Discussion of the discrepancy method for identifying Learning Disabilities has spilled into the letters to the editor section of the IndyStar television station in Indianapolis (IN; US). Dorene J. Philpot, an attorney in Indianapolis, wrote to support coverage of the topic.
read with interest Gayle Williams’ letter to the editor May 13 in regard to “Outdated standards to reveal learning disabilities.” Williams is correct that the “discrepancy model” is an outdated way to determine whether a child has a learning disability. In fact, the Indiana Department of Education for more than 13 years has been telling schools to stop using that as the sole criterion for determining learning disabilities.
Ms. Philpot’s letter also points to resources in the Indiana Department of Education on this topic. Link to Ms. Philpot’s letter.
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Here’s another in our line of examples of the mis-use of the term “Learning Disabilities. This one is from Ian Urquhart of the Toronto (ON, CA) Star: “Special education is the catch-all label for some $2 billion in school programs for children with various degrees of learning disabilities.” Link to Mr. Urquhart’s article.
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In an article entitled “Citizenship by Birthright,” Giovanna Dell’Orto of the Associated Press described examples of families in which parents have foreign citizenship and children have US citizenship because they children were born in the US. In the current climate of near-hysterical discussions about immigration in the US, this is an intriguing topic. Ms. Dell’Orto dropped into her story one complicating example that touches on Learning Disabilities. I need to dig around and find more on this.
Even though Luz Maria Medrano of Las Vegas was ordered deported along with her second husband, the couple won permanent residency after a six-year legal battle when a judge found her 7-year-old, U.S.-born son would not receive proper treatment for his learning disability in Mexico.
Link to Ms. Dell’Orto’s story, as published in the Los Angeles Times (CA; US).
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I’m feeling a little discouraged. Why? Well, I keep on learning about what people are doing in hopes of helping students achieve better.
In the Kenora Catholic District School (Ontario, CA), according to Shelley Bujold of the Kenora Miner & News, the school agency is investing in an FM sound system, apparently to amplify teachers’ speech so that students will hear it better and, therefore, learn to read and compute better. The only part of this I am making up is the part about how the local education agency expects the sound system to work. The parts about the sound system and the hopes of improved outcomes come from the story itself.
As part of a trial program at schools in the Kenora Catholic District School Board, special education students were given extra support to help them achieve.
The program started in January and runs through to June and implements a contact teacher in each school to help teachers and students with support.
“This was to enhance literacy and numeracy in the classroom for students with special needs,” said special needs co-ordinator Estelle Cantera during the regular board meeting.
She said a lot of background research went into the program in order to track progress of each student participating. They focused on Grade 4 and Grade 7 students because of their year’s previous data from the Education Quality and Accountability Office test scores. Cantera said the goal was to have 25 per cent of the students participating move up one level by June — starting from level one on a scale to four.
At least it’s a trail program. Ms. Cantera also is quoted as saying that the test will be whether the students make progress. Hooray for that part.
Link to Ms. Bujold’s story.
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Simple answers
Yahoo! Answers is an online system for posing and answering questions. The questions are sometimes simple and fact-based (”What is the capital of Mnop?”), but sometimes they are more complex—similar to those I get by e-mail. One of the questions caught my eye: “How to Teach a Teenager With a Learning Disability How to Spell?”
There were two answers when I looked at it, both of which contain a grain of truth but neither of which were sufficient. Here they are:
Link to the question about spelling. Amazon link to Dixon’s book.
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