SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITY
According to the 2010 -2011 Annual Report to the Legislature, 31.5% of special education students in Massachusetts were categorized as Specific Learning Disability, (SLD). That was 51,900 of the 164,711 students in the special education programs for the school year 2010-2011. We have no data about how many should be or are classified as dyslexic because many schools refuse to consider dyslexia without an outside evaluation.
Specific Learning Disability (SLD) is a broad category that is described under IDEA law.
“…including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.” Dyslexia is by far the most common, most well researched by neuroscientists. SLD conditions are not all the same and to get the appropriate instruction dyslexic students need to be instructed based on the actual brain based disability, dyslexia. Not all students with SLD are dyslexic, but those that are need instruction guided based on the disability they have as recognized by neuroscientists and much research as to what is effective. (Both the flu and pneumonia have characteristic symptoms including aches and fever, but the treatment is not the same.) The science based definition of dyslexia accepted by the National Institute of Health, and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), are also accepted by the NAACP’s 2014 Resolution on Dyslexia, and many states including New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois.
Finally in the Review of Special Education in the Commonwealth, Report commissioned by Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on April 2012:
The report states that the variability of identification of disabilities described as SLD, with some schools also describing disabilities with similar characteristics in the Health and Communication categories. This variability quoted from the report below “is an impediment to the effective delivery of services.” Parents who know will seek out a diagnosis from a speech and language specialist or a medical diagnosis to get the dyslexia specific services. Those who do not know or can not afford the outside testing run the risk of services that are special education and costly, but not based on evidence based practices for dyslexia so do not learn to read proficiently.
“The variability in identification between specific disability categories from district to district is also notable. For example, we found one district with the highest rates of identification for Specific Learning Disability in the commonwealth (17.7%) and the lowest rates of identification for the Communication category (0%). This same district, meanwhile, had an average identification rate for the Health category (<1%). In another district, we found the commonwealth’s lowest rate of identification for Specific Learning Disabilities (<1%), one of the highest rates of identification in the Communication category (7.4%) and an above average rate of identification in the Health category (1.7%). While these districts represent extreme examples, this high degree of variation in the use of these three disability categories was evident across the commonwealth. Through focus groups with advocates and state special education officials, we learned that local school districts are given substantial flexibility in their interpretation of these specific disability categories. In some cases, this appears to result in children with the same underlying issues receiving different disability labels in different school districts. This represents a potential impediment to the effective delivery of services to children and also presents challenges for our analyses. Based on what appears to be the relative diagnostic subjectivity for certain disability categories across the Commonwealth, we combined – as described in Part 1 of this report – children in the Specific Learning Disability, Health and Communication disability categories into one ‘High Incidence’ disability category in some of the analyses reported below. “
“…including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.” Dyslexia is by far the most common, most well researched by neuroscientists. SLD conditions are not all the same and to get the appropriate instruction dyslexic students need to be instructed based on the actual brain based disability, dyslexia. Not all students with SLD are dyslexic, but those that are need instruction guided based on the disability they have as recognized by neuroscientists and much research as to what is effective. (Both the flu and pneumonia have characteristic symptoms including aches and fever, but the treatment is not the same.) The science based definition of dyslexia accepted by the National Institute of Health, and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), are also accepted by the NAACP’s 2014 Resolution on Dyslexia, and many states including New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois.
Finally in the Review of Special Education in the Commonwealth, Report commissioned by Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on April 2012:
The report states that the variability of identification of disabilities described as SLD, with some schools also describing disabilities with similar characteristics in the Health and Communication categories. This variability quoted from the report below “is an impediment to the effective delivery of services.” Parents who know will seek out a diagnosis from a speech and language specialist or a medical diagnosis to get the dyslexia specific services. Those who do not know or can not afford the outside testing run the risk of services that are special education and costly, but not based on evidence based practices for dyslexia so do not learn to read proficiently.
“The variability in identification between specific disability categories from district to district is also notable. For example, we found one district with the highest rates of identification for Specific Learning Disability in the commonwealth (17.7%) and the lowest rates of identification for the Communication category (0%). This same district, meanwhile, had an average identification rate for the Health category (<1%). In another district, we found the commonwealth’s lowest rate of identification for Specific Learning Disabilities (<1%), one of the highest rates of identification in the Communication category (7.4%) and an above average rate of identification in the Health category (1.7%). While these districts represent extreme examples, this high degree of variation in the use of these three disability categories was evident across the commonwealth. Through focus groups with advocates and state special education officials, we learned that local school districts are given substantial flexibility in their interpretation of these specific disability categories. In some cases, this appears to result in children with the same underlying issues receiving different disability labels in different school districts. This represents a potential impediment to the effective delivery of services to children and also presents challenges for our analyses. Based on what appears to be the relative diagnostic subjectivity for certain disability categories across the Commonwealth, we combined – as described in Part 1 of this report – children in the Specific Learning Disability, Health and Communication disability categories into one ‘High Incidence’ disability category in some of the analyses reported below. “