The Pre and Referral Process - Essay Example

The Pre and Referral Process It is very important for the educational system to help in preparing all s for their future lives, careers and citizenship given the demands of the 21st century (Samuel et al, 32). Schools should aim at providing multiple opportunities for every student as well as ensuring various pathways for all students to achieve the results they desire. In some cases however, some students may not meet the behavioral and learning standards expected for their respective age groups.

Additional support may be required to assist such students in their education and help them prepare for a much brighter future just like their age or classmates. Students with such special needs have to be identified and given special care right from an early age. Where it is necessary, such students ought to be separated from other students and taken to special schools where they can receive special care from specialists. Before the students are separated from others and referred to special schools, efforts must be made to try and fit and accommodate them in to the normal program.

It is important that the students must be trained to adapt to the current system before any attempts to refer them to special schools (Samuel et al, 253). Only those students who, after making efforts to accommodate them in the general education program, they still can’t adapt are supposed to be referred. The teachers and the guardians of the students need to be satisfied that the needs of the student cannot be accommodated in the general education program. Referral should be done at an early age so as to help the students better and improve chances of them achieving a higher level of success in life.

Schools should put in place mechanisms of identifying students to discover those who may have special needs that need additional attention. Before any referral, there ought to be pre-referral procedures to help identify the needs of the student and whether a referral is necessary to meet those needs (Samuel et al, 342). Pre-referral refers to the procedures taken to assess the students who may exhibit certain characteristics in their behaviors and education to identify if they need to be given any additional attention in special schools.

Pre-referral is a very important step in ensuring children with special needs are identified early enough and given special care. It also gives the guardians and teachers an opportunity to ponder on the child’s future and come up with the best alternatives for him or her at the end of the pre-referral period. The student should be assessed using the Instructional Support Team (IST) found in elementary schools in the district, and the Student Study Team (SST) in MHS and KHS. This will help document the student’s experiences as he or she tries to adapt to the general education program.

Depending on this assessment, the student can either continue learning in the school or be referred to a special learning institution by the parents, teachers, or counselors (Samuel et al, 341). Early intervention measures are very beneficial to both the school and the student. One advantage of early intervention is that it leads to empowerment of teachers in the general education program with a wide range of skills and strategies to be able to serve the diverse needs of the learners. Early intervention processes also provide a forum for teachers as well as other team members, including guardians and counselors, to discuss and brainstorm on better ways of helping the student and meeting his needs (Samuel et al, 142).

Early intervention also helps to prevent overrepresentation of students from a specific group in special needs education. RTI can be defined as both a service delivery system and a diagnostic tool that aids in intervention by the school to identify and deal with children with special needs. It is a multi-tiered approach for decision making which seeks to address students’ behavioral and academic difficulties. It is a great model incorporating both intervention and prevention measures in order to help students achieve the best out of their education.

RTI is very useful in helping students get the best attention required for their success in education and future life. It has therefore been at the heart of special education in the recent years. Successful implementation of RTI requires collaborative and unified efforts in teaching and learning with the support of all major stakeholders in schools and the guardians. There are three steps involved in implementing RTI in special education. The first step is consensus building, where the basic concepts of the system are discussed and agreed upon.

The second step is infrastructure building and involves examining various sites against requirements of RTL. The final step is implementation where all the structures are put in place with necessary support to help students with special needs. Reference Samuel Kirk , James J Gallagher, Mary Ruth Coleman , Nicholas J. Anastasiow . Educating Exceptional Children 13th edition. Belmont: Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.