Did you know that failing to address bullying can be the cause of schools having to pay for private placement of students with Learning Disabilities? Bullying has justified parents’ decisions to move their children to private schools and seek reimbursement for tuition. So, bullying isn’t only something that educators should address because it’s the right thing to do. Bullying might be a reason that a student can claim she is denied access to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE).
Continue reading ‘Bullying and FAPE’
Archive for the 'News' Category
Mildred Hope Fisher Wood, long-time teacher and advocate for Learning Disabilities, was inducted into the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women Hall of Fame 27 August 2011. Ms. Wood, who began teaching in 1939, later became a speech therapist, and eventually migrated to higher education, was 91 years old at the time of recognition. According to published reports, she has served on boards for both the Iowa chapter and the national Learning Disabilities Association.
Dr. Mildred Hope Fisher Wood is a pioneer who brought special education for learning disabilities to the forefront in Iowa, empowering thousands of students each year to lead productive, respected lives. Born in Alta in 1920, Wood earned four degrees from the University of Northern Iowa, did postgraduate work at Syracuse University and the University of Oregon, and earned a doctorate at Indiana University – all to study learning disabilities in children and to develop practices to transform them into learners. She created and taught the first courses on learning disabilities to future teachers at the University of Northern Iowa and conducted hundreds of workshops for teachers, principals, parents, psychologists, and juvenile court officers. Not only is she an advocate for children, she is a mentor for parents and has bettered the lives of innumerable families – often through volunteer work in communities, the church, and throughout the state. Wood is a recognized leader and is a charter member of the National Association for Children with Learning Disabilities and the Iowa Association. She has also been the president of the Iowa Learning Disabilities Association. Wood is a published author, a co-author of a diagnostic test for pre-school children, and the recipient of many awards. Wood was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame in 2011.
News coverage of the Ms. Wood’s induction is available: “Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame inductees announced” by Danielle Plogmann; “Innovative educator, Fischer Wood, inducted into Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame” by John Molseed; “Four Iowa women cited for honors.”
Sphere: Related ContentWriting for the Los Angeles (CA, US) Times, Matt Stevens leads an extended story about the importance of sports in society with a section on Julius English, a 39-year-old behavior therapist who couldn’t read until he was 10 but developed strong basketball skills during his adolescence and now uses those skills as part of his repertoire for working with children. Mr. Stevens’s story is about sports, but the section on Mr. English has enough about LD that it will be of interest to some readers of LD Blog.
I was particularly taken with with a quotation in the caption for a photo: Mr. English said, ” You can teach a kid with special needs anything. You just have to figure out how.”
Link to Mr. Stevens’s story, “Why sports matters: A behavior therapist with a learning disability, a blind baseball fan and a high school football player all have something in common: a love for the game.”
Sphere: Related ContentThe National Center on Learning Disabilities (NCLD), a US advocacy organization, has released its annual report about its views of the policy situation for individuals with Learning Disabilities. NCLD calls the report The State of Learning Disabilities: Facts, Trends, and Indicators and says that it includes US national and state-by-state data about Learning Disabilities and their impact.
The report documents significant advancements for students with learning disabilities as well as continued challenges facing older students, college students and adults with LD. Key findings include:
- The number of school-age children with learning disabilities has declined by 14% during the last decade.
- 2.5 million public school students have learning disabilities and are eligible to receive special education – representing 42% of the 5.9 million students with disabilities, down from a high of over 50% a decade ago.
- Learning disabilities do not include conditions such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, intellectual disabilities, autism, deafness and blindness yet such conditions are often confused with LD.
- More students with LD are graduating with a regular high school diploma (64%) than only a decade ago (52%) and fewer students with learning disabilities are dropping out of school (22%) than in 1999 (40%).
- People with LD are more likely to live in poverty than those in the general population.
- Students with LD attend postsecondary education at lower rates than their non-disabled peers. Only 10% of students with learning disabilities enrolled in a 4-year college within 2 years of leaving high school.
Interested readers may download copies of the The State of Learning Disabilities: Facts, Trends, and Indicators.
Sphere: Related ContentIn a puzzling case of a student who appears to have had problems throughout the primary grades and did not get help until fourth grade, Liz Ditz asks the question, How Often Does This Happen? Teacher accused of testing fraud to avoid special education referral for her student. Not until the parents had pushed for years were the child’s problems recognized. Was this a well-meaning, but misguided teacher? Has anti-LD sentiment become so strong that folks cheat to keep kids from having the label?
Sphere: Related ContentSheldon Horowitz and colleagues at the National Center for Learning Disabilities published a multipage supplement about Learning Disabilities in USA Today in late May of 2011. If you missed the print version, you can snag a PDF from this link.
Sphere: Related ContentJaime Openden and her colleagues have launched Bignity a new Web resource for the disability community. There are podcasts, news entries, and other sorts of materials for one to review. The authors cover many different topics. Check on it!
Sphere: Related ContentIn the prestigious journal Science, Professors Brian Butterworth, Sashank Varma, and Diana Laurillard published a review article discussing dyscalculia, the Learning Disability that makes arithmetic and mathematics an especially- miserable muddle for some students. In their review they explain why mathematical problems are important to individuals and society, what dyscalculia is, what neuroscientists know about mathematics and dyscalculia, and what they see as the outlook for dyscalculia.
Continue reading ‘Dyscalculia gets good ink’
In “Improving the Reading Recall of High School Students With ADHD,” Joseph W. Johnson, Robert Reid, and Linda H. Mason report the results of an intensive study in which they examined the effects of teaching high-school students a comprehension strategy as a part of a self-regulated strategy development model. They found that systematically preparing the students to use what they dubbed the “Think Before Reading” (TWA) strategy helped the students with recall of passages’ main ideas and details connected to them.
Students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often have difficulty with reading comprehension. This multiple baseline across participants design with multiple probes study examined the effectiveness of a multicomponent reading comprehension strategy (TWA: Think Before Reading, Think While Reading, Think After Reading) taught following the self-regulated strategy development model on social studies expository text recall of three high school students with ADHD. Results showed improvement in the number of main ideas and percentage of supporting details recalled. Gains were maintained and some improvement occurred at 2- and 4-week follow-ups. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Continue reading ‘Reading comprehension help for ADHD high schoolers’
Sphere: Related ContentThe British Dyslexia Association holds its eighth international conference in June of 2011. There is an outstanding list of presentations by authorities, including talks by Margaret Snowling, Bruce Pennington, David Saldaña, Joel Talcott, and many others. Download a copy of the announcement directly or jump over to the http://bdainternationalconference.org/ Web site where you can explore the list of speaker, learn about bookings, register, and so forth.
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