subtests of the DIBELS used as a universal screening tool with all students, school-wide. Other data included Kate’s reflections that she had assessed short-term memory by asking questions and providing the answers, but that the student did not remember the answers when she re-asked the questions at the end of their conversation. These and other examples of what it meant to monitor student progress and intervene within the context of concerns with special education eligibility and student retention, also signaled to us problems with educators’ technical capacity to do so, which we address in a subsequent section.

RTI meetings were also a step in a process of retaining students. An RTI “bonanza” as Kate called it, occurred one day in March when 18 students were discussed. Although so-called interventions were documented therein, it appeared to be a performance of compliance with administrative rule that students go through the process as a precursor to grade retention.

Technical forces

Technical forces include organizational and operational structures of schools, including how time and other resources, capacities, and skills of those within the organization are utilized (Welner, 2001). Time, as well as educators’ knowledge of what constituted and how to collect data, provide interventions, and monitor progress within RTI frameworks (i.e., technical capacity) converged as key technical forces.

RTI meetings were held before school hours and outside contract hours. More often than not, the TOR referring the student to be discussed by the team was late or absent. On several occasions, two of the three RTI team leaders were late or absent as well. Those leading the weekly meetings provided glimpses of fatigue about holding meetings with limited participation, using sarcasm and humor as a way to cope with the apparent nonchalance with which team members arrived late, if at all. To wit:

8:20 Teacher arrives with Hardees coffee.

Ruth:

Well done, we got another teacher here! Bravo!

Ann:

Who are we missing?

Ruth:

Mrs. X (TOR)—the key player.

Ann:

She’s not the key player, she’s the quarterback. (6 min pass, with general chatter about the student)

8:27 Ann: Oh, there she is. TOR arrives with Starbucks coffee . . . 8:40

8:42 Another teacher arrives with McDonalds coffee, sits at Table 4.

Despite the principal’s insistence that the RTI process was of enormous value, we found that the scheduling of meetings before school created conflicts and eroded energy and interest in the process. Relatedly, another time-related technical factor that limited RTI appropriation was the duration allotted to discuss each student. Although meetings were scheduled for 45 min, discussions were typically only 20 due to late starts, time lost to retrieving materials and records, and other interruptions. Teachers kidded with each other in rare instances when meetings began on time. As a teacher said at the meeting table one morning at 8:02, “We made it down here before the announcement. What’s wrong with us?”

Kate shared in an individual interview that a number of educators were sent to a district-led RTI “training at the beginning of the year,” at which they learned “about what RTI was comprised of” and “what they were supposed to be doing,” but, Kate lamented, “really when it comes down to it we don’t have the time to do everything, so we have boiled down,” the process.

Notable throughout the study, we found decisions marked by minimal technical understandings of central features of RTI, such as the selection of research-based interventions, process, and centrality of progress monitoring. Educators’ capacity to intervene significantly limited interventions selected and carried out; interventions were spontaneously generated based on largely intuitive ideas about appropriate supports for struggling students. Queried about intervention selection during a group interview between the research team and all three RTI coordinators, Ruth responded, “we pull interventions out of the air.” Time and time again, we witnessed this to be the case, as this example of a TOR’s comment during an initial intake reveals: “I just thought of an intervention. Maybe give her grandmother a copy of those decodable books she could read with her if she goes different places on the weekends.” Yet, none of this was surprising upon analysis of the professional support teachers received to enact RTI. For example, although the district formed a cadre of coaches to visit schools and support RTI efforts, a mentor visited only for the last RTI meeting of the school year and the cadre was slated to be dissolved the next school year. Furthermore, the district offered a single, optional RTI professional development session during the previous school year.

As a result and across all meetings, interventions were strategies constructed by teachers in the here-in-now, rather than in light of research describing methods for supporting student academics and behavior within RTI frameworks. This was reminiscent of notions of “pre-referral interventions” that were commonly held in the mid-1980s when teachers modified teaching or elements of the learning environment to intervene with challenging students before referring them to the special education eligibility process, often generated within teams consulting with the student’s teacher (Fuchs, Mock, Morgan, & Young, 2003). In one instance, teachers came up with an intervention for a student who had difficulty sitting still to wash cafeteria tables after he ate each day. In another instance,

Ruth reviews the interventions the group has come up with while she was out of the room.

Ruth:

Pick a special book out with Ms. X and share with a book buddy. Kate is going to do an assessment because I’m not good with phonics. Use an iPod, books on tape. Reading Rabbit. TOR: I don’t know if we have it.

Kate:

Those are good. He’s just at a standstill, like he has hit his plateau.

Ruth:

We will rotate and try some of these.

TOR:

Ok, sounds good. (Packs up, exits).

These and myriad other examples about the nature and delivery of interventions were absent of features of what counts as intervention in the RTI literature, most notably that interventions are research-based (Trainor & Bal, 2012). Notwithstanding critiques of the RTI evidence base, which we discussed earlier, it appeared educators were unaware of any evidence base from which to cull interventions.

Concurrently, progress monitoring appeared incidental to designing interventions or determining impact. Statements such as “I’ll progress monitor him,” or comments about data as spelling test scores or attendance tallies confirmed our initial analysis that progress monitoring was indeed documentation that some form of student performance data existed, but absence of data analysis or use to inform goals or expected progress. Once, referring to a student’s score of 6 on the DIBELS Letter Naming Fluency subtest, Kate said, “In the next 6 weeks, let’s increase from 6 to 29. The TOR replied, “There are only 26 letters.”

Normative forces

“Normative forces arise from beliefs and values and reflect such matters as conventional conceptions of intelligence and deep-seated racist and classist attitudes and prejudices” (Welner, 2001, p. 56). Overwhelmingly, teacher assumptions and beliefs about students and families shaped how RTI was carried out. The majority of White female teachers, principal, and school psychologist revealed through interviews and throughout meetings, their assumptions that families were to blame for concerns teachers voiced about students’ academics and behavior. The female faculty routinely exchanged deficit-laden representations of students and families who were primarily from low-income households and of racial/ethnic minority backgrounds. Suggestive of a tacit acceptance of such assumptions, a photocopy of a letter to the editor of a local paper was displayed prominently on the refrigerator of the teachers’ lounge where meetings were held with parents and family members often in attendance. Across the top “FYI” was written in large red letters and the letter read,

Rating teachers on the basis of pupil progress is foolish and unfair in the cases of kids who never get cognitive training in poor homes. No matter how good the first grade teacher, teaching essentially falls on deaf ears. There can be no progress when there is not much to start with. So you can congratulate, in advance, teachers of kids from educated homes and say “tough luck” to the ones who deal with products of ignorant homes. How about cognitive preschool for them? As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

Although we did not discuss this editorial with the participants, other conversations surfaced during meetings, as well as interviews that revealed broad acceptance or tolerance of deficit assumptions about students and families. To illustrate, during a data review, one White female teacher commented, “They’re all thieves. I have a bunch of thieves in my room.” Another responded with concerns about leaving her purse in her classroom. The conversation concluded with an observation that although students were smart enough to steal, they were not smart enough for academic work. Staff comments about students’ home lives—a regular part of team meetings—produced a similar narrative: The vast majority of students suffered from poor supervision in single-parent families in which parents routinely failed to comply with school requests, refused to follow through with medication requirements, and could not be bothered with their children’s education. This led students to spend time with the “wrong crowds,” watch too much television, and eat junk food. Schooling, then, was conceived of as a path out of a dissolute life and deficit assumptions appeared closely related to educators’ positioning of themselves as there to help. In one instance, Kate responded to our question about family participation in the RTI process:

When parents come to school, they look uneasy. I attempt to explain, just to let you know your child is in trouble and we want to help. When parents come we learn more about the home. Death, jail, things we kind of knew already, but we hear more of the details.

In contrast to deficit assumptions about families, we regularly saw family members attend these early morning team meetings, often arriving before school staff and waiting in the hallway. Over 22 sessions, we saw families during 11, despite Kate’s report that they had a 10% family participation rate. Concurrently, educators revealed gaps in their efforts to engage families, as when teachers asked questions such as “Did we call his mom?” During meetings, family members often demonstrated awareness of staff expectations and articulated concerns about their children’s schooling experiences. These included questions about why students were pulled out for interventions during instruction and why planned interventions were not fully implemented. Family members also agreed to implement home interventions and demonstrated their efforts with artifacts, such as alphabet flashcard checklists with known letter sounds checked off. More than once, they surfaced worries about or challenges to the dominant pattern of medicating students. In response to these concerns, staff generally encouraged family members to keep students on medication and offered alternative strategies for addressing their concerns. For example, when a father shared fears about his child’s loss of appetite, a staff member turned to the child who was present and said to him, “take two bites of everything.”

The articulated link between medication and learning was just one of the many signals revealing staff members’ beliefs about learning as a process of transmission that required compliant student behavior. For many teachers, medication appeared to be viewed as the key to student compliance and, therefore, learning. “This is my take,” one teacher noted, “he has needed medication for so long he hasn’t built any skills . . . ” Handing over pre-filled diagnostic tools or suggesting that families continue or increase dosages was commonplace, often backed by the refrain, “We’ve got to get him learning.” Over several meetings, concerns about students’ behavior led to discussion about whether students had ADHD and/or should be or were medicated. It appeared such beliefs were reified in a professional development session about ADHD, which was the only building-level RTI-related session participants recalled. Comments about whether and why students “had ADHD” and whether they should be on the medication Adderall was a recurring discussion across over half of the weekly observations. In meetings, teachers often suggested parents take students to the doctor for ADHD diagnosis, or if already diagnosed, rebuked parents about medicating their children inconsistently:

Kate (to father):

When you read with him at home, can you ask him to summarize in his own words? What I want to make sure . . . can we count on you to make sure he gets his medicine?

Father:

I don’t want him to be on medicine for life.

Kate:

My concern is that if he doesn’t have this in school, he can’t learn. Kate talks about a link between learning and life. For the next few months . . . She suggests getting him on medication to see what happens. Look at that little window there in his life. So get him on meds, and we’ll get strategies in place. Let’s just really see if the next few weeks . . . we can get on the meds, and get him learning. After 8 weeks, we’ll have a follow-up.

In other instances when family members were absent, teachers voiced that parents were in denial about their children’s need to be diagnosed with ADHD and take medication. As one teacher stated, “Dad just doesn’t want to accept it.” Relatedly, we noted educators’ acute concern with student behavior as compliance with their directives, and keeping silent and still in entrances/exits, hallways, the cafeteria, on the playground, and in the restroom. A document titled “Positive School-Wide Expectations,” which was posted in all classrooms and sent home with all students, delineated expected behavior for these locations. For each location, there were several rules. Cafeteria expectations were that students (a) enter and exit silently; (b) wait in line with shirt tucked in and mouth closed; (c) sit in assigned seat with no talking for the first 10 min; (d) talk in a whisper voice when given permission by the person on duty; (e) show good manners while eating and clean up after yourself.

Political forces

Political forces shaping the ZOM emerge from demands and concerns of constituents and are subject to political (i.e., power) imbalances among states, districts, and schools, as well as educators and families (Welner, 2001). In this school, RTI implementation must be understood within the context of competing educational priorities in a turbulent national and state context following the international economic collapse of 2008 (see Maxcy, 2011). As outlined above, RTI is an approach to gauging and meting out instructional services taking hold across the nation over the past decade. Although optional, adoption of RTI was encouraged by the State Education Agencies (SEAs). LEAs statewide were experimenting with RTI in the period just prior to our study while also responding to evolving state and federal accountability requirements (No Child Left Behind legislation, the Race to the Top Program, the Common Core State Standards Initiative, etc.) as tax receipts plummeted following the 2008 economic collapse.

In 2009, the district’s implementation efforts converged with the federal government’s effort to stimulate the economy. The district was anticipating teacher layoffs due to declining tax revenues in the wake of the 2008 economic downturn. Stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided temporary respite. The district received funds to support planning and implementation of an improvement plan. Relatedly, personnel echoed the principal’s characterization of the school as the district vanguard in adopting RTI. The principal shared, “I keep hearing from our compliance monitor,” “No one does RTI like you guys do,” and “I keep telling everybody that you guys have it down.”

She also, however, revealed that this was relative to very limited district-wide advances. She continued,

And I don’t know what she means when she says that, because it is a district change in policy and that’s what is expected of us. So, therefore, if it’s expected of us I’m going to make sure that we do the best we can in enacting that . . . We took it upon ourselves to go to the training—not everyone was provided the training last year—we had a team and they knew that our team was forming and working on it. So, we were one of the very first ones that they asked “Would you be interested in your (RTI team) coming to training?” And I said, “Yes,” so then that’s when we all went.

Thus, official pronouncements notwithstanding, district support of RTI was limited, consisting largely of a voluntary training and a support team charged with assisting all schools. Although the school was among those making efforts, the strides consisted of attendance of 10 teachers and staff at a voluntary session, development of a school-wide intake and monitoring process, invitation of an ADHD expert, and self-study on research-based interventions. That is, although the school was an early, earnest adopter, resources available and devoted were limited.

Two factors significantly shaped uptake of the RTI reform among the broader corps of teachers in the school. The first related to implementation in an environment emphasizing test-based performance in state-level decisions to assume administrative control of underperforming schools. In this environment, we found interventions with students strongly informed by an interest in achievement measured through standardized assessments. As noted above, interventions commonly featured appeals to medicate students whose behavior deviated from an acquiescent ideal expressed in the “school-wide expectations” posted in the cafeteria. Discussions of interventions revealed connections between these ideals and a desire for test-based discipline:

Resource Teacher (RT):

How is he doing academically?

TOR:

Wish I knew.

RT:

He just doesn’t complete anything?

TOR:

Yes. Math is definitely not his strong suit, but he rushes through.

RT:

Maybe that’s what we need to do with them, just slow it down, taking their time.

Ann:

I did some DIBELS tests with him and he did ok, but had careless errors.

RT:

I tell them there is no prize for finishing quick. My kids now know not to raise their hand quickly to say “I’m done.”

Ann:

Did you modify the process in monitoring by hashmark tally?

TOR:

I couldn’t keep track

Ann:

You don’t even have a goal?

RT:

What is the goal? Just monitoring good behavior?

Ann:

Baseline data is how many times blue/green (behavior rating). 1 of 25 blue? Green?

RT:

On blue or green? 20% of the time?

Ann:

He’s going on meds. I was thinking 50%.

RT:

Really!?

Ann:

He’s going on meds. You’d be surprised.

To sell the 50% benchmark, Ann points to behavioral improvement following medication of a student. Thus, the group concludes the student’s academic challenges—as determined by failure to complete a test—reflect a behavioral problem—a lack of discipline common at the school—that may be addressed through medication—as has been effective with the school’s most undisciplined students. Common in such exchanges was lack of effort to probe adequacy of instructional practice, and a focus of getting students “on track” to succeed on standardized tests.

A second political factor relates to the school’s prioritization of the RTI adoption. As suggested above, interviews with the principal and RTI team leaders suggested that RTI adoption was a priority. Yet, we noted that the team meetings were situated as an add-on, occurring prior to contracted hours and attendance appeared to be a lower priority for teachers than for administrators and team coordinators. Moreover, the superficial discussions of instructional issues encountered, and interventions considered and adopted, suggested limited curiosity about or interest in reforming practice. This effect became more pronounced as the year wore on and a growing number of teachers and staff were notified they might be laid off due to budget constraints. In short, although implementation of a sophisticated framework such as RTI demands resources and intensive and sustained organizational attention, the political context was increasingly less conducive to deep or sustained engagement.

Discussion

Delving into local policy enactment using a critical practice framework illustrates ways qualitative methodologies and critical stances allow exploration of equity concerns precipitating and growing out of special education policy development. We hope to have contributed to understandings of how and why disparities continue to exist across student groups and locales, despite policies’ inclusion of regulations to address them. Our findings provide rationale for critical qualitative inquiry into policy appropriation that maps contextual factors to be considered as special education policy is developed, introduced, and rolled out locally. Findings also suggest a need for development of teacher learning frameworks that address not only technical aspects of policy enactment but also structural and individual barriers to such policies.

We acknowledge several limitations to our study. First, our choice to focus on the RTI meetings as the primary unit of analysis for examining local RTI appropriation did not account for teacher practice in classrooms with the students discussed at the meetings. Future research that includes observation and analysis of teacher practice in connection with meetings within which practices reflective of policy appropriations are discussed would further enhance a critical practice analysis of educational policy appropriation. Furthermore, findings represent our own interpretation of the data (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999); although we engaged in member-checking around our understanding of the participants’ technical process of RTI, we did not share our analysis with participants. Nonetheless, we hope to have provided methodological transparency by using participants’ words to represent thematic discourse patterns over the data collection period and by triangulating data through the use of multiple observers and methods for capturing participants’ RTI processes and related dialogue (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994).

That RTI was locally appropriated to replicate traditional special education eligibility processes and student retention speaks to the power of entrenched traditions of schooling concerned with sorting of students—disproportionately students of color—by perceived ability. Activities locally conceived as RTI centered on educators’ diagnosis of student struggles as inherent psychological traits and deficits in connection from their family and community origins disconnected from structural (in)opportunities and individual biases they experienced. We apply this finding to suggest any professional learning that supports teachers’ enactment of RTI must proceed with caution to avoid becoming a “well-funded apparatus for diagnosing the problems of young children, as nice as it sounds,” that as enacted, functions as a

guidance system for reproducing a divided and often unjust social structure, no less racist and class biased in outcomes than before, but now phrased in terms of embodied psychological traits, for example, ability, intelligence, attention span, problem solving skills, speed of reasoning, language capacity, and so on. (McDermott & Raley, 2008, p. 431)

Furthermore, teacher beliefs about students and their families, and concerns for students’ compliance and comportment vis-à-vis ADHD diagnosis and psychotropic medication use emerged as key normative forces shaping RTI appropriation. Rigid expectations about appearance and conduct are not unusual in urban schooling, including monitoring of children’s bodily movements (Raible & Irizarry, 2010) and are often considered part of a hidden curriculum that teaches race, class, and gender lessons (Morris, 2005). As we saw played out between an RTI leader and father, diagnosis and medication concerns took on a veneer of helpfulness; educators saw themselves as providing advice to families that if followed, would allow them to impart social capital necessary for students to thrive (Bourdieu, 2008). Similar ideals of quiescent and test-focused students appeared to inform efforts to monitor and shape student behavior.

Accordingly, our findings underscore the need for research examining further the functions and purposes of goals policies such as RTI are utilized to achieve. It is plausible that some of the functions of these goals in this school show that teachers see special education as a means for removing hard-to-teach students from their classrooms, and retention as manifestation of meritocratic beliefs that only those deserving to advance should do so. However, we suspect these explanations fall short, particularly given findings of political forces converging in this school that we sum up as neoliberal influences concerned with accountability and efficiency. Under state policy, underperforming schools failing to improve test scores faced state takeover and closure. Although quasi-market forces are intended to catalyze reform, the prospect of reconstitution can focus instructional efforts on immediate gains at the expense of longer-term reform (Rice & Malen, 2010). Furthermore, as schools are drawn into ratings-focused responses, curriculum can narrow to tests and students with additional learning needs—often from historically underserved groups—can be viewed as barriers to school success (Sloan, 2005). In a majority-minority school serving a low-income community in an urban district that was a focus of state efforts for school takeover, the specter of reconstitution was pervasive and palpable.

These findings underscore need for additional research on the roles of macro factors affecting teachers’ everyday practice including policy enactment. This has implications for critique of special education research that has examined the role of variables such as teacher beliefs and/or biases related to equity concerns (e.g., the classification of historically underserved students as at-risk and disabled). We suggest that focus only on teachers’ implementation efforts (i.e., fidelity) may miss how teachers approach work in schools nested within systems that are veritable pressure cookers of competing policies, agendas, and standardized teaching and testing.

That is not to say that teachers’ individual beliefs about students and their families, or lack of technical capacity around instruction, intervention, and progress monitoring are without consequence, or best left unaddressed. Our findings implicate examination of professional learning around RTI, as well as development of frameworks for doing so that account for the complexity within which educators operate as well as critical reflection on their own practices and beliefs about students, their families, and communities. Although professional learning opportunities concerned with RTI’s technical aspects are relevant, it is perhaps more important to provide opportunities that foreground educators’ analysis of structural barriers embedded in where and individual biases held by whom it is implemented. That is, although an absence of almost any professional development may have contributed to local RTI appropriation, we do not assume professional development on RTI would ensure equity-minded reform. Indeed, teacher learning studies find constrained discursive patterns of autonomous school-based teams, which reinforce and replicate common sense practices (Scribner, Sawyer, Watson, & Myers, 2007). Thus, although professional development on RTI or any policy to be enacted locally is warranted, content and process must move beyond technical arenas (see Thorius & Scribner, 2013, for an example of urban teacher professional learning frameworks). Toward this end, empirical work on RTI and similar initiatives is needed to account for broader socio-historical factors that shape opportunities to learn as well as ways local contexts shape interpretation and implementation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The first and second authors acknowledge the Center for Multicultural Education at Indiana University - IUPUI, for graduate student support on this project (in the form of some of the time dedicated by the second and third authors), as well as our colleagues at the Great Lakes Equity Center at IUPUI for helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

Artiles

A. J.

(2005, November). RTI for all: Reflections on sociocultural questions and challenges. Lecture presented at the Commemoration of P.L. 94–142, Loyola Marymount University. Los Angeles, CA.

Artiles

A. J.

Bal

Thorius

K. A. K.

(2010). Back to the future: A critique of Response to Intervention’s social justice views. Theory Into Practice, 49, 250–257. doi:10.1080/00405841.2010.510447

Artiles

A. J.

Kozleski

E. B.

(2010). What counts as response and intervention in RTI? A sociocultural analysis. Psicothema, 22, 949–954.

Artiles

A. J.

Thorius

K. A.

Bal

Waitoller

Neal

Hernandez-Saca

(2011). Beyond culture as group traits: Future learning disabilities ontology, epistemology, and Inquiry on research knowledge use. Learning Disabilities Quarterly, 34, 167–179. doi:10.1177/0731948711417552

Ball

(1997). Policy sociology and critical social research: A personal review of recent education policy and policy research. British Educational Research Journal, 23, 257–274. doi:10.1080/0141192970230302

Bouman

(2010). Response-to-intervention in California public schools: Has it helped address disproportional placement rates for students with learning disabilities? (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA.

Bourdieu

(2008). The forms of capital. In Biggart

N. W.

(Ed.), Readings in economic sociology (pp. 280–291). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Brown

Maguire

Ball

S. J.

(2010). Policy enactments in the UK secondary school: Examining policy, practice and school positioning. Journal of Education Policy, 25, 547–560. doi:10.1080/02680931003698544

Bruce

(2007). Questions arising about emergence, data collection, and its interaction with analysis in a grounded theory study. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 6, 51–60.

10.

Carspecken

P. F.

(1996). Critical ethnography in educational research. New York, NY: Routledge.

11.

Denzin

Lincoln

(Eds.). (1994). Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

12.

Emerson

R. M.

Fretz

R. I.

Shaw

L. L.

(1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

13.

Fletcher

J. M.

Vaughn

(2009). Response to intervention: Preventing and remediating academic difficulties. Child Development Perspectives, 3, 30–37. doi:10.1111/j.1750-8606.2008.00072.x

14.

Fuchs

L. S.

Stecker

P. M.

(2010). The “blurring” of special education in a new continuum of general education placements and services. Exceptional Children, 76, 301–323.

15.

Fuchs

Mock

Morgan

P. L.

Young

C. L.

(2003). Responsiveness-to-intervention: Definitions, evidence, and implications for the learning disabilities construct. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 18, 157–171. doi:10.1111/1540-5826.00072

16.

Hartlep

N. D.

Ellis

A. L.

(2012). Just what is Response to Intervention and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? A critical race theory examination of RTI. In Gorlewski

Porfilio

Gorlewski

(Eds.), Using standards and high-stakes testing for students: Exploiting power with critical pedagogy (pp. 87–108). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

17.

Hodgson

Edward

Gregerson

(2007). Riding the waves of policy? The case of basic skills in adult and community learning in England. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 59, 213–229. doi:10.1080/13636820701342913

18.

Hughes

Dexter

D. D.

(2008). Field studies of RTI programs (RTI Action Network Web: National Center for Learning Disabilities). Retrieved from http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/research/field-studies-rti-programs

19.

Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 (2004).

20.

Kozleski

E. B.

Huber

J. J.

(2010). Systemic change for RTI: Key shifts in practice. Theory Into Practice, 49, 258–264. doi:10.1080/00405841.2010.510696

21.

LeCompte

M. D.

Schensul

J. J.

(1999). Analyzing and interpreting ethnographic data. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.

22.

Levinson

Sutton

(2001). Introduction: Policy as/in practice—A sociocultural approach to the study of educational policy. In Sutton

Levinson

(Eds.), Policy as practice: Towards a comparative sociocultural analysis of educational policy (pp. 1–22). Westport. CT: Ablex Publishing.

23.

Levinson

Sutton

Winstead

(2009). Education policy as a practice of power: Theoretical tools, ethnographic methods, democratic options. Educational Policy, 23, 767–795. doi:10.1177/0895904808320676

24.

Maxcy

B. D.

(2011). The politics of priorities in turbulent times: Policy logics, faces of power and reform possibilities. Peabody Journal of Education, 86, 252–271. doi:10.1080/0161956X.2011.578974

25.

McDermott

Raley

(2008). The tell-tale body: The constitution of disability in schools. In Ayers

Quinn

Stoval

(Eds.), Handbook of social justice in education (pp. 431–445). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

26.

McKinney

Bartholomew

Gray

(2010). RTI and SWPBIS: Confronting the problem of disproportionality. NASP Communiqué, 38(6), 26–29.

27.

Morris

E. W.

(2005). “Tuck in that shirt!” Race, class, gender, and discipline in an urban school. Sociological Perspectives, 48, 25–48.

28.

Morse

J. M.

Barrett

Mayan

Olson

Spiers

(2002). Verification strategies for establishing reliability and validity in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1(2), 13–22.

29.

Oakes

Welner

Yonezawa

Allen

R. L.

(2005). Norms and politics of equity-minded change: Researching the “zone of mediation.” In Fullan

(Ed.), Fundamental change: International handbook of educational change (pp. 282–305). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

30.

Raible

Irizarry

(2010). Redirecting the teacher’s gaze: Youth surveillance, teacher education, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1196–1203.

31.

Rice

J. K.

Malen

(2010). School reconstitution as a reform strategy: A synopsis of the evidence. Washington, DC: National Education Association.

32.

Scribner

J. P.

Sawyer

Watson

Myers

(2007). Teacher teams and distributed leadership: A study of group discourse and collaboration. Educational Administration Quarterly, 43, 67–100. doi:10.1177/0013161X06293631

33.

Sloan

(2005). Playing to the logic of the Texas accountability system: How focusing on “ratings”—not children—undermines quality and equity. In Valenzuela

(Ed.), Leaving children behind: How “Texas-style” accountability fails Latino youth (pp. 153–178). Albany: State University of New York.

34.

Sullivan

A. L.

Artiles

A. J.

(2011). Theorizing racial inequity in special education: Applying structural theory to disproportionality. Urban Education, 46, 1526–1552. doi:10.1177/0042085911416014

35.

Thorius

K. A. K.

Maxcy

B. D.

(2012, April). A critical practice framework for examination of special education policy appropriation in local contexts. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Vancouver, Canada.

36.

Thorius

K. A. K.

Scribner

S. M. P.

(2013). Teacher learning in urban schools. In Kozleski

E. B.

Thorius

K. A. K.

(Eds.). Ability, equity, and culture: Sustaining inclusive urban education reform (pp. 134–150). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

37.

Thorius

K. A. K.

Sullivan

A. L.

(2013). Interrogating instruction and intervention in RTI research with students identified as English language learners. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 29, 64–88.

38.

Trainor

Bal

(2012). Development and preliminary analysis of a rubric for culturally responsive research. The Journal of Special Education. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0022466912436397

39.

Trainor

A. A.

Leko

(2014). Qualitative special education research: Purpose, rigor, and contribution. Remedial and Special Education, 35, 263–266. doi:10.1177/0741932514536996

40.

Vaughn

Fuchs

L. S.

(2003). Redefining learning disabilities as inadequate response to instruction: The promise and potential problems. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 18, 137–146. doi:10.1111/1540-5826.00070.

41.

Welner

K. G.

(2001). Legal rights, local wrongs: When community control collides with educational equity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.