Starting New Thread-LDs or not

One more thing, yes I do believe there would still be learning disabilities, but not near the number we have now.

Actually TS,I somewhat agree with this.
I am dyslexic,37 years old. I am the mother of two boys who have a definite language based disability,formally named dysgraphic, among a few more labels.
I was diagnosed in Kindergarten,basicly because I was really uncoordinated physically also. ( okay I would throw a ball backwards) Anyway,I did not learn to read until I was in the 8th grade,and I you can see from some of the other posts I am a poor speller.
It took literally years for me to convince the school system my children were enrolled in, that they too, had the very same difficulties,and were in need of another way to learn. It took multiple evaluations and labels before I could get them the help they needed.
The best reading program is the one that helps the kid learn. Problem is every kid is so very different in their difficulties. School tend to go with whatever the average student learns with. Unfortunately it isn’t always beneficial to the kid who needs it taught another way.

I literally visualize in picture form,not words. Words were confusing and to this day,I must say the alphabet over in my head before coming to the correct letter to use.The other huge component is respectfulness for differences. My boys are now in a school were everyone has a learning deficit,needs vary from auditory learner to visual one. Strengths are built on and everyone respects everyone elses right to learn their way. I write at a 90 degree angle,if not allowed to do this my handwriting would be illegible.Sometimes it can be a simple matter of saying,hey if you can read that book by memorizing the words,go for it. Know what I am saying? We are getting better at pinpointing the area of difficulties,we also have three times the amount of students in one room. If not for the way the system works in general there probably wouldn’t need to be a reason to use half of the labels we do.

Several years ago whilst sitting around with my son’s
Resource teachers they expressed the same thought to me.

And since I figure they are right in the middle of it all
they probably have a valid point.

Anne

… you are suggesting that there are lots of people identified as having learning disabilities who could have avoided that label… and that we can keep the number of labeled folks down by identifying and dealing with problems early — which would be labeling ‘em earlier instead of later.

I think it’s pointless to compare reading now to 50 years ago because of the number of variables over which we have no control.
I do agree completely and utterly that better teaching and perceptual skills development early on would mean fewer kids in the special ed rooms later.

So what’s your point? If it is to have more preschools available at more affordable cost to families, I’m with you there.

Past that, I’d have trouble agreeing with you. The rise in the diagnosis of learning differences is due to our increased understanding of these issues. First described in 1907, it’s sadly taken this long for us to get our act even somewhat together. It’s also true that in the past few decades we are more interested in meeting individual needs in our society and one expression of that have been the laws that define and protect children with learning differences.

But I certainly support your interest in affordable preschools.

I also agree with you that there are too many students who are labeled LD for what ever reason today. I also think that if the teachers in the grades K-3 who give very direct phonetic awareness instruction some of the problems that arise in 4th, 5th grade and beyond might not occur. I am on both ends of this problem. I am a teacher in high school-9th and a parent of a daughter who has some processing problems. In my daughters situation, she was fine in k and 1, but problems started in 2nd. She had a very nice first year teacher who probably did not really know what to do. They just wanted her to go to summer school which is a joke in our system, in my opinion. I wasn’t until late in the 3rd grade that the school would test her. The next year was not an improvement. She was put in such a disruptive class I do not think anyone learned anything. She did make progress in 5th grade, but now we are at a stand still again. I know from personal experience if she had had help in 2nd grade along with my help at home she would not be 2 years behind her peers in language arts skills. They are also still insisting that achieving academic success is the major goal. What student doesn’t want academic success. Schools need to start addressing the problems, not just modify them so a student can pass.

I never said labeling them earlier. I would like to see the curriculum change emphasis to developing these skills. Maybe, just a thought, we are trying to teach the academics too soon. Starting earlier and earlier with letter, number recognition, etc. is not what I mean.

Show me the statistics that show our kids are doing better academically now then they were years ago.

I have wondered about the increasingly wide range of kids that regular ed. elementary teachers are called upon to teach, with academic standards increasing and state-mandated tests yearly. We chose private tutoring and lots of work at home for our bright ld son, feeling that the classroom teacher had her hands full with the kids who have behavior problems, are slow-learners, and the high functioning autistic students. Yes, we were very frustrated and angry, but how could one teacher reach all those students, most labeled as ld. Yes, they mostly were academic low-achievers, but not all were ready for the academics in a fastpaced school system. We have a system that uses total inclusion, no resource rooms, for everyone in K-5.

.

Hi to all,

I have just caught up with this discussion. I raised similar isues on one of the other forum groups here recently. As a teacher of students with special needs I come across many students who are experiencing difficulties in basic areas which are causing them difficulty when they reach their 3rd or 4th year of schooling.

I believe that most of this can be put down to them not acquiring the basic skills of phonemic awareness( rhyming, sound manipulation, syllables and word play). I have had many discussions with peers about the importance of such activities and not just sound/letter recognition. Many of these students are able to get their way through the first few years because they are able to build a bank of words which gets them through many of the earlier literacy activities. They are not decoding or encoding at all. What happens as the words, sentences etc get more complex they are suddenly caught out because they do noy possess the necessary skills. These children need explicit teaching of such skills and they never will “just catch it”

Another trend I have observed in over the last years is the rush by parents to get their children through the lower levels of reading. There appears to be some prestige with the fact that a child is on to a certain level quickly or before someone else. I hear comments of “they get bored”, “this one is too easy”, “can we have a cahpter book” ” he read so easily”. Many of these children are the ones teachers are coming to me about in later years as the ones needing help.

Solutions, I do not know. Waiting for ideas!!!!!!!!!!!!

helen

I agree with you that teaching underlying skills would alleviate some LDs. I suspect this sort of teaching would help most the kids who fall through the cracks though or other fairly mild LDs. These are the ones that don’t always qualify but don’t suceed either. I actually think that the sort of teaching you are talking about will actually pinpoint serious LDs earlier because these kids won’t respond as well. My son was identified as having a speech disability at 3 and entered school as a special ed student. He had all sorts of issues that I didn’t realize later but would have been very obvious in K with the type of teaching you are talking about. Interestingly enough, his school did do some sort of visual screening for K which he did score horrid on but not any sort of teaching to build up visual skills. They also didn’t screen auditorially. I know there are some systems that screen kids in K for auditory issues—like blending ect. The kids who do poorly then get more help with the idea that this will avoid problems later. It is more difficult and expensive to remediate problems by the time a child is identified in 4th grade.

I honestly think my child would still be identified as LD even with that sort of teaching but I would have had the school doing the same sorts of things we have ended up doing at home and privately which would have been a big benefit.

Beth

You are so right. I did not want to get an IEP for my son. I felt that I was forced to get him on an IEP so the school system would notice that he was reading at a 2nd grade level in the 5th grade. Not one teacher acknowledged (or knew) that he could not read. His class room grades were in the C to D range (Passing) but his standardized test scores (Iowa Basics and State Standardized Test) were terrible. What does one do to make the schools recongnize the fact that intensive math and reading needs to be the focus in K-5. I strongly believe that this would help a large number of kids who fall through the cracks. If they only knew that by the time these kids get to the Jr. High/Middle School level and they are three and four grade levels behind, they hate school. Our schools need help in the “how to’s” of teaching basic skills.

If I understand correctly this is the focus of Dr. Laura Moats and the results of her research with NICHD. The National Reading Panel results pretty much say the same thing and explain that it is cheap teaching balanced and whole language methods of reading and it is difficult to get school districts to accept greater expense at preschool level. Also from what I’ve read about CAPD if kids could be identified and helped in preschool and kindergarton they can learn to compensate early enough for this not to cause a reading problem. What I hear again and again is that all kids do the things my son did so there’s no way of identifying kids who need these things until 3rd or 4th grade when it’s too late. Would that be true if all kindergarton thru 2nd grade teachers were trained in a phonics method like phonographix and had Lindamood Bell workshops? If all kids do these things then isn’t it possible that all kids would benefit from some help with phoneme sequencing etc at this age level? Also in other european countries children up to middle school will have the same teacher so she comes to know the child and how he learns and also the parents. It’s very expensive, but few children have to be put in spec. ed. Certainly not even close to here.

The question here is what can we do? How do we change a system that is so set in its ways?

My son as a younger child was always so bright, articulate and old seeming for his age. I read to him before naps and bedtime every day from the time he was a couple of months old. He had a warm and fuzzy kindergarten experience with no problems noted other than a word list sent home two weeks before school let out that stated ‘__ needs to learn these words’. Imagine my suprise when he got so slammed in 1st grade, F’s in just about everything, expected to know 30 words a week when he didn’t know that ‘w’ made the ‘whu’ sound not the ‘duh’ sound.
If only teachers everywhere were taught the things you all are talking about, sure, maybe my son would have learned to read sooner and not had to play catch up in 4th and 5th grades. We wouldn’t have had to deal with child study teams& ieps I don’t think and life would have been so much simpler. I wish so many times that all I had to do was send him to school and not have to worry about every little thing.
I do believe the system needs to change but with the high stakes testing starting in 3rd grade these days, I think things will only get worse not better. Parents will have to start getting their kids tutors when they are 3 and 4 so their kids won’t get left behind. Never mind that the kids are not mentally or physically ready for it. I have noticed many things my kids have to learn that they are learning at an ever earlier age than when it was introduced to me.

Click on the article in LDonLine called Diagnosis by Reid Lyon(this week it’s a highlighted article); it’s a great review of LD, it’s diagnostic problems and how as a non-stigmatizing label to get services, it’s growing by leaps and bounds. In our district, LD means language-based learning disabilities; I don’t think NLD is a category, although the students may be served under other categories.

I’d like to see more people support the National Reading Panel study. If parents would be willing to stand up and say we want to get rid of whole language and balanced systems that would be a start. The whole language supporters have already forced the panel to include their “qualitative” research before the panel’s research is considered conclusive. Read Whole Language Lives on LD in depth and email Dr. Moats.

That’s a different point to raise. That our kids are not doing better doesn’t mean they don’t have learning disabilities. It means we don’t know how to teach them properly. It means the IEP process is a very flawed one.

I’m one who believes all the laws that have been written for these kids are sadly little more than political pandering. I don’t think our society ever really cared or cares much now about the needs of children with learning differences but it likes to throw up a good smokescreen as if they do. They mandate that documents be written and signed but many of the stipulations in an IEP can’t be met in the course of a school day. They ask the impossible of teachers.

If that was your point, I agree with it. But I don’t agree that our failure as a society to properly provide for children with learning differences means that learning differences don’t exist.

TS,

I completely agree with everything you say!! Until my youngest daughter was diagnosed with a “LD” in 2nd grade I used to think students who couldn’t learn to read or understand math were dumb. I figured if I could why couldn’t they? Right? I’m also a certified teacher, but I decided not to teach (for now) but I am substituting a lot and I see a lot in the classrooms that I totally disagree with - but that’s another topic.

After all of the reading and research I have done over the past four years I realize now how “dumb” I was. Everyone is special and unique in their own way. Some kids don’t fit into the school system as well as others. Whose fault is that? The school system makes it the kid’s fault, but isn’t the school system partly to blame? I really don’t have all of the answers. However, if I could start my own K-2 school I would have the students work on reading, reading, reading, and math, math, math. So many schools are rushing through every subject so fast (so everything is covered before testing) that a lot of students don’t really “get” whatever subject they’re having a hard time in. I would really like young students to focus on reading skill and math skills. I really dislike most math textbooks because they keep moving from one topic to another. Repitition is the key, even though it sounds boring. The more you do some type of new skill the easier it becomes and finally you just “know” it. Unfortunately, schools aren’t letting a lot of students get to “know” most of their subjects. I’m willing to bet a lot of students are just getting through the next chapter and forgetting it after the test. I better quit before I bore everyone. But I totally agree with what you said!!

My point is that our kids are not doing any better even with all the testing, labels and IEPS. I believe that if our society provided differently, there would be fewer kids labeled because they could learn . Note I said fewer kids, not that there wouldn’t be any learning disabilities. My view is that there are many that if they got the right start may not have troubles later.

I am afraid what is going to happen as more testing becomes mandated. There is a lot of pressure put on schools and teachers now to achieve. Let’s spend all that money on teacher training and updating programs in the classrooms instead.

agree, agree,agree!!!! What is the point of my 5th grader knowing what an expectorant is when he hasn’t passed a required reading comprehension test yet? Reading, reading, reading, math,math,math. You hit it right on.

My 5th grader learned expectorant and others like analgesic in health class. Won’t do him much good for another 8 yrs, since I won’t be letting him buy any of that stuff himself til he’s an adult!

After a long IEP meeting yesterday where LD was thoroughly explained to a mother, I have some thoughts that are tangentially related.

When I work with my students who have, often, rapid naming deficits (slow processing, word finding, results in very slow reading), sequential processing deficits (perhaps auditory and/or visual, results in struggle to read sequentially across a word and match output with input), working memory deficits (significant difficulty holding information in memory while working on next step, very obvious in decoding multisyllabic words, middle syllable(s) get dropped), and other phonological issues………….I marvel at the folks on the reading board who tout Phonographs as the cure-all. Just buy this easy to use program and in a matter of hours your child will read!!

That may be great if the child has relatively mimimal issues, perhaps a simple and not earthshattering phonological deficit. However, when several issues pop up, the child is LD and teaching the child to read WELL at grade level may be a daunting task, because there are so very many issues to be remediated. The child may very well decode pretty well, but will be very slow and may still suffer significantly with decoding multisyllabic words. This is the child who CAN, under your guidance, correctly chunk and sound a word, but who cannot arrive at the pronunciation due to one or more of the LDs.

Do I think the magic bullet is good early instruction? My school has been doing very strong early instruction for some years now, more than 5. We have an early intervention program through Title I and a capable reading specialist. We do phonological processing drills out the wazoo and provide extra tutoring to the lower functioning students. I do get fewer referrals, yes, however the ones I do get, when they qualify, have several issues, believe me. Believe me, they are LD. Good early intervention did help them, I know it, but the deficits in processing still impact the child.

And lastly, given the intensity of instruction that is needed to teach this child skills that other children learn with comparative ease, given the highly structured and sequenced direct instruction necessary to teach these skills and the daily review to keep them learned, plus the requirements that the child have PE, social studies and science………even with great resource room instruction within the school day, there frequently is not enough time available to address all the issues and to the extent that both parents and we would like to. Therefore, even in good resource programs, we do not successfully catch up every child to competency at grade level in reading and written language. They make progress. When i read posts from parents who simply state that they expect that goals will be written to catch their child up in 1 year, 2 years or 3 years, this may or may not happen……..it depends upon the severity of the processing deficits. Even in LiPs, some students require much more instruction than do others. There is NOT a rule of thumb that applies to all LD children.

With or without a “label” per se, the early intervention requires differentiating between the students who teach themselves to read at age four and the students who don’t “think in words.” I agree — the trend to just cramming the advanced stuff further down the developmental chain only serves to get the kids *failing* earlier if they’re not ready for it. “New Math” did a good job of that — only the kids who were already “thinking in math” caught on, went ahead, and the poor normal souls were left thinking they were mathematically incompetent. Trying to impose adult thinking on the kid’s mind is a big mistake.

You are absoultely right. I believe we are forcing the academic learning way too early. We should be concentrating on the perceptual developments. I think schools go with pushing the academics early so that students are prepared for their first round of standardized testing. It is a shame. The kids who aren’t really ready suffer and begin showing signs of stress and anxiety towards school as early as Kindergarten (I know mine did). Maybe the schools should slow down and really take a look at where kids are lacking. Get back to the basics. In my son’s 1st grade class there are 8 children who need “outside tutoring” to keep up. Something is wrong here.

You have hit the nail on the head!

I guess one of the things I think of to help is to make the extra classes (art, music, etc) a part of the reading and math lessons instead of ‘now we must have an hour of art in a different room with a different teacher’. Why can’t these other classes be made a part of the reading and math learning? Ya, know with the hands on, active, music learning(I think also known as multisensory) I understand that there are always going to be kids with multiple difficulties, I think most of us would like the teachers of kgarten and 1st to be the ones who can help identify them early if they aren’t already identified, especially when we parents are asking questions that early. 4th grade is a terrible time to be playing catch up especially if the ld isn’t so complicated. I don’t poo poo the complicated ld kids, I think it would help them the most to be identified early. I know the teachers currently working are for the most part not trained regularly in college for this kind of evaluating, perhaps this is something that should be regularly done by the school personnel in conjunction with the teachers as a routine. I am not a teacher, I know there is a lot of stuff y’all do on top of teaching our little darlings. Maybe what I am suggesting isn’t feasible, I just figured we were kind of brainstorming here.

Early identification should be the goal as all studies show that students who are identified later have poorer outcomes in remediation. Better (and earlier) screening, more work on phonics, and a willingness by schools to give extra help as soon as kids appear to be struggling, will help kids with milder learning issues. My school system does most of the above.

But I agree that kids with more severe LD issues will always need special help and that’s what special ed is supposed to provide. Often that help, as others have commented, is too little and not systematic enough to help these kids progress as they should.

I saw some horrible statistics recently that only 2% of LD kids go on to and successfully graduate from 4 year colleges. I hope my son will be in that 2% but right now, sadly, I wouldn’t want to bet on it. And my son was identified early, has good classroom and resource room support, a high IQ and strong support from home. Think about the prognosis for kids who don’t have all that.

I would not mind learning what students would need from me as a teacher, but I do not think it should be at my expense. Most teachers have to pay for their own education, and as a regular ed. teacher I feel it should be the responsiblility of the school system to pay for extra education.

Well, my thoughts are that your idea has merit, however in the day-to-day world of school there are many drawbacks. First of all, we don’t have art and music here, they are long gone to budget cuts and PE is mandated by law. I don’t teach PE, nor do I plan to. So, for my program, this won’t happen at this time. I don’t regret it and we have standards across subject areas we are responsible for. A private LD school can forego formal science and social studies class and they can make almost the whole day (with breaks) language arts and math. We really can’t yet do that, so we cannot really compete with private LD schools.

When you are teaching a carefully controlled and sequenced program, it can be really hard to teach it in art or music. At best you can integrate print.

There may be greater possibilities for this degree of integration in a self-contained special ed. classroom, however.

I certainly agree with that.

Even while I do, though, I recognize the family can’t be mandated to provide differently for children. You can’t legislate values and a commitment to education. You can legislate the existence of preschools. You can legislate them and pay for them with federal funds and offer them to families.

We might both agree that would be a good thing to do for the sake of the children and their families and our society.

I’d rather see money directed to that initiative than to ‘save our schools’ as they are now. More of the same is not going to work.

You started a great discussion. Thanks for taking the time and the risk to do so.

I’ve enjoyed this discussion too. Sharing with each other is one of the best ways that I learn.

First, I want to say what a relief it is to hear that our school system isn’t the ONLY one represented on these board that is doing a half decent job of early intervention and special education.

Second, I agree with your comments that early intervention is key in remediating problems to the extent that this is possible, and that some kids will require special education anyway.

But I’d like to play devil’s sdvocate on the LD-college issue. I think that LD kids should have the right to go to college and be prepared to go to college IF THEY CHOOSE. But I don’t think that LD = “Life Disabled”. I think there are lots of people for whom school is not the best learning environment. I think there are lots of small business owners (and some very large business owners… look at Bill Gates) who don’t function at their best in an academic environment.

For some people, I think the old Simon and Garfunkle song is still apt… “My life of education never hurt me none.”

I’d be more interested to see statistics on whether former SPED kids are happy with their adult lives and gainfully employed than whether or not they have a degree from a 4 year college. I don’t, and I had a successful career in the banking world, and now am a free lance writer and a full time mother. I feel that I’ve been successful in all three careers.

School isn’t everything, even though it sometimes feels like it when our kids are going through it!

Karen

I am really confused!! I thought that children with LD’s had LD’s because their brains grew differently. That is how it was explained to my family.

I come from a family where my mom, two brothers and sister are learning disabled. My Mom always thought that the reason I have never shown any signs of disability is because I was in a private preschool and kindergarten. I learned how to read by 3 1/2 and I was always well above grade level. I remember having to go to special reading groups so that I could read older material. Until I started learning about disabilities did I realize that I probably do have disability. I guess I got the necessary tools to work with it and back then I don’t remember LD’s being diagnosed. They just told your parents you needed extra help.

I placed my son in private preschool and now he is in private kindergarten. We are very lucky that we can afford it. My husbands family told him that he was crazy for allowing me to place my son in such an expensive school BUT it has been the best thing in the world. The K teacher recognized early on that he was having trouble and requested an eval for him.

I understand public school is a totally different, beleive me I know. My brother has been in services with the school district since age 3. They misdiagnosed him until he was 12 and I took his test to someone to have them independently evaluated. The school refuses to follow his IEP. The teacher say they are too busy. Even the special ed aide in the room isn’t helping. I understand that they have 30 students all with different degrees of learning. Unfortunately I think that most of the things we ask the teacher to do, extra spacing between tests, keeping his desk free of distractions, etc, are not things that all students couldn’t benefit from. I am frustrated by teachers who seem to be annoyed when they have to teach out side of the box.

I guess I have begun to ramble. This whole group of posts has gotten me really confused. What was the original point, I forget!! I think that a preschool program would help. I think that maybe many years ago there was no name for why some children learned differently. I don’t know I am confused. My own son is being eval. this morning at thelocal elem school so my brain is not focused!!

Thanks
Dawn

I am not sure why you are confused, sorry. I read a suggestion by someone that we teach our academics in art and music. Well, for starters we don’t even have those classes in our state, for the most part. For another, when there are art classes and music classes, those teachers have a curriculum and all children have a right to THAT curriculum, not things turned around so that it can become a medium for teaching reading and math. Also, while one can incorportate some aspects of art or music in a LD program, this is a limited amount. You could make 3D letters with young children who are learning letters. OK, so we cannot only make 3D letters and we cannot do that forever. We can possibly create and teach some singsong jingles to aide in the memory of math facts (there are tapes for sale with facts to music already) or language arts skills. Ok, but again this is not the range of experiences children should have in music and will only go so far. finally, most of our students are mainstreamed most of the day into regular ed. So, in places where they do go to art or music, it is reasonable for that teacher to teach her or his curriculum in that subject to the whole class. Meantime, the resource teacher is busy in her program teaching other students who are not in specials at that time period.

I can see that idea working better in a self-contained special ed. class where one person has control over the curriculum and day. In that case, I say, “Go for it!”

In our state, WA, we are starting this high stakes testing.

On top of that we have these ‘essential learning’ goals.

The upshot of these ‘els’ are that they have plopped reading
and writing into EVERYTHING!.

Two examples - art, instead of just enjoying making art, the
kids have to keep an art journal and do written reports.

Math - constant writing explaining math facts.Doing a
huge math project using math vocab.

While these may all benefit what my good friend calls
‘neuro-typical’ children, it is very hard on LD kids.

My son is two or three grades ahead in math, something
he is very proud of, but now he is under the same old stress
that his reading & writing disability brings him. Math should
have been a ‘safe’ zone for him. That is gone now.

Same with art. My son, like many dyslexics, does really well
in art. But art class now brings the stress of reading and writing
again.

I really *hate* this. It is so wrong. But we are stuck with this
new high stakes testing and all the teaching for the test that
comes along with it. People are unhappy but I doubt it will
change until my son is through school.

Anne

I agree. I too despair over everything becoming reading and writing. I was just going over some sample problems for Florida’s version of high stakes testing with my son. He is supposed not only solve the problems (which require reading) but also explain his logic in writing. He had a fit and said he hates to write.

Beth

>>He is supposed not only solve the problems (which require reading) but also explain his logic in writing. He had a fit and said he hates to write. <<

We have our IEP before the 7th grade test (given here 4th, 7th and 10th grade).

In our state your IEP has to state ALL the accommodations before hand.
So if you come up to the test and have not planned for it, you’re toast.

The SE staff is supposed to make plans for accommodations for the test.

My son could have a reader and a scribe for everything except the reading
comprehension portion.

At least that is what they say ;-)
at this time….

We all know we need to be on top of things and make sure it actually
happens (as so many things in his IEP don’t happen without firm and
cheerful nagging).

My son’s class is the first group of kids that will be held to the high stakes
test in 10th grade. The whole thing is still fluid and I don’t think they have
any firm plan for LD kids. They NEVER communicate anything about it
to you, you have to ask. I missed this year’s meeting because my son needed
help with that night’s homework. Always a Catch 22.
Personally I’m hoping for another delay, bar that I’m
hoping for lots and lots of lawsuits….

Anne

My son has the math problems read to him but no scribe. I guess I didn’t realize until too late that the math portion of the testing had a written component. Now he is in third grade and it is fourth grade that is when they make kids retain a grade. My understanding is that there are no real consequences for him for poor performance because he is classified as LD. There seems to be a policy of not retaining LD kids.

Beth

I sympathize with you. We are on a mission in this country to make every one alike. We are doing this under the guise of leaving no child behind and all the great sounding, rah, rah, rhetoric. Who can argue such noble goals? I think there is more than one way to teach people. I also don’t think everyone needs to become an author. I do think that we should hit reading really hard in elementary school (esp. forLD) and in secondary grades hone in on functional writing skills. NonLD can do more with writing earlier. Elem. for LD writing should focus on learning to write a good sentence or two, perhaps to write a strong paragraph by the end of 6th grade (essays are just multiple paragraphs). We should explicitely teach the elements of a good paragraph, in depth. I.E. we could focus for as much as a year on teaching the art and skill of topic sentences. We examine many well-written paragraphs to locate the topic sentence. We discuss what makes it a good topic sentence. We encounter hundreds of examples and are led to writing our own (after we can already write a good sentence). Then we focus on a good concluding sentence the same way, lastly to supporting details. We practice with paragraph frames where most of the paragraph is provided, gradually the frame is reduced. Nobody out there that I am aware of in public school is teaching LD students to write in a manner that they can learn to write school essays and functional life-oriented writing in a fashion that is very systematically structured in teeny tiny steps so the children can succeed and actually learn.

I have totally stopped, for many of my students, writing goals that state, “Carol (who is 10) will write a 5 paragraph essay that includes correct indentation, 90% correct capitalization and punctuation, 85% correct spelling………to a teacher provided prompt that is measured by work samples.” That is hogwash, yet get students who cannot write a sentence that starts with a capital and ends with a period AND is well stated that move in with IEP goals similar to that. And we wonder why the goals are not met.

I am too long, sorry. I think we want too much, too fast and we are in a rush, this does not get the job done. The best approach is to teach for long term learning, retention and success. This may not be the fast and furious route.

We are in a race here in education. One school is pitted against the next, district against district, state against state and finally we compete against other nations on a regular basis when tests are given across 50 or more nations and the nations ranked. The education olympics and the individual child is totally lost in the numbers. Dreadful.