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Abstract

In this critique, race is centralized to draw attention to the role it plays in the complex evolution of response to intervention, past and present. I use a critical race theory analytical lens to focus on how the dominant narrative serves as a framework within institutional and political structures in support of the approach. A brief overview of anti-discrimination laws and policies is followed by several historical narratives that are used to convey the intersecting nature of early reading and special education research. The body of research is employed to articulate the goals and purpose of the intervention, sans a clear commitment to addressing racial disproportionality. This critique particularly exposes how response to intervention has neither improved reading achievement nor curtailed racial disproportionality, and emphasizes that reading research is complicit in the reproduction of racial inequality in education. I conclude with a call to action.

Keywords

race/ethnicity RTI reading research response to intervention

The popularity of response to intervention (RTI) as an approach used in education is unquestioned. An Internet search for the term, for instance, yields 18,100,000 results in 0.48 s. When first proposed by L. S. Fuchs and Fuchs (1998), RTI was characterized as following a medical model to offer a multitiered approach for early readers and to help address racial inequities in special education. It readily expanded to tripartite purposes with amendments to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 1997) to use RTI procedures for student behavior (Sugai et al., 2000), and claims that RTI may help diminish racial disproportionality in special education placements (Carnine, 2003). RTI is linked to reading ‘intervention and prevention’: as an intervention process that avoids the wait-to-fail syndrome, closes the reading achievement gap, and helps to prevent reading difficulties. Supporters allege that RTI will prevent reading difficulties that may persist over the long term, and argue that by preventing early reading failure, the percentage of students being placed in the specific learning disability (SLD) category will decline. Furthermore, given that there is a higher percentage of students of color (SOC) identified as SLD, RTI will lessen racial disproportionality. RTI is used for multiple purposes, in diverse content areas, and across numerous grade levels.

This article brings together the complex and overlapping histories of reading and special education (albeit comprehensive histories are not possible) to inform a critique of RTI in reading research and instruction. Histories and critiques are neither acultural nor apolitical, and like other forms of interpretative research, they reflect the lens, perspectives, and worldviews used by researchers. In special education research, Patton (1998) and Artiles, Kozleski, Trent, Osher, and Ortiz (2010) acknowledge the role that race plays in the placement of SOC in special education. Conversely, in reading research, there has been a disinclination to acknowledge race in general, and race as a factor in RTI specifically. I draw on critical race theory (CRT)—as theorized by Bell (1980,1993); Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, and Thomas (1995); and Delgado and Stefancic (2001)—to examine the evolution of RTI. These scholars argue that CRT is premised on two foundational ideas:

to understand how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in the USA and in particular, to examine the relationship between that social structure and professed ideals such as the “rule of law” and “equal protection.” The second is a desire not merely to understand the vexed bond between law and racial power but to change it. (Crenshaw et al., 1995, p. xiii)

Delgado and Stefancic (2001) describe six hallmarks of CRT: “racism is normal or ordinary, not aberrational” (p. 7); “interest convergence or material determinism” (p. 7); “race is a social construction” (p. 7); “differential racialization and its consequences” (p. 8); “intersectionality and anti-essentialism” (pp. 7-8); “a unique voice of color” and “the use of counternarratives” (p. 9).

I describe the evolution of RTI through a CRT lens focused on constitutional law, intersectionality, and interest convergence. This perspective permits a view of the “largely invisible collection of patterns and habits that make up . . . domination” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001, p. 5). Herein, CRT is used to reveal that race is integral to RTI, with a focus on how the dominant narrative describes and enables “racial inequality [to] reproduce itself structurally even in the absence of intentional discrimination” (Carbado & Roithmayr, 2014, p. 163) through federal laws and policies. The dominant narrative of White supremacy, as Ansley (1997) observes, represents

a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings. (p. 592)

White supremacy is pervasive within society as it seeks to reproduce assumptions, beliefs, and ideas about people of color. In education, it presents as the dominant narrative and seeks to maintain authority, control, and power by perpetuating a belief in the superiority of Whites over all other races. It is shrouded in Janus-faced discourses of Scientific Racism and Americana. A brief description of the Janus-faced discourses is warranted.

Scientific racism attempts to justify White superiority using scientific methods as an inviolable source of knowledge and camouflaging with coded language: biological, genetic, inheritable, intelligence testing, meritocracy, neutral, objective, and so on. The employment of these words in support of pseudo-scientific theories of intelligence emerged in the 1890s (Gould, 1981/1996; Sokal, 1978) and continues to this day. To be clear, the dominant narrative “does not refer to individual white people and their individual intentions or actions but to an overarching political, economic, and social system of domination” (DiAngelo, 2018, p. 28). Scientific racism includes notions of merit, objectivity, and science that are used to defend, justify, and maintain White supremacy. Americana also is camouflaged in coded language: apolitical, color-blind, culture-free, equitable, ethical, fair-minded, universal, and so on. The ideas are remnants of the past and present national ethos seeking to project actions and thoughts as antiracist, benevolent, compassionate, just, moral, principled, and unbiased. Americana includes notions of fairness, equality, and equity to defend, justify, and maintain White supremacy. The Janus-faced discourses also reveal how “the concepts and languages of practical thought . . . stabilize a particular form of power and domination” (Hall, 2003, p. 27).

My goals are to highlight the role of race and reading in RTI, to describe how the dominant narrative is interwoven within sociopolitical arenas as well as institutional and political structures, and to emphasize the involvement of reading research in the reproduction of racial inequality.

Sociopolitical Antecedents of RTI

A starting point to understand the role that race plays in the evolution of RTI is the mid-20th century, as the nation grappled with a legacy of racial discrimination. During this period, federal laws and policies were enacted to encourage equality and equity in educational, political, and social realms. Monumental anti-discrimination federal laws and legal decisions—for instance, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Civil Rights Act (1964), and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA; 1965)—sought to remedy the discrimination, prejudice, racism, and segregation experienced by people of color. The plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education sought relief of segregation in public education, based on the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, arguing there are extreme differences in educational opportunities and physical facilities between Black and White schools (Supp. 797—Dist. Court, D. Kansas, 1951). The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously passed Brown, ruling a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Warren declared, “In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate facilities are inherently unequal” (Brown v. Board of Education I, 1954, p. 495). The Court claimed,

It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied that opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity . . . is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. (Brown v. Board of Education I, 1954, p. 493)

The implementation of Brown hinged not only on federal law but on the willingness of state and local officials to enforce the law, which was not immediately forthcoming. Thus, Brown II required that desegregation be conducted “with all deliberate speed” (Brown v. Board of Education II 349 U.S. 294, 1955). Brown revealed that admonitions of states’ rights are part of the dominant narrative and undermine processes to end racial discrimination in public education. Bell (1993) wrote,

The interest of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites. However, the fourteenth amendment, standing alone, will not authorize a judicial remedy providing effective racial equality for blacks where the remedy sought threatens the superior societal status of middle and upper-class whites. (p. 523)

Importantly, he recognized the interest-conversion dilemma in Brown and offered two important observations. First, he understood that the interest of Whites undermined support of desegregation given federal funding would be denied Southern states if they failed to comply with the law. Second, he observed, “local control . . . may result in the maintenance of a status quo that will preserve superior educational opportunities and facilities for whites at the expense of blacks” (pp. 526-527). In short, the federal government cannot rely on states to enforce the anti-discrimination laws out of goodwill or legality; compliance requires an accompanying financial incentive, in the form of federal funding.

A decade later, drawing on the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act (1964) effectively struck down Jim/Jane Crow laws and legally ensured human and civil rights were extended to all U.S. citizens. The struggles that produced these laws marked a shift in national consciousness to outlaw racial discrimination in society and in education (Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sec. 601; 78 Stat. 252; 42 U.S.C. 2000d). The Civil Rights Act was part of a multipronged federal socioeconomic plan implemented by President Lyndon Johnson, who in his War on Poverty address asserted that “equal access to education was vital to a child’s ability to lead a productive life” (Darrow, 2016). His declarations were part of a strategy to link political and social reform efforts to civil rights legislation and enforcement, as well as to educational reform and funding. For example, ESEA (1965) was designed to work in concert with the Civil Rights Act to address racial and social inequality: “Congress would not have taken this step [passing ESEA] had Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act] not established the principle that schools receiving federal assistance must meet uniform national standards for desegregation” (U.S. v. Jefferson Co. Bd. of Ed., 372, E. 836, 5th Cir. 1966, as cited in Frankenberg & Taylor, 2015). This collective federal legislation was planned to provide federal financial support to address economic, racial, and social discrimination as well as political avenues for educational access and opportunity, specifically for SOC, students living in poverty, and students with disabilities (ESEA, Sec. 201). The mid-20th-century sociopolitical context, as well as federal laws and policies, served as the foundation for RTI when understood as an approach to address educational discrimination. Several early antecedents from special education and reading research follow as forerunners of RTI.

RTI: Early Beginnings in Special Education and Reading Research

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) was encouraged by advocates to pursue the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause for people with disabilities. At the request of Eunice Shriver, sister of then-vice president John F. Kennedy, Robert Cooke issued The Cooke Report (1965) on early education and the special needs of children. Supportive of the current sociopolitical climate, the report detailed a comprehensive approach to early childhood education, health, and parental education. Congress also authorized early childhood experts to create a program to improve student learning, so children would be more prepared for kindergarten and first grade. The implemented processes reveal how political structures helped to instantiate the dominant narrative as a response to educational issues.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, for example, examined the Early Training Program, an 8-week summer enrichment program and follow-up parental program for Black poor children and families. The program was evaluated using experimental methods and was found to show improvements in the subjects’ levels of intelligence. The researchers described the subjects as Black, poor, and with low intelligence and their parents as having limited education. Most troubling were claims of student mental retardation (Zigler & Styfco, 2010) that adopted the discourse of scientific racism and extended the dominant narrative of Black intellectual inferiority (Kennedy, Van de Riet, & White, 1963). The researchers did not acknowledge the history of Blacks in Tennessee, where Jane/Jim Crow laws were enforced and where lynchings, riots, and violent White mobs enacted racial and social discrimination. For decades, education for Blacks was constrained by dire economic conditions and state statutes that enforced segregated schools. Black schools could not plan on accurate taxpayer distributions and thus were dependent upon local grassroots and national philanthropic funding (Anderson, 1988). More than a decade after Brown, there remained significant local White resistance to school desegregation in Nashville and many Southern school districts; fearful of losing federal funding (Franklin, 2005), the districts proposed a “grade-a-year” program (Erickson, 2012). Such programs were devised to deprioritize the “all deliberate speed” mandate and slowly desegregate schools one grade each school year over 12 years.

For centuries, myths about Black humanity and intelligence were perpetuated in politics and society because they “represent reality in ways that prescribe and legitimate White supremacy” (Woodson, 2017, p. 319). African American scholars presented data and alternative perspectives about the intellect of Black children. For instance, K. Miller (1897) argued that low test performance among African Americans and other ethnic groups was due to cultural, economic, historical, linguistic, and social conditions and differences as well as to varying educational access and opportunities. H. A. Miller (1923) noted that “the vocabulary of science has been appropriated and its methods prostituted to prove what men want to prove . . . [and] the most fruitful medium for this method has been intelligence testing” (p. 229). Du Bois (1940) also observed that testing supported racist theories and placed African Americans at the lowest rates. In addition, the Office of Civil Rights 1968 Elementary and Secondary Schools Civil Rights Survey collected data on school efforts of desegregation and found a disproportionate number of African American children placed in segregated special education classes. In 1969, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP; 1969) reported on the use of federal funds under ESEA/Title I, noting that many states were out of compliance with the law, funds were being mismanaged, and the federal government was reluctant to address noncompliance. Given the alternative data and research, the NAACP rejected the findings of the Early Training Program and questioned the characterization and pathologizing of African American children as mentally deficient, cautioning that such findings would be used to funnel and segregate Black students into special education. Political structures, however, supported the dominant narrative: Congress authorized studies, accepted findings, provided federal funding, and crafted additional funding opportunities for like-minded research. This early linkage between Congress and education research exposed the dominant narrative’s intransigence and collaboration among institutional and political structures that concretized processes and procedures; ignored alternative concepts, data, methods, and theories; and silenced opponents.

In a second attempt to provide greater educational equality, Congress made a more refined request to explore the intersection of conditions and socioeconomic status within communities to improve educational opportunities. They sought to understand the impact of early reading programs on student academic success and requested student demographic information: gender, chronological age, race/ethnicity, and preschool experience. Reading experts, in what are known as the “First-Grade Studies” (Bond & Dykstra, 1967), solicited studies that applied experimental research methods to the study of beginning reading programs. There were 76 research proposals submitted, of which 27 were funded; however, only 15 were used in a cross-study analysis (Chall, 1967). Discarded studies included students who were: Black and lived in urban areas, Spanish dominant learning to read in English, and low income. The panel’s final report was positioned as apolitical, color-blind, and objective, although it applied and extended scientific racism (Willis, 2018). In reading research, it idealized the U.S. student as English dominant, middle to upper class, with above normal abilities, and White (Willis, 2008). As well, it established a pattern among federally funded reading research: a fixation on the learning needs of White students, the erasure of SOC and students who are not English dominant, and limited use of available research methods.

Dunn’s (1968) critique of racial overrepresentation in special education, tinged by the dominant narrative, disrupted pronouncements about the intellectual abilities of SOC: “a better education than special class placement is needed for socioculturally deprived children with mild learning problems . . . these pupils who come from poverty, broken and inadequate homes, and low status ethnic groups” (p. 5). He clarified the student population: as those from “low status backgrounds—including Afro Americans, American Indians, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans; those from nonstandard English speaking, broken, disorganized, and inadequate homes; and children from non-middle-class environments” (p. 6). He also acknowledged that mistakes were made in labeling children as mentally retarded, disproportionately placing Black and Brown students in special education, and segregating students from the general school population. Dunn’s remarks ushered in a shift in special education’s approach to equality in education that openly questioned racial inequality and inequity. Shortly thereafter, the federal government, working through the National Research Council (NRC) impaneled experts to review the extant literature and publish a series of reports. The 1982 report, for instance, revealed inconsistencies in racial categories, imprecision in how race was measured across studies, and a preference to discuss cultural differences and poverty as more tenable explanations for disproportionality than race.

Following Dunn’s critique, federal special education laws provided a pathway for the future adoption of RTI. Foremost, the 1969 Specific Learning Disabilities Act (SLDA) required educational support services for all children with learning disabilities (LD). Later, this act became part of Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA), P. L. 91-230. The law described SLD characteristics:

a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. (34 C.F.R. 300.8)

The definition clarified linkages between the diagnosis of SLD and communication abilities, specifically in reading. It also described conditions of exclusion: “learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage” (34 C.F.R. 300.8). The list of exclusions did not include race, albeit culture was often used as a proxy.

Williams (1970) compiled research that offered alternative perspectives about the communicative, intellectual, and linguistic (African American English, bilingual) prowess of SOC and students living in poverty. The research studies included a range of research methods and perspectives (anthropology, education, linguistics, and sociology) promoting cultural and linguistic differences, and debunking deficit models. Despite these perspectives, reading research for the remainder of the century remained moored in a search for discrete cognitive and communicative skills of English-dominant, middle-class, White students that would ensure reading success (J. Green, Kalainoff, & Skukauskaite, in press).

A federally supported review of early reading by Adams (1990) offered a description of reading development and instruction in which was embedded a call to address reading within language-centered communicative and developmental processes. Drawing on a diverse body of research, Adams’s findings indicated that phonemic awareness was an important skill, as was systematic phonics instruction, especially for select groups (e.g., children who were developmentally behind and children living in poverty). Reading researchers either ignored or minimized racial differences among subjects by referencing cognitive, cultural, economic, or psychological explanations for reading problems.

Renewed legal attempts to apply the Fourteenth Amendment in support of the needs of people with disabilities were not successful. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, however, passed in 1975 and required free, appropriate, and public education for all children; a less restrictive educational environment; and nondiscriminatory identification and evaluation (this Act was amended as IDEA in 1997).

By contrast, legal attempts to address concerns about the use of psychometric tests, especially IQ tests, as a means of measuring intelligence, drawing on the Fourteenth Amendment, were successful. The ruling in the Larry P. v. Riles case of 1979 declared that “IQ tests were found to discriminate against Black children” (Coddington & Fairchild, 2012, p. 11). Explicitly, the ruling noted that “tests administered to minority children must have been validated for use with that population . . . IQ tests have been found wanting in their utility for special education placements” (p. 11). In the NRC report, Heller, Holtzman, and Messick (1982) also acknowledged that dominant groups used their power to appeal to the majority. The authors revealed there were potentially multiple “causes” for special education placements; however, they concluded, “the hopes of correcting or eliminating them to directly reduce disproportion, was deemed insufficient and unfruitful” (pp. 4-5). MacMillan and Reschly (1988) observed that racial disproportionality was confounded by the difficulty of tracking it, in part because criteria varied widely across states and districts. Harry (1992) suggested that over- and underrepresentations of ethnic and racial groups were found across racial categories, such as in the numbers of Asian Pacific students in gifted and talented programs and the percentages of SOC in the total school population, as well as in teacher biases. Artiles and Trent (1994) found recurring patterns of SOC overrepresentation in special education in their research. In special education research, discussions of ethnicity and race were avoided as it was preferable to discuss culture, language, and poverty as possible factors affecting student placements.

Intersections of Politics, Special Education Research, and Reading Research

Advocates for special education extended their political influence as they redirected discussions about equality and equity away from class, ethnicity, and race to students with special needs. The federal laws, policies, reports, and reviews that emerged served as the bedrock of RTI.

Connections: Politics and Special Education Research

The Summit on Learning Disabilities: A National Responsibility (1994) marked a watershed moment in the evolution of RTI. The two-day event, held by advocates and allies of special education and the federal government and sponsored by the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) in Washington, DC, included political attendees working to move a special education agenda forward. In attendance were then-first lady Hilary Clinton; Duane Alexander, the director of NICHD; Richard Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education; Donna Shalala, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services; Janet Reno, U.S. Attorney General; and other politicians, physicians, and education researchers. A contemporaneous report by Ellis and Cramer (1995) presented claims that linked LD and reading:

Research indicates that 70–80% of students identified as LD have their primary deficits in basic language and reading skills, very specifically manifested in deficits in phonological awareness. Studies show that 74% of students who are unsuccessful readers in the third grade are still unsuccessful readers in the ninth grade. (p. 8)

The report did not reference specific studies, although it suggested a connection among language competencies, noting, “a variety of disorders in the domains of listening, speaking, basic reading skills, reading comprehension” (pp. xxvii-xxviii). It indicated problems in early reading, especially among students identified as LD. The goals of the summit included encouraging the federal government to invest in improving support services for LD, bringing national attention to LD, and seeking consensus among stakeholders to chart a pathway for support of LD funding (S. C. Cramer & Ellis, 1996). The declarations were used to garner political support for addressing problems in early reading as potentially lifelong. For example, the researchers drew heavily from two studies and suggested that if LD is unaddressed, people with LD create grave societal costs: illiteracy, incarceration, substance abuse, and unwed motherhood.

In a subsequent book, Lyon’s (1996) chapter presented a selective review of literature for LD in math, oral language, and reading; debated a shared definition of LD; dismissed the discrepancy model; and repeated the tropes about Black and White reading achievement. Lyon acknowledged that LD definitions “cannot be attributed to cultural factors (including race and ethnicity), [as] limited information exists how race, ethnicity, and cultural background might influence school learning” (p. 10). Lyon’s work draws heavily from neurobiological research by Wood, Fenton, Flowers, and Naylor (1991), whose findings offered a window into how dominant assumptions undergird research as they examined “parental marital status, parental education, parental status as welfare recipient, social economic status, the number of books in the home, and occupational status” (p. 10). Lyon shared Wood’s impression that African American dialect also may be a contributing factor in “sound-symbol” reading approaches (p. 11). Lyon surmised that “some aspects of race and culture can influence the development of reading abilities” (p. 11, emphasis added). He also declared, without support, that “bias or disadvantage is not reflected in referral patterns” (p. 11). Lyon’s statement aligned with Stanovich and Siegel’s (1994) perspective of intervention failures that highlighted culture, economic class, ethnicity, environment, language, and race as possible factors for low achievement. Admittedly, they implied that these factors were potential predictors of reading difficulties in conflict with the SLDA (1969).

Lyon proposed, in his closing remarks, several ideas that aligned with the purpose of the Summit: early interventions, collaboration among stakeholders, teacher development, acknowledgment of potential biases in referral patterns, and increased funding. General education instruction also found support from Representative Owens, then-First Lady Clinton, and U.S. Secretary of Education Riley. They argued for more whole-classroom instruction to include students with LD and less segregation of minoritized students (S. C. Cramer, 1996). Their ideas were initially sidelined but resurfaced as key features in multitiered interventions to thwart segregation claims.

The dominant narrative’s Janus-faced discourses were reflected in Lyon’s comments about race and the inaccuracies of IQ testing. On one hand, he admits that the IQ–achievement discrepancy approach produced “invalid diagnostic markers for LD in basic reading” (p. 24) and acknowledged that the tests were poor indicators of early reading difficulties among African American students. On the other hand, he dismissed the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the findings of Larry P. v. Riles (1979 & 1986). In the latter, the plaintiffs argued there was bias in testing procedures and the placement of SOC in special education: “labeling and placement decisions reflected stereotypic beliefs about White intellectual superiority” and “the widespread use of ‘scientifically’ objective measures to gauge intellectual ability” (Ferri & Connor, 2005, p. 94). Lyon (1996) argued for replacing the long-standing use of the IQ–achievement discrepancy approach for SLD placement, especially, but not singularly among SOC. The alternative approach simply replaced the use of IQ tests, as it drew from the same ideological beliefs in White supremacy (intellectual superiority and the use of “scientifically” objective measures). Legally, the alternative approach permitted the disproportionate identification of SOC for special education and did not provide equal educational opportunities.

In an effort to illustrate the need for early reading intervention among SOC, students whose first language is not English, and students living in poverty, as well as drawing on the dominant narrative, D. Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, and Simmons (1997) crafted a hypothetical sketch that allegedly reflected an actual urban school environment:

Now picture this: 34 children in an urban third-grade classroom, one third of whom live in poverty. Six live with grandparents, and three are in foster care. Five come from homes in which a language other than English is spoken; two children do not speak English at all. Seven, six, five, three, two, and one are African American, Hispanic American, Korean, Russian, Haitian, Chinese, respectively. Six are new to the school, and four will relocate to a different school next year. Only five of the 34 students are at or above grade level in reading; 10 are two or more grade levels below. There is a 5-grade spread in reading achievement. In addition, three students have been certified as learning disabled. One is severely mentally retarded, and another is deaf. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the child with mental retardation and two other students in the class have been physically or sexually abused. (p. 176)

The sketch exposed an uninformed and impoverished characterization of urban classrooms, families, immigrants, schools, and students; it also clarified that researchers were racially conscious while dismissing the research about inequalities in the field. MacMillan, Siperstein, and Gresham (1996) and Reschly (1997) examined the overrepresentation of SOC in special education and concluded that a host of intervening factors influenced placements. Likewise, politicians were aware of perceptions of racial bias and disproportionality linked to special education, as evident in the reauthorization of IDEA (1997). The law required states to collect and report race/ethnicity data to document and address racial disproportionality (34 C.F.R. 300.755). It also provided outlines of specific requirements to better track racial disproportionality: reporting data by race, analyzing disproportionality data from states and schools, and revising policies, procedures, and practices when significant disproportionality is found.

The focus on reading achievement and development in the sketch alleged to have identified which students might benefit from reading support: students who are disabled, English language learners, minoritized, and poor. It also signaled that progress by third grade was a benchmark that aligned with a proposal under consideration by Congress whereby “every child in America should be able to read well and independently by the end of third grade” (143 Cong. Rec. 86, 1997, emphasis added). The authors implied that if early reading interventions had occurred, students’ reading failures would have been prevented.

Separately, L. S. Fuchs and Fuchs (1998) acknowledged legislation that challenged the overrepresentation of SOC in special education due to the use of IQ discrepancy measures and offered an alternative approach for early reading intervention. They mentioned the ineffectiveness of IQ–achievement discrepancy measures; racial disproportionality among students who are American Indian, Black, and Latinx; and increasing costs of funding special education. They repeated claims that IQ–achievement discrepancy models should be abandoned and argued that they should be replaced with their alternative approach: a four-staged multitiered approach (RTI) that, along with teacher judgment, offered a way to assure students’ eligibility for special education. In this model, students received effective general education, small-group instruction, and individualized tutoring before referrals for special education placement. The researchers claimed their approach was aligned with federal law and presented a likelihood of reducing the overrepresentation of SOC in special education: “Equity is achieved when, before placement, evidence verifies that special education is actually a valuable service because it enhances the learning of the individual” (p. 216). Later, they summarized RTI as “a research-based multitiered system of preventive intervention to prevent LD for students who are otherwise ‘instructional casualties’” (L. S. Fuchs & Fuchs, 2007, p. 15). They did not guarantee their model, however, and suggested additional research was needed.

Connections: Politics and Reading Research

During the late 1990s, Congress established three additional panels to review reading research. First, the National Academy of Science, under Adams’s leadership, impaneled culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse experts to review “the effectiveness of interventions for young children who are at risk of having problems learning to read” (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 18). The recommendations in the resulting report, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, acknowledged that reading is “inextricably embedded in educational, social, historical, cultural, and biological realities” (p. 33). With broad strokes and deficit language, the authors shared factors—biological, class, cultural, environment, hearing, and visual—used to identify students who may be “at risk” of reading failure. Other risk factors included speakers with limited English or nonstandard English skills; minority students’ communities, families, and homes; and parents with limited reading skills. The connections between race and poverty aligned with special education and reading research traditions:

Children from poor families, children of African American and Hispanic descent, and children attending urban schools are at much greater risk of poor reading outcomes than are middle-class, European-American, and suburban children. Studying these demographic disparities can help us identify groups that should be targeted for special prevention efforts. (pp. 27-28)

Minoritized racial groups were more often paired with poverty and urbanicity, and when the combined characteristics of poverty and SOC were identified, students were labeled as potentially “at risk” of reading failure. Not surprisingly, the panel’s findings mirrored claims made at the LD summit (1994) as well as recommendations made by Adams (1990).

Second, Republican U.S. Senators Thad Cochran and Arlen Spector pushed forward an agenda to address the alleged “growing national education crisis,” in pursuit of a solution to early reading difficulties. Mississippi Senator Cochran introduced federal legislation to improve the reading performance and outcomes of schoolchildren following the release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading Report Cards (National Center for Education Statistics, 1992, 1994). The reports portrayed students in Mississippi among the lowest ranked in reading achievement, and the White students in Mississippi exceeded the national percentage of students at the basic level. Cochran criticized reading research as filled with confusing results, failing schools, underprepared teachers, and weak education programs in higher education, although he did not present any evidence for these critiques. He insisted that “rigorous scientific research [is needed] to understand not only the causes but the consequences of reading problems and related cognitive difficulties” (143 Cong Rec H 4072). Later, Dr. Duane Alexander testified at a hearing on reading development and disorders that failure to learn to read was “a major public health issue” (National Reading Panel [NRP], 2000, p. 7). The framing of early reading difficulties as a national crisis and a health problem reflected the language and imagery of the LD advocates.

The third panel to review beginning reading was the NRP. Drawing on procedures and processes from NICHD and USDOE, the panel consisted of community members, medical doctors, parents, reading experts, and teachers. They were charged to

examine critically the research literature with respect to the basic processes by which children learn to read, and the instructional approaches used in the United States to teach children to learn to read . . . and evaluate research on teaching of reading to children, identify proven methodologies. (NRP, 2000, pp. 1-2)

Donald N. Langenberg, a physicist and the NRP chair, drew on the dominant narrative to define which methods of reading research were acceptable: “We cannot separate truth from conjecture, or distinguish what really works from what might work without scientifically rigorous, experimental, or quasi-experimental research of the kind on which this Panel focused its work” (NRP, 2000, p. 2). The full report consisted of five subgroup reports (on alphabetics, comprehension, fluency, teacher education, and computer technology) and a minority report.

Among the subgroup reports, the one on alphabetics is germane: It presented a meta-analysis of phonemic awareness and a review of phonics. Unsurprisingly, although Congress requested demographic data, ethnicity and race were invisible in the report. Individual research studies also obfuscated discussions of ethnicity and race with descriptions of reading achievement influenced by class, community, home life, and absent fathers (Gersten, Darch, & Gleason, 1998) or by living in an urban setting, lack of home pre-literacy training, and poor-quality instruction in schools (Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider, & Mehta, 1998). Spanish-dominant students were not included in the original studies. Demographically, the majority of identifiable students were English dominant, learning disabled, middle class, and White (Willis & Williams, 2001). Through efforts by Senator Cochran, the federal government disseminated free materials in support of the findings of the NRP report. The Americana discourse and images of SOC used in the ancillary materials implied that SOC would benefit most from the scientifically based research on reading instruction, although they were not part of the original studies.

The findings of the report appeared to corroborate recommendations found in earlier federal reports. They were paired with data from NAEP and presented as “an abundance of facts” regarding national reading achievement. Although race, as a descriptor, was invisible in the NRP report, race was central and visible in NAEP data. In both, the reading achievement of White students became the standard to which minoritized student achievement was compared. The dominant narrative simultaneously drew on the Janus-faced Americana discourse in support for vulnerable groups, while scientific racism was used to sabotage the possibility of equity in reading achievement. DeLissovoy (2016) observed that “rather than softening the blow of systemic inequality and marginalization, elite reform efforts . . . end up repackaging and accelerating these processes” (p. 353). Throughout the 20th century, federal political and institutional structures authorized, choreographed, and controlled processes to review, promote, and disseminate information on reading research. The anodyne nature of political rhetoric functions as an undertow in reading reform and obscures the intersectional oppressive mechanisms at play.

RTI: Politics, Reading, and Special Education Research

Presidential candidate Governor George W. Bush portrayed education as a national crisis as he sought to convince politicians and the public that he could resolve differences in the academic achievement gap between SOC and their White peers. Drawing comparisons to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Civil Rights Act (1964), and featuring the advocacy of Marian Wright Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund (1973)—that is, Leave No Child Behind, H.R. 1990/S. 940—Bush’s message was crafted to subliminally appeal, link, and promote the idea that it was time to address inequality for children of color and children who live in poverty. For example, in a speech to the Latin Business Association, he argued that “no child in America should be segregated by low expectations, imprisoned by illiteracy, abandoned to frustration and darkness of self-doubt” (Bush, 1999). His remarks invoked the Janus-faced discourses of Scientific Racism and Americana. He embraced Scientific Racism when he compared student achievement by race: “It is a scandal of the first order when the average test scores of African-American and Latino students at age 17 are roughly the same as white 13-year-old’s’ ” (Bush, 1999). In another speech, before the NAACP in 2000, he returned to the Americana discourse of educational equity and fairness by characterizing “reading [as] the new civil right” (as cited in Stanford, 2013). He identified early reading achievement as a lynchpin to academic success. These pronouncements were not happenstance but calculated political maneuvers to sway politicians and the public.

As president, Bush (2002b) revised and broadened his platform, declaring, “Education is the greatest civil rights issue of our time” as he extended educational equity to address students with disabilities. This was accomplished through the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), revised ESEA/Title I (Improving the Academic Performance of the Disadvantaged, Part A, Basic Program), Title III (Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students), Title VII (Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native Education), and IDEA (addressing the needs of students with disabilities). NCLB required states to assure adequate progress was made annually by economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, and students with limited English proficiency. NCLB (2002) also required data be disaggregated by race and tasked each state with “defining major racial and ethnic subgroups” (p. 1446). Reading was recognized as pivotal to the effectiveness of NCLB and the national focus on reading resulted in significant increases of federal funding.

Special Education: Support of RTI

Executive Order 13227, The President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education, emerged as a key document connecting reading and special education research. The panel was directed to consider that “the education of all children, regardless of background or disability, must always be a national priority . . . [and] among those at greatest risk of being left behind are children with disabilities” (Bush, 2002a). The commission’s report, A New Era: Revitalizing Special Education for Children and Their Families (President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education, 2002), presented three general recommendations: focus on results, not on process; embrace a model of prevention, not a model of failure; and consider children with disabilities as general education children first. RTI was endorsed as the preferred approach for reading intervention, as a reasonable alternative to IQ–achievement discrepancy models, and as a way to screen for special education. Likewise, during testimony before the Congressional Subcommittee on Education Reform, Carnine (2003) articulated connections between LD and early reading problems and emphasized the need to improve general and special education’s quality of instruction with “scientifically-based” interventions. In his testimony, he framed reading intervention as a multistep approach, like those undertaken in medicine and social work. He proffered that general education needed improvement and the best way to do so was through scientifically based education, along with a multistaged intervention program. He explained that RTI was focused on early intervention so that students were identified quickly and referrals for special education placement were reduced. Carnine also claimed that prevention of early reading problems would lead to a reduction of racial disproportionality in special education.

The latter idea conflicted with an in-depth review of research (Donovan & Cross, 2002) that acknowledged: Special education theorizing obscured race in descriptions of culture and other factors (environment, languages other than English, social class), and disproportionality persisted for reasons that were not immediately recognized but appear tethered to poverty. Research by Hosp and Reschly (2003) also revealed that higher numbers of referrals for African American, American Indian, and Latinx students existed when compared with their Asian American and White peers. Their study exposed the consistent failure to include racial and ethnic group data in national intervention databases.

The reauthorization of IDEA (2004) included RTI funding under Title I, Title III, and Coordinated Early Intervening Services (CEIS), of which RTI was the favored component (U.S. Department of Education Assistance to States, 2006). The new guidelines authorized local school districts to use RTI to support reading and behavior, general education, and early reading interventions for students with SLD and to serve as a remedy for racial disproportionality in special education. States were required to “have policies and procedures in place to prevent the inappropriate overidentification or disproportionate representation by race or ethnicity of students with disabilities” (34 C.F.R. 300.173; 20 U.S.C. I4l2(a)(24)). Under Part B, states were required to “collect and examine data to determine whether significant disproportionality on the basis of race and ethnicity is occurring in the state, or its school districts, with respect to the identification, placement, and discipline of students with disabilities” (U.S. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, 2016, p. 5). States were required to “monitor local education agencies using quantifiable indicators of disproportionate representation of racial and ethnic groups in special education” (34 C.F.R. 300.600(d)(3); 20 U.S.C. l4l6(a)(3)(C)). In addition, states had a separate obligation to annually report significant race and ethnicity disproportionality under 20 U.S.C. 1418(d) and 34 C.F.R. 300.64. Notions of “flexibility” permitted states to use the IQ–discrepancy achievement metric, create racial categories, and determine what constituted significant race and ethnicity disproportionality (USDOE, 2008b; federal guidelines now require the use of seven ethnic and racial groups). The flexibility options weakened chances for equality, obfuscated attempts to track and monitor compliance, and made noncompliance difficult to prove.

Some members of Congress expressed reservations about RTI as a universal remedy and questioned the merits of “scientific evidence,” limited data, a focus on reading, subjectivity in determining SLD, and the effectiveness of RTI among SOC and students who are not native English speakers. Supporters of RTI pointed to the breadth of available research on its effectiveness while admitting more research was needed for the identified groups. Their rebutall gave policy makers and researchers, often the same people (D. Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006), more time to address these concerns. In addition, mutual relationships and lack of dissension concretized RTI within educational, political, and institutional arenas.

Alternative research conducted by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and the National Center for Education Statistics (2004) revealed patterns of racial disproportionality in special education placements. It also calibrated the use of “mentally retarded” labeling of Black children as related to educational opportunity, race, and tracking. Among the findings were repeated dominant narratives of White supremacy and Black intellectual inferiority:

Black children constitute 33% of those labeled “mentally retarded.”

Black children are nearly three times more likely than Whites to be labeled “mentally retarded.”

States with a history of legal school segregation account for the highest overrepresentation of African Americans labeled “mentally retarded.”

In wealthier districts, Black children, especially Black boys, are more likely to be labeled “mentally retarded.”

Studies of disproportionate placement indicate unconscious racial bias on the part of school authorities. (Public Broadcasting Service, 2004)

The 2005 IDEA amendment outlined steps to remedy racial disproportionality by addressing cultural differences, the involvement of families, and students whose first language is not English. A number of USDOE (2005, 2007b 2008, 2011) memorandums were issued to states reiterating the legal requirements for accurate reporting of racial disproportionality in special education—yet racial disproportionality persisted.

RTI was portrayed as the solution to educational inequality by preventing reading difficulties and diminishing racial disproportionality in special education, herein SLD. The logic centered on a multitiered approach to reading intervention and prevention: avoiding the wait-to-fail syndrome, closing the reading achievement gap, and preventing reading failure and longtime reading difficulties. Under RTI, Tier I, all students would receive “high-quality general education” instruction and “universal” screening. Tier II presented small-group instruction focused on the needs of the learners. Tier III expanded the equity theme by offering individualized instruction but otherwise mimicked Tier II. RTI as an approach identified students who are not reaching benchmarks and referred them for SLD screening and additional support in special education, or Tier IV. Overall, RTI appeared to offer a scientific, research-based intervention for reading, that included processes, procedures, and documentation to track equal educational access. However, it continued to be troubled by racial disproportionality.

Supporters argued the multiple steps helped to document compliance and “determine if significant disproportionality based on race and ethnicity is occurring at the State or local level with respect to disability, placement in particular settings” (34 C.F.R. 300.646(a); 20 U.S.C. I4l8(d)(l)). States were afforded flexibility to determine SLD placements and permitted consideration of “a child’s response to scientific, research-based intervention as part of the SLD determination process” (USDOE, 2007, pp. 1, 34). D. Fuchs et al. (2007) explained that RTI was legally sanctioned as “a method of disability identification” (p. 58), and personnel were “expected to reduce the likelihood that untaught or poorly taught nondisabled students are misidentified as disabled” (p. 58). Americana discourses implied these processes and procedures were equitable.

RTI appealed to educators, politicians, and the public because it provided federal funding to all students (beyond the previously identified groups), and thus it was more equitable. Americana appeals of initial high-quality instruction grounded Tier I and implied the approach offered equitable instruction to all students. The moniker universal is a misnomer, though, as assessments reflected dominant systems of knowing. Tier II, centered on small-group instruction, offered additional skill support and included progress monitoring. This step implied greater equity as students’ individual needs were being more directly addressed. The processes, however, are unregulated, and interventionists (teachers or staff) implemented informal reading assessments. These assessments were hailed as “scientifically based” and “nationally normed,” but they were drawn from the same ideological assumptions as the discredited IQ–achievement discrepancy model. In addition, interventionists were allowed to make decisions (evaluations and judgments) regarding students’ language dialects and variations (although the legal description of SLD prohibits consideration of cognitive, cultural, and linguistic factors). Tier III offered individual tutoring and assessment that were equally wanting. Tier IV moved students into special education.

Numerous scholars observed special education’s unease with racial disproportionality. Shifrer, Mueller, and Callahan (2011) opined, “(1) students may be referred to special education in response to issues other than a learning disability, (2) the identification process may be inconsistent and/or inaccurate, and (3) the disproportionately under-identified may not receive needed services” (p. 247). Kratochwill, Clements, and Kalymon (2007) pointed out that “considerable ambiguity exists in the exact definitions of what is evidence-based within the RTI model with a full range of opinions about how the intervention is developed, implemented, and evaluated” (p. 26). Hosp and Madyun (2007) suggested that when guidelines are followed, “it can be inferred that each individual’s needs are being met, no matter what race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, native language, or any other factor” (p. 173). Other scholars voiced concerns about the use of RTI and its link to racial disproportionality in special education. Skiba et al. (2008) asserted, “It cannot be assumed that interventions that have been shown to work on average in improving educational outcomes will also be effective for groups that have been traditionally marginalized” (p. 281). Castro-Villarreal, Villarreal, and Sullivan (2016) observed that an “unintended outcome of RTI is subjectivity and variability in decisions about who should be eligible for special education” (p. 15). Recently, NCLD revealed that during the 2015-2016 school year, SLD identification among SOC, students learning English, and students who live in poverty remained constant and disproportionate (Horowitz, Rawe, & Whittaker, 2017).

Reading Research and RTI

Among reading researchers, there was a consistent narrative that pointed to RTI as an approach to prevent reading failures. However, missing from the narrative was any discussion of the role RTI has played in the placement of SOC in SLD and sustaining racial disproportionality. Over the last two decades, RTI research evaluations, reflections, reports, and reviews failed to acknowledge the link between reading difficulties and special education eligibility as well the role of IDEA funding in support of special education (Gersten & Dimino, 2006). There was a dearth of RTI research among SOC (Lindo, 2006) and few studies that focused on SOC and universal screenings, reading assessments, and process monitoring (L. Cramer, 2015). Evaluations and reports centered on student group size, paraprofessionals (educators/tutors), reading (informal assessments, instructional scripts, materials, and reading strategies), student and teacher schedules, and teachers’ skills (fidelity, knowledge, training). Reviews consistently pointed to teacher fidelity as the major culprit in the ineffectiveness of RTI to improve reading achievement among students, along with factors related to culture, economic status, and environment. Clearly, despite widespread implementation of RTI, NAEP (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015) data revealed reading achievement gaps persisted between SOC and their White peers. Reading research eschewed discussions of RTI as a pathway of SLD and as a remedy for racial disproportionality, and has remained silent about its role in sustaining both.

Racial Disproportionality: A legal remedy

In the waning months of the Obama administration, three steps were taken to address racial disproportionality. First, Secretary of Education, John King (2016), reminded states of their legal responsibilities and produced a fact sheet to illustrate pervasive racial disproportionality in special education. Second, Assistant Secretary of Education, Catherine Lhamon (2016), explained the subtleties of disproportionality, noting especially “(1) over-identification of students of color as having disabilities; (2) under-identification of students of color who do not have disabilities; and (3) unlawful delays in evaluating students of color for disability and their need for special education services” (p. 2). She also restated that every misidentification is a violation of Title VI and Section 504 that may “harm students’ civil rights to equal educational opportunity” (Lhamon, 2016, p. 3). Third, the Obama administration legislated a policy, effective July 1, 2018, to standardize the methodology to “identify and address the factors contributing to the significant disproportionality, which may include . . . economic, cultural, or linguistic barriers to appropriate identification or placement in particular educational settings” (Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 2016). The current USDOE, however, resolved to “postpone by two years the date for States to comply with the ‘Equity in IDEA’ or ‘significant disproportionality’ regulations, from July 1, 2018, to July 1, 2020” (Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 2018). They cited concerns over the proposed standard methodology, lack of evidence of discrimination, and need for additional research. The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates filed a lawsuit against current Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, and the USDOE for failure to uphold IDEA with regard to racial disproportionality (National Center for Youth Law, 2018). On March 8, 2019, a federal judge ruled that the Department of Education illegally delayed the Obama-era mandate and ordered the mandate “take effect immediately” (E. L. Green, 2019, n.p.).

Conclusion

This history and critique of RTI adds to what is known about the pervasiveness of the dominant ideology within institutional and political structures and how it has been used to frame narratives about what reading is, what counts as reading research, and whom reading research benefits. This article furthers an understanding of how the Fourteenth Amendment has been mis/applied in support of equitable access to education for SOC and students living in poverty. It also demonstrates how dominant ideologies characterize race in reading research, sustain racial disproportionality in special education, and obfuscate and undermine legal remedies for educational justice. Centralizing the role of race helps to explain how the dominant narrative contributes to the resilience of RTI, as mounting evidence suggests it is not a solution to reading difficulties or racial disproportionality in special education. Why is this knowledge important, and why now?

A new challenge to equitable educational access and opportunity for Black students exists in the Gary B. v. Snyder (2016), as it revisits historic patterns of educational injustice. The plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that Black students who attend one of five identified Detroit public schools are not receiving an equal and equitable education compared with their White peers. Specifically, they emphasize that the plaintiffs have not received adequate reading instruction to propel them to a meaningful life or future. The lawyers cite a number of alleged violations of the Fourteenth Amendment: due process and equal protection clause, state-created danger, discrimination on the basis of race in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42, U.S.C., and 34 C.F.R. 1000.3((b)(2); and declaratory relief (Gary B. v. Snyder, 2016). Their case hinges, in part, on whether literacy is a fundamental right (Gary B. v. Snyder, 2016). Intriguingly, their request for relief echoes dominant narrative assumptions and replicates RTI (Gary B. v. Snyder, 2016). Given the history and evolution of RTI discussed herein, the use of RTI in its current iteration is unlikely to remedy the literacy concerns of the plaintiffs.

In 2018, the presiding judge dismissed the case, ruling that literacy is not promised in the Constitution. The case is currently being appealed, and a number of amicus briefs have been filed. One, by PEN America (2018), argues that “the right to education, and therefore to literacy, is . . . recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” (p. 10). Another amicus brief (Brief for Detroit Literacy, as Amicus Curiae, Gary B. v. Snyder, 2018) was filed by the National Council of Teachers of English, the International Literacy Association, Dean Moje (of the University of Michigan, College of Education), and an impressive list of researchers. Unfortunately, the body of research cited is based on the same ideological positions that frame much of reading research as well as RTI and will reproduce similar results.

What are the next steps? To ignore the role that race plays in reading research and in RTI is to support racial inequality and to be complicit in derailing educational justice. We must acknowledge the contributions of reading research to the reproduction of racial discrimination and marshal the moral and political will to replace the ideology that informs existing laws, reading research, and reading instruction .

Disparities & inequities don’t just happen. They are created by discriminatory laws and predatory actions, and they are preserved by the complicit silence of many. (Ayanna Presley, 2018)

Footnotes

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.

ORCID iD

Arlette Ingram Willis

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Race,Response to Intervention,and Reading Research

Abstract

Keywords

Sociopolitical Antecedents of RTI

RTI: Early Beginnings in Special Education and Reading Research

Intersections of Politics, Special Education Research, and Reading Research

Connections: Politics and Special Education Research

Connections: Politics and Reading Research

RTI: Politics, Reading, and Special Education Research

Special Education: Support of RTI

Reading Research and RTI

Racial Disproportionality: A legal remedy

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

References