At least the change to “Developmental Disabilities” isn’t aimed at the illogical recommendation that we provide services without labels. As soon as we say that a child needs help with something, that is essentially a label. About the only logical way to provide services without identifying to whom they will be provided is to distribute them randomly. I hope no one is seriously recommending do this. Jim Kauffman has made this point repeatedly; see, for example, “School reform disorder: Alternative audience responses to nonsense” (1992; Journal of Behavioral Education) and “A diversity of restrictive environments: Placement as a problem of social ecology (with D. P. Hallahan, 1997; book chapter) [see Jim's vita].

I also want to remark that in the area of mental health there is a common argument that labels actually cause problems for individuals with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders. As I noted in an entry on EBD Blog, this idea was pretty thorough debunked by John Ruscio in an article for the Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. (For the view of one parent of a child with Autism, see the comment by queenannelace on the EBD Blog entry.)