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Perspective Newsletters
Summer 2008
Update on Learning Disabilities
Page 7
Thirty years is really not that long of a time considering the evolution of national
issues.
It was just over thirty years ago that our country decided that all students, regardless
of disability, would be provided an individualized and special education.
At the time, learning disabilities was one of the major categories of disabilities
for which we wanted far reaching attention and protection.
Also, at that time also, even though the field was hardly new, defining learning
disabilities was complex and frequently debated. The national law finally defined
learning disabilities in the statute. It included the following:
"Specific learning disability means a disorder in one or more of the
basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken
or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think,
speak, read, write, spell or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes
such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction,
dyslexia and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have
learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps,
of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural,
or economic disadvantage." (PL 94-142)
Eligibility was determined based upon a severe discrepancy between achievement and
intellectual ability model which essentially required, in most cases, a discrepancy
between one and two standard deviations between expected achievement and aptitude
(IQ).
This made great sense and helped transform an initiative to a policy to an act with
substance that was readily enforceable.
Great positive change followed and continues.
At the same time, the field has come to understand a few things better.
- While the national law never intended for States and locals to use one measure
each to determine achievement and aptitude, most have used a single measure for
each which is believed to increase the risk of error associated with identification.
This does not include the error that may already be assigned the various instruments
for a variety of reasons (cultural norms, reliability, validity, reference to
the curriculum, correlation between the two instruments and/or measurements).
- There are other reasons that may account for a discrepancy between achievement
and aptitude. At the top of the list is quality and content of instruction. Sometimes
LD may be a measure of learning (input) while other times, LD may be a measure
of teaching (output). Simply put, sometimes a diagnosis of LD might be attributable
to teaching disabled.
- Following the discrepancy model requires that the educational achievement of
the student has already been delayed usually by at least two years. The student
has to fail first before making the criteria which acts as a gatekeeper for the
remedy. This inaction certainly is not good prevention much less intervention.
For these and other reasons, those in the field of learning disabilities have proffered
a new eligibility criterion model for LD: RTI.
RTI really stands for two models: Response to Intervention and Response to Instruction.
In this model, assessment is directly related to what has been taught.
In 2004 re-authorization of the IDEA, the United States Department of Education included
in the associated regulations language that States must not require the use of a
severe discrepancy model.
Since that short time ago, 39 states have revised their regulations, while ten report
they are currently in process of doing so.
More great progress!!!
Please check out http://www.projectforum.org/index.cfm for an excellent article on
these changes.
Reprints are provided free of charge through the National Association of State Directors
of Special Education.
Leary School can also provide interested parents with a hard copy of the Project
Forum article.
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