This study sought to provide educational researchers, policy-makers, and professionals with quantitative data on the status of RTI implementation, as well as on which leadership behaviors have been associated with successful implementation. School psychologists and other RTI professionals rated their schools on RTI implementation using the RTI Essential Components Integrity Rubric and rated their school principals on leadership style using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5X. Descriptive data indicate that while schools have made progress, they have fallen far short of having fully implemented the RTI model. Multiple regression analysis identified transformational leadership as the predictive factor for RTI implementation, highlighting the importance of effective school leadership for this model.

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The investigators examined four correlated aspects of the Bender-Gestalt and the Draw-A-Person tests. Subjects were 41 boys and 14 girls classified as seriously emotionally disturbed or seriously behavior disordered by their school system in southwest Georgia. Each subject's Bender-Gestalt and human figure drawings were placed on a digitizing pad and encoded to provide information relative to the width, height, average point of location on the fourth quadrant abscissa and ordinate of each drawing. The widths of Bender Figures 2 and 8 correlated significantly with the widths of human drawings; the heights of Figures A, 5, and 7 were significantly correlated with the heights of the human drawings. Bender Figure 1 was significantly correlated with average points of location on the abscissa of human figure drawings (distance from the left margin of the page), but correlations between the average points of location from the top of the page were nonsignificant. Comparison of these results with data from other samples might refine diagnosis.

40 students (M age = 13.5 yr., SD = 1) from a rural south Georgia school system participated. 20 participants (11 boys, 9 girls) were receiving special education services for diagnosed learning disabilities, and 20 were general education students (10 boys, 10 girls). Students attempted to memorize a list of 15 words in 1 min., tried to recall the words, and then repeated the process for each of 10-word lists. As predicted, students with diagnosed learning disabilities recalled fewer words overall and fewer critical lures than did the general education students.

Disproportionate representation occurs when the percentage of an identified group enrolled in special education varies significantly from that group's overall percentage of the school population (Harry, 1994). Response to Intervention (RTI), a paradigm for educational intervention, is designed to minimize many factors contributing to disproportionality. The study examined disproportionality risk ratios for African American students, ages 6 through 21, who received special education services in a southeastern state supporting the RTI initiative during the 2006-2009 school years. Data suggest that African American students identified with a specific learning disability experienced increased referral and placement in special education in the three years corresponding to the initial RTI implementation efforts. Definitive conclusions about the fidelity of RTI implementation or effectiveness of intervention are beyond the scope of the current study, but disproportionality findings may be used as a comparative baseline for future research. Intervention Disproportionate RepresentationDisproportionate representation, or disproportionality, occurs when the percentage of an identified group enrolled in special education varies significantly from that group's overall percentage of the school population (Harry, 1994). Disproportionality is a complex problem and a host of contributing factors has been cited in the literature to include societal factors, racism in education, classroom management failures, cultural unresponsiveness, varied definitions and implementation of special education, as well as biases in the educational and referral process itself (Armor, 2006;Artiles & Bal, 2008;Artiles & Trent, 1994;Coutinho & Oswald, 2000;Evans, 2005;Farkas, 2003;Harry & Klingner, 2007;Miller & Ward, 2008;Monroe, 2005;Patton, 1998;Singham, 2003;Skiba, Poloni-Staudinger, Simmons, Feggins-Azziz, & Chung, 2005;Warner, Dede, Garvan, & Conway, 2002). The negative implications of disproportionality include curriculum limitations, lower academic achievement, decreased participation in postsecondary education, and decreased employment opportunities for those identified and placed in special education (Patton, 1998).The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 incorporated into oversight of special education mandate that states and districts analyze disproportionality data and take action to reduce imbalances (Bollmer, Bethel, GarrisonMogren, & Brauen, 2007). The primary measure of the incidence of disproportionality currently used in analyzing data is the risk ratio. A risk ratio "compares a racial/ethnic group's risk of receiving special education and related services to the risk for a comparison group," providing a measure of risk for an ethnic group of receiving special education services (Bollmer et al., 2007, p. 187). A weighted risk ratio is a more complex calculation in which a particular district's level of risk is divided by that of risk for all other students in that state (Bollmer et al., 2...