Impact of States' Adoption of Response to Interventions (RTI) on the Identification and Placement of Students in Special Education

This study investigates the impact of states' adoption of Response to Interventions (RTI) on the identification and placement of students in special education. RTI, adopted by the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2004, is designed to improve the identification and support of children with learning disabilities within inclusive educational settings. Using multiple national datasets, we employed a difference-in-differences method to assess state-level impacts from 2004 to 2018. Results show that states adopting RTI observed increased identification of students with specific learning disabilities, yet showed reductions in the placement of students with disabilities in separate school settings. Furthermore, our subgroup analyses suggest that RTI adoption disproportionately increased disability identification among non-White students relative to their White peers.