Learning Disabilities: Assessment and Intervention

 Students with Learning Disabilities

Diagnosis is crucial and a thorough evaluation to narrow in on the kind of learning disability and to which degree the disability is and also where the child’s strengths and weaknesses are.

Identification early on is key!

Some issues regarding assessment are that there is a lack of coordination and too many parties contributing with different points of views, Such as teachers and specialists.

Components of Assessment:

Observation: What the student has been doing.

Collection of work and products

Discussions and Information obtained between important parties

Testing

Currently there isn’t just one system on how to identify learning disabilities.

When assessing a child personal judgment and experience helps to diagnosis.

The two main processes when for assessment are:

1. Screening

2. Psycho educational diagnosis which is based on educational tests and

psychological test

Diagnosis can be very expensive

Effective Assessments Include:

1.     Various sources have been used; (such as teachers, parents, other professionals.)

2.    If tests have been used are they reliable, and is the administrator properly qualified to be giving the tests?

3.    Has the assessment been altered to be subject’s culture, age, etc?

4.    Was the assessment ecological? Did it pertain to the subjects whole environment( Home, school, classroom situation)

5.    Does the assessment recommend responses: ways of enrichment or remediation

6.    Do parties involved believe that the assessment best represents the subject?

Curriculum - Based Assessment: Procedure that directly assesses student performance within the course content for the purpose of finding out the students instructional needs. 

Psychological Processing: Diagnosing processing deficiencies. This process can’t be directly observed so there is controversy over weather or not it can be properly diagnosed. Information about areas like auditory, visual, motor skills and kinesthetic functions are available. 

Medical Intervention: medicine and learning disabilities have been closely linked historically. Many have moved away from medical model to a diagnostic and educational model for remediation.

Drug Therapy

Technical Aids: Such as computer programs which help children who have troubles concentrating.

Also helps children who are unorganized to become organized

Learning disabled children who used a computer showed improvement in areas such as, reading, comprehension, spelling and comprehension of words.

Educational: Concerns for educators who are teaching a learning disabled child is how to set them up to succeed and how to design a program that will benefit the child.

Services:  Resource Rooms. Controversy over whether or not to segregate learning disabled children from the rest of the class? 

• Most educators want the learning disabled child to be kept in the regular classroom with full time support.
• Great reluctance to segregate learning disabled children from regular classrooms.
• Prefer to have the students in the classroom with full time support.
• Some research shows that inclusion can benefit academically, that learning disabled children who were included benefited academically.
• Inclusion may benefit in certain subjects in school.
• On the flip side studies and some educators found that children who were in classrooms designed specifically for learning disabled succeeded better then in a general classroom.
• Specific classrooms help students who are learning disabled or who are emotionally disturbed 
•  Inclusive placements have not always led to positive outcomes. Children with mild learning disabilities seem to be having the most problems with inclusion.
• Found that when the children were included the outcome were “neither desirable nor acceptable”.
• Even students in inclusive rooms with full time support did not make significant academic progress.
• No evidence that either inclusion or segregation meets the needs of all students.