Post by misty on Jan 6, 2007 23:41:38 GMT -5
Thread Started on Jun 12, 2006, 1:35am
It only lets me save this to my computer..it says I can share it, but theres no working link to give..I saved it to my PC .
Thinking of Having Your Children Tested for Learning Disabilities? What You Absolutely Need to Know!
A learning difficulty is not necessarily a learning disability.
If a child is having difficulty in school, it’s always something to be concerned about. However, it’s important to understand that difficulty in school -- even serious difficulty -- does not necessarily mean that the child has a learning disability. It’s not as simple as saying "I want my daughter tested to find out if she has a learning disability."
Before you subject your son or daughter to the hours and hours of testing that are required to do a really thorough LD assessment, there are a few things to consider. A child can have difficulty in school for many reasons. A boy or girl may have had the misfortune of being exposed to inadequate or inappropriate teaching, or their education may have been interrupted for some reason. A teacher may have left unexpectedly because of illness, or it may have been difficult for a school to find a qualified replacement for a teacher on maternity leave. A teacher may have been under stress for personal reasons, and was not able to fulfill the duties of his/her job for several months, or even an entire school year. A child may have had a difficult time connecting with a teacher, even though the teacher was doing an excellent job. A child’s family may have moved once or twice, or traumatic family events have taken place during critical periods in the child’s instruction. As a result, there may be significant "holes" in the child’s knowledge or skill base that make it a challenge to learn higher-level skills. A child may have become ill or emotionally upset to the extent that he or she was unable to take advantage of what the teacher was offering. A child may not have been developmentally ready for what was being taught in class, and as a result, he or she may lack the cognitive maturity to do what was required. While it’s clear that a learning difficulty is not always caused by a learning disability, circumstances such as those listed above can certainly take their toll on a child’s education and on the development of a healthy attitude toward school.
So what is a learning disability?
Many groups or organizations have attempted to generate an acceptable definition of the term learning disabled, but there is still much confusion about what a learning disability really is. This is one of the things that make assessment a difficult challenge, even for a seasoned clinician.
In the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal government defines a "specific learning disability" as "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 that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
In an attempt to clarify some of the confusion about LD, this definition specifically excludes several other possible causes of learning difficulties. However, this rather complex definition does not do a couple of important things. It does not specifically say that this condition is neurologically based (that is, that learning disabilities are caused by a dysfunction or difference in the way the human brain processes information). Also, it does not say a word about how such a condition should be evaluated.
In an effort to broaden the definition offered by the federal government to make it more inclusive, the National Joint Committee for Learning Disabilities (NJCLD, 1989), made up of representatives from a variety of professions, declared that "learning disabilities is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual, presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction, and may occur across the life span. Problems in self-regulatory behaviors, social perception and social interaction may exist with learning disabilities, but do not by themselves constitute a learning disability. Although learning disabilities may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (for example, sensory impairment, mental retardation, serious emotional disturbance) or with extrinsic influences (such as cultural differences, insufficient or inappropriate instruction), they are not the result of those conditions or influences." This definition promotes the view that a learning disability is neurologically based, and that it may affect performance both in and out of school, and that the condition may affect a person in different ways throughout his or her entire life.
Other professional organizations, such as the American Psychiatric Association (APA), have also weighed in on this issue. In the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the APA), we can find a variety of conditions, such as "Reading Disorder" or "Mathematics Disorder" or "Disorder of Written Expression," all of which fall under the general umbrella of learning disabilities. The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) has worked hard to clarify the relationship between the terms learning disability and dyslexia. This organization defines dyslexia as "one of several distinct learning disabilities" (which it does not enumerate), and explains it as "a specific language-based disorder of constitutional origin characterized by difficulties in single word decoding, usually reflecting insufficient phonological processing abilities." The full definition can be found in the FAQs section of their website (http://www.interdys.org/) under "What is Dyslexia?"
The Schwab Learning Foundation (http://www.schwablearning.org/) makes a special effort to clarify the distinction between learning differences and learning disabilities. They apply the broad term learning differences to "a range and variety of learning challenges that children confront," which, in their view include both learning disabilities (as defined by federal law), and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (as defined by DSM-IV).
A "real" learning disability has a neurological basis.
Medical studies have confirmed that there is a neurobiological basis for learning disabilities. From the studies done by investigators like Dr. Albert Galaburda and Drs. Sally and Bennett Shaywitz (among others), we now know that the brains of individuals with learning disabilities function differently and are anatomically different from the brains of people without this condition. When learning differences are found to be caused by a brain that functions differently from the brains of most other people, then such a difference is appropriately called a learning disability. The problem is that, at least for the foreseeable future, the brain scans that can identify this difference are very expensive and only used in scientific studies involving small numbers of children. For that reason, there is only one practical approach to making this diagnosis.
First, qualified professionals have to rule out any environmental, medical, emotional factors or other conditions that have a negative impact on learning. The assessment must be guided by an active and unrelenting search for answers to questions that are raised by parents, by teachers and by the child himself. Before formal testing is even considered, a thorough developmental and educational history must be taken, with attention paid not only to what a child has not been able to do, but to how he was taught and why he learned or did not learn. History will tell us much about the nature of a child’s difficulties and help to guide the selection of tests that are then used to confirm diagnostic hypotheses, not to "discover" the roots of a learning problem.
A combination of a thorough history, an examination of the child’s actual work samples over time, and an assessment of the environment in which the child has been educated, and the wise use of formal tests can provide fairly objective evidence to justify the use of the learning disability label, versus a label of learning difficulty or learning difference.
An effective assessment requires a team effort.
Since a neuropsychologist is trained to assess the relationship between brain function and behavior (i.e., learning), it seems logical that an assessment of learning disabilities should be carried out by someone with this set of skills. However, a neuropsychologist may or may not be experienced and trained as an educator. As a result, there may be a discrepancy between what a neuropsychologist finds and the educational intervention that he or she recommends. Since a learning disability is a complex condition that varies from individual to individual, and which affects each learner differently depending on his age, the setting and the task, it is imperative that the diagnosis of this condition be carried out by a team of professionals from different disciplines who share and compare results, who question their individual and collective conclusions, and who collaboratively come to a sound diagnostic conclusion, and generate an effective intervention and support plan for a child.
Sounds simple, but it’s not.
It is the federal definition that is used by school systems to determine a child’s eligibility for special educational services. In schools, it’s not enough to have a learning disability to get special help. In order for a student to receive special educational services, he or she must not only exhibit the characteristics listed in this federal definition, but must also demonstrate a significant impairment in learning that is related to this disability. About 5 percent of school age students have been determined to have learning disabilities based on this dual set of criteria. Most educators believe that there are many more children (perhaps 20 to 25 percent) who have significant difficulty in some aspect of school, but who are not judged to have learning disabilities.
In an attempt to make an objective diagnosis, schools in the United States have adopted what’s known as a discrepancy formula to identify a learning disability. This is a rather simplistic approach to solving a big, expensive problem. Despite the lack of research supporting the use of this discrepancy formula, many evaluators look for two things to classify a child as learning disabled. They look for a difference (i.e., discrepancy) between a child’s potential (usually measured by an IQ test) and his achievement (as measured by an achievement test). This widely used "method" of identifying learning disabilities lacks a sound scientific foundation, since researchers have found that many kids without any learning difficulties whatsoever also exhibit this difference. While the discovery of such a difference clearly demands an explanation, it certainly does not confirm that a child has a learning disability. In an effort to explain the discrepancy, psychologists typically look for a significant difference between the total scores of the verbal section of an IQ test and the performance section, commonly referred to as a "verbal/performance split." Here again, a wide ("statistically significant") V/P split demands an explanation.
And it’s here that you get into another muddy area of assessment: so-called process tests. Remember that federal definition of learning disabilities that talked about a "disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written…"? This is a very non-specific term used to describe the cognitive behaviors thought to be involved in learning how to read, write and do arithmetic. These include such things as long- and short-term ("working") memory for sounds and for visually presented materials, auditory processing (listening and phonological processing) and language (receptive and expressive) and sequencing. It also includes things like rapid naming, organization, and comprehension.
The list goes on.
There are a couple of big problems at this point in the evaluation. It’s clear that in some kids with LD, some of the cognitive processes mentioned above are weak. It’s sometimes hard to show that by using formal testing. A student might do well on one test, but not on another that is supposed to measure exactly the same process. And furthermore, some kids with no apparent difficulties in school can have a weakness in "one or more of the psychological processes" involved in learning, if you look at the results of formal testing. In my own doctoral work, I administered four tests that were supposed to measure the same process; namely auditory discrimination, or the ability to tell the difference between and among words. I gave all four tests to over 300 students and found that two of these tests measured one skill and the other two measured quite another skill, even though they all had "auditory discrimination" in their title. What was more astounding is that even though all of the kids in the study were reading at or above grade level (i.e., had no LD) a full 25 percent of the students failed all four tests! If this weren’t enough to cast significant doubt on the efficacy of process tests, history has shown us that even if we can work with kids to make a "process" stronger, they may not do better in school. For a great analysis of this issue, read "The Uses and Misuses of Processing Tests" by Louise Spear-Swerling, Ph.D., co-author of "Off Track -- When Poor Readers Become ‘Learning Disabled’" (http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/assessment/swerling_assessment.html.)
Frustrating? Yes. Confusing? Yes. Hopeless? No.
Why? Because a competent diagnostician knows how to gather data from parents, teachers and other specialists and from about the child himself and consider all this information in the context of the child’s developmental and educational history and come up with a very good picture of not only a child’s learning style. He or she can also, with some degree of confidence conclude that this constellation of strengths and weakness can be considered a learning disability and not just a "learning difference." This takes time and it takes experience. It takes good investigative skills, and the patience not to rush to a conclusion about LD. It also takes the courage and confidence to use this label when it is appropriate. It demands the ability to translate the findings of a comprehensive evaluation into a plan that will make a difference the way the child is taught and in how he or she learns. A school psychologist may not have the time or the expertise in neuropsychological assessment to do this job well enough. An independent psychologist may have the time and the expertise, but may lack the opportunity or ability to relate this information to the teachers and others who are responsible for a child’s education on a day-to-day basis. One solution is for schools to employ psychologists who are trained in neuropsychology. Another is to commit to a collaborative process in which the expertise and wisdom of all participants in the evaluation process is collectively employed on behalf of the child. The more parents know what goes into an evaluation of learning disabilities, the better they can understand the results, advocate for good assessment practices, and be a better advocate for their child.
Please visit the website of the Learning Disabilities Association of Massachusetts (781-891-5009) for valuable information and resources for students, parents and teachers.
It only lets me save this to my computer..it says I can share it, but theres no working link to give..I saved it to my PC .
Thinking of Having Your Children Tested for Learning Disabilities? What You Absolutely Need to Know!
A learning difficulty is not necessarily a learning disability.
If a child is having difficulty in school, it’s always something to be concerned about. However, it’s important to understand that difficulty in school -- even serious difficulty -- does not necessarily mean that the child has a learning disability. It’s not as simple as saying "I want my daughter tested to find out if she has a learning disability."
Before you subject your son or daughter to the hours and hours of testing that are required to do a really thorough LD assessment, there are a few things to consider. A child can have difficulty in school for many reasons. A boy or girl may have had the misfortune of being exposed to inadequate or inappropriate teaching, or their education may have been interrupted for some reason. A teacher may have left unexpectedly because of illness, or it may have been difficult for a school to find a qualified replacement for a teacher on maternity leave. A teacher may have been under stress for personal reasons, and was not able to fulfill the duties of his/her job for several months, or even an entire school year. A child may have had a difficult time connecting with a teacher, even though the teacher was doing an excellent job. A child’s family may have moved once or twice, or traumatic family events have taken place during critical periods in the child’s instruction. As a result, there may be significant "holes" in the child’s knowledge or skill base that make it a challenge to learn higher-level skills. A child may have become ill or emotionally upset to the extent that he or she was unable to take advantage of what the teacher was offering. A child may not have been developmentally ready for what was being taught in class, and as a result, he or she may lack the cognitive maturity to do what was required. While it’s clear that a learning difficulty is not always caused by a learning disability, circumstances such as those listed above can certainly take their toll on a child’s education and on the development of a healthy attitude toward school.
So what is a learning disability?
Many groups or organizations have attempted to generate an acceptable definition of the term learning disabled, but there is still much confusion about what a learning disability really is. This is one of the things that make assessment a difficult challenge, even for a seasoned clinician.
In the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal government defines a "specific learning disability" as "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 that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
In an attempt to clarify some of the confusion about LD, this definition specifically excludes several other possible causes of learning difficulties. However, this rather complex definition does not do a couple of important things. It does not specifically say that this condition is neurologically based (that is, that learning disabilities are caused by a dysfunction or difference in the way the human brain processes information). Also, it does not say a word about how such a condition should be evaluated.
In an effort to broaden the definition offered by the federal government to make it more inclusive, the National Joint Committee for Learning Disabilities (NJCLD, 1989), made up of representatives from a variety of professions, declared that "learning disabilities is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual, presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction, and may occur across the life span. Problems in self-regulatory behaviors, social perception and social interaction may exist with learning disabilities, but do not by themselves constitute a learning disability. Although learning disabilities may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (for example, sensory impairment, mental retardation, serious emotional disturbance) or with extrinsic influences (such as cultural differences, insufficient or inappropriate instruction), they are not the result of those conditions or influences." This definition promotes the view that a learning disability is neurologically based, and that it may affect performance both in and out of school, and that the condition may affect a person in different ways throughout his or her entire life.
Other professional organizations, such as the American Psychiatric Association (APA), have also weighed in on this issue. In the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the APA), we can find a variety of conditions, such as "Reading Disorder" or "Mathematics Disorder" or "Disorder of Written Expression," all of which fall under the general umbrella of learning disabilities. The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) has worked hard to clarify the relationship between the terms learning disability and dyslexia. This organization defines dyslexia as "one of several distinct learning disabilities" (which it does not enumerate), and explains it as "a specific language-based disorder of constitutional origin characterized by difficulties in single word decoding, usually reflecting insufficient phonological processing abilities." The full definition can be found in the FAQs section of their website (http://www.interdys.org/) under "What is Dyslexia?"
The Schwab Learning Foundation (http://www.schwablearning.org/) makes a special effort to clarify the distinction between learning differences and learning disabilities. They apply the broad term learning differences to "a range and variety of learning challenges that children confront," which, in their view include both learning disabilities (as defined by federal law), and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (as defined by DSM-IV).
A "real" learning disability has a neurological basis.
Medical studies have confirmed that there is a neurobiological basis for learning disabilities. From the studies done by investigators like Dr. Albert Galaburda and Drs. Sally and Bennett Shaywitz (among others), we now know that the brains of individuals with learning disabilities function differently and are anatomically different from the brains of people without this condition. When learning differences are found to be caused by a brain that functions differently from the brains of most other people, then such a difference is appropriately called a learning disability. The problem is that, at least for the foreseeable future, the brain scans that can identify this difference are very expensive and only used in scientific studies involving small numbers of children. For that reason, there is only one practical approach to making this diagnosis.
First, qualified professionals have to rule out any environmental, medical, emotional factors or other conditions that have a negative impact on learning. The assessment must be guided by an active and unrelenting search for answers to questions that are raised by parents, by teachers and by the child himself. Before formal testing is even considered, a thorough developmental and educational history must be taken, with attention paid not only to what a child has not been able to do, but to how he was taught and why he learned or did not learn. History will tell us much about the nature of a child’s difficulties and help to guide the selection of tests that are then used to confirm diagnostic hypotheses, not to "discover" the roots of a learning problem.
A combination of a thorough history, an examination of the child’s actual work samples over time, and an assessment of the environment in which the child has been educated, and the wise use of formal tests can provide fairly objective evidence to justify the use of the learning disability label, versus a label of learning difficulty or learning difference.
An effective assessment requires a team effort.
Since a neuropsychologist is trained to assess the relationship between brain function and behavior (i.e., learning), it seems logical that an assessment of learning disabilities should be carried out by someone with this set of skills. However, a neuropsychologist may or may not be experienced and trained as an educator. As a result, there may be a discrepancy between what a neuropsychologist finds and the educational intervention that he or she recommends. Since a learning disability is a complex condition that varies from individual to individual, and which affects each learner differently depending on his age, the setting and the task, it is imperative that the diagnosis of this condition be carried out by a team of professionals from different disciplines who share and compare results, who question their individual and collective conclusions, and who collaboratively come to a sound diagnostic conclusion, and generate an effective intervention and support plan for a child.
Sounds simple, but it’s not.
It is the federal definition that is used by school systems to determine a child’s eligibility for special educational services. In schools, it’s not enough to have a learning disability to get special help. In order for a student to receive special educational services, he or she must not only exhibit the characteristics listed in this federal definition, but must also demonstrate a significant impairment in learning that is related to this disability. About 5 percent of school age students have been determined to have learning disabilities based on this dual set of criteria. Most educators believe that there are many more children (perhaps 20 to 25 percent) who have significant difficulty in some aspect of school, but who are not judged to have learning disabilities.
In an attempt to make an objective diagnosis, schools in the United States have adopted what’s known as a discrepancy formula to identify a learning disability. This is a rather simplistic approach to solving a big, expensive problem. Despite the lack of research supporting the use of this discrepancy formula, many evaluators look for two things to classify a child as learning disabled. They look for a difference (i.e., discrepancy) between a child’s potential (usually measured by an IQ test) and his achievement (as measured by an achievement test). This widely used "method" of identifying learning disabilities lacks a sound scientific foundation, since researchers have found that many kids without any learning difficulties whatsoever also exhibit this difference. While the discovery of such a difference clearly demands an explanation, it certainly does not confirm that a child has a learning disability. In an effort to explain the discrepancy, psychologists typically look for a significant difference between the total scores of the verbal section of an IQ test and the performance section, commonly referred to as a "verbal/performance split." Here again, a wide ("statistically significant") V/P split demands an explanation.
And it’s here that you get into another muddy area of assessment: so-called process tests. Remember that federal definition of learning disabilities that talked about a "disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written…"? This is a very non-specific term used to describe the cognitive behaviors thought to be involved in learning how to read, write and do arithmetic. These include such things as long- and short-term ("working") memory for sounds and for visually presented materials, auditory processing (listening and phonological processing) and language (receptive and expressive) and sequencing. It also includes things like rapid naming, organization, and comprehension.
The list goes on.
There are a couple of big problems at this point in the evaluation. It’s clear that in some kids with LD, some of the cognitive processes mentioned above are weak. It’s sometimes hard to show that by using formal testing. A student might do well on one test, but not on another that is supposed to measure exactly the same process. And furthermore, some kids with no apparent difficulties in school can have a weakness in "one or more of the psychological processes" involved in learning, if you look at the results of formal testing. In my own doctoral work, I administered four tests that were supposed to measure the same process; namely auditory discrimination, or the ability to tell the difference between and among words. I gave all four tests to over 300 students and found that two of these tests measured one skill and the other two measured quite another skill, even though they all had "auditory discrimination" in their title. What was more astounding is that even though all of the kids in the study were reading at or above grade level (i.e., had no LD) a full 25 percent of the students failed all four tests! If this weren’t enough to cast significant doubt on the efficacy of process tests, history has shown us that even if we can work with kids to make a "process" stronger, they may not do better in school. For a great analysis of this issue, read "The Uses and Misuses of Processing Tests" by Louise Spear-Swerling, Ph.D., co-author of "Off Track -- When Poor Readers Become ‘Learning Disabled’" (http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/assessment/swerling_assessment.html.)
Frustrating? Yes. Confusing? Yes. Hopeless? No.
Why? Because a competent diagnostician knows how to gather data from parents, teachers and other specialists and from about the child himself and consider all this information in the context of the child’s developmental and educational history and come up with a very good picture of not only a child’s learning style. He or she can also, with some degree of confidence conclude that this constellation of strengths and weakness can be considered a learning disability and not just a "learning difference." This takes time and it takes experience. It takes good investigative skills, and the patience not to rush to a conclusion about LD. It also takes the courage and confidence to use this label when it is appropriate. It demands the ability to translate the findings of a comprehensive evaluation into a plan that will make a difference the way the child is taught and in how he or she learns. A school psychologist may not have the time or the expertise in neuropsychological assessment to do this job well enough. An independent psychologist may have the time and the expertise, but may lack the opportunity or ability to relate this information to the teachers and others who are responsible for a child’s education on a day-to-day basis. One solution is for schools to employ psychologists who are trained in neuropsychology. Another is to commit to a collaborative process in which the expertise and wisdom of all participants in the evaluation process is collectively employed on behalf of the child. The more parents know what goes into an evaluation of learning disabilities, the better they can understand the results, advocate for good assessment practices, and be a better advocate for their child.
Please visit the website of the Learning Disabilities Association of Massachusetts (781-891-5009) for valuable information and resources for students, parents and teachers.
