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TeachingLD News-Brief
Welcome to the on-line version of TeachingLD.org News. TeachingLD.org is a public service of the Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) of the Council for Exceptional Children. Explore TeachingLD.org by following the links at the left or follow the links below to jump to sections of the news. Contents
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Reflections of TeachingLD.org: What Can We Prevent? Contemporary emphasis on prevention of reading problems is a good idea. There are many sensible--even research-based--reasons for U.S. education to promote early, intensive instruction in the basics of decoding, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and spoken vocabulary. Children who learn to read well have easier access to subsequent curricular content; those who read well will be able to learn about history, the arts, and even math better than they would were they poor readers. Children who can read well are more likely to read and, therefore, be exposed to widening horizons about the world and an ever-expanding vocabulary. Many who champion early intervention predicate their argument, at least in part, on preventing identification of children as having learning disabilities (LD). Because most students who are identified as having LD have problems with reading, this is a natural connection. The idea is that if early reading instruction is effective, more children will learn to read in the primary grades and, thus, will be less likely to be referred and identified as having LD. Presumably, those who read well will avoid any negative consequences of failure, labelling, and so forth. As appealing as this idea is--and we noted that we support an emphasis on prevention of reading problems--there are concerns about the prevention argument that deserve discussion. First, there is ample evidence from research that, even given well-designed reading instruction, that some students (perhaps 4-6%) will still not learn to read well. With effective preventation(?), we still can anticipate the need for services for those students who do not succeed. Second, not all learning problems students experience are in the area of reading. Some students learn to read like champs but never become proficient with arithmetic computation or mathematical problem solving--or both. Others may read and even spell well, but they have terrible difficulty in learning to organize paragraphs or outline essays. Even given effective primary reading instruction, we still can anticipate the need for services for students who experience these problems. Problems with later learning occur not just with academic tool skills, but also content classes. For example, those memory problems that are common among individuals with learning disabilities, are not likely to go away by the time students reach middle school. For some students who are strong readers, based on what they have learned in the primary grades, special educators will need to provide services in other areas. Third, as wonderful as it is to see higher proportions of children succeed, some of those who do succeed have other characteristics that are not changed by reading competence. Some students still have quirks, need additional supports, even if they are able to read fluently and with comprehension. We all know some adults who, though they are capable of sustaining an adult life, are a little different. We should not expect that successful prevention will homogenize learners; there still will be some who read better than others--individual differences! Some of those students will need special services. So, even given powerful reading instruction in the primary grades, we can anticipate a need for learning disabilities services. Preventing early reading problems, which we know will not be 100% effective, is only part of the game. We support the effort to teach reading well in the beginning, and we want to be prepared to provide additional services needed by individuals with learning disabilities. JohnL & Peggy
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