Implementing prereferral intervention teams as an approach to school-based consultation in an urban school system

Prereferral intervention is an approach to the prevention of special education problems that, although frequently recommended in recent years, has not received sufficient attention as a research topic. The purpose of this article is to provide data descriptive of the typical procedures and the collaborative problem-solving processes used by the prereferral intervention teams in eight urban schools. In addition to describing the model and its implementation, this article provides data indicating educators' perceptions of the goals of these teams, and their strengths and weaknesses, as well as describing the nature of consultation that is provided to classroom teachers and offering recommendations for improving these teams. The qualitative data sources used in this research included surveys, interviews, and team observations. Surveys were administered to team members and teachers, followed by interviews with these two groups. This resulted in 134 surveys and 91 interviews that were available for analysis. Also, each prereferral intervention team was observed at least once as they reviewed cases that had been referred. Some of the findings about team functioning included (a) meeting schedules varied from once per week to once per month; (b) multidisciplinary input was consistently viewed as a strength; (c) problem-solving stages were used inconsistently, particularly problem definition and systematic data collection; (d) involvement of classroom teachers was inconsistent; and (e) staff views about the preventive potential of prereferral intervention were widely disparate. In addition, the data revealed group process strategies used by the teams. These results are compared to existing literature and used to underscore strategies that are needed to implement prereferral intervention in urban systems. Suggestions are provided for future research in this area.