Pajamas Media

35 Comments

1. Richard:

I’d be interested to know what percentage of Boys, diagnosed with ADD or ADHD are put into these “special” classes, segregated and told, in effect they’re flawed.
But with love.
Bahh. It sickens me.

Jul 5, 2008 - 3:40 am 2. Ed Wallis:

Yeah, but another complicating factor – whether one likes to admit it or not – is “the lazy parent factor.” Take my sister (please!). She won’t teach her son discipline and shoved him off on a special ed school as if it were a babysitter…so it benefitted the lazy parent by taking the kid off her hands, gave the “doctors” lots of taxpayer cash, and kept the do-nothing “school” running. Keep a fair amount of responsibility on the parents, where it belongs.

Jul 5, 2008 - 4:44 am 3. john:

Our daughter is severly autistic. She is in a public school program that produces little or no results. She has, in the past, been in a very expensive program that did produce results but which we can no longer afford.

The problem is that effectively handling some disabilities requires special training and talent. I cant do it. I am not surprised a lot of good teachers can’t either.

Jul 5, 2008 - 7:40 am 4. Robin:

I’ve been a Speech Pathologist working in the public schools for the last twenty-five years. I’ve worked in two states, three different school districts and eight different schools. I’ve been in the classrooms of more than a hundred teachers at this point in my career. I’ve participated in thousands of multidisciplinary evaluations. I’ve never met or interacted with anyone who gave a rip about the financial ‘incentive’ to diagnose or qualify kids. By and large teachers either want to help a child, or they want help with a child. Statistics tell a piece of a story, but it is certainly not the whole story. Just because there appears to be a causal relationship between events doesn’t make it so. Any student of statistics knows that they can be manipulated to show whatever you want. I will concede that “personal” experience by anyone–parent or special educator–gives limited information from which to extrapolate a conclusion. However, I’d be more convinced by your article if you had some actual first hand evidence of a special education team making a decision motivated by a financial benefit for their school.

And by the way, knocking McKenna for using emotion and non-empirical evidence in her article while saying things like, I paraphrase; misidentification of LD students is causing substantial resentment from parents who think their child is being cheated out of resources which will ultimately result in a backlash against funding and services to all special education students, is rather hypocritical.

Jul 5, 2008 - 8:24 am 5. laura:

There is no misunderstanding on my part, guys. Let’s see if I can do this quickly in a comment section.

Local schools have NO incentive to label kids with learning disorders. State, local, and federal governments do not want to turn over this money to the schools. There is a finite pool of money out there. Political officials and voters put pressure on schools to keep a lid on expenses. If they have to give schools more money for special education, then they hold back money for regular education. For obvious reasons, schools and local politicians would rather spread education money among a large number of students, rather than concentrate it on a few needy students.

Within each school, there is a special education bureaucracy. The head of special services works closely with the superintendent and is rewarded for holding down costs. The caseworkers are also rewarded for lower costs. Perhaps when you get to the level of the individual teachers and therapists, there is an incentive to increase services in order to perpetuate their jobs. However, the school administration and the upper levels of the special education bureaucracy have very strong incentives to not diagnosis and provide services.

Diagnoses usually happen only when the child is taken to a medical professional for a proper evaluation. (So, is the fraud happening at the school level or in the neurologist’s office?) Most parents take years before they are ready to admit that their child has learning disabilities. Schools are very happy to exploit this natural denial to put off services until the problems can no longer be ignored.

Since we’re all political scientists, we’ve very comfortable talking about incentives and politics. Indeed, that’s what we’ve been trained to do. We are not qualified to make generalizations about neurological and cognitive abilities of America’s school population, which makes this whole discussion strange, but let’s keep going.

You write that the growth in special education is due to certain funding incentives. OK, let’s just say that’s true. Your findings (at least how you’ve presented them here) do not show that the “bounty system” leads to false diagnosis. Indeed, the reformed funding could mean that less disabled kids are getting the services they need. The bounty system may actually be working better. Also, parents with special needs kids may be moving to states with the bounty system further inflating costs in those states.

I did not address your final points about school vouchers, because I am not utterly opposed to the idea and would like to read more before I state any strong position. My initial thoughts are that the special education vouchers would only be beneficial to the kids with the greater problems, but I’ll have to read more. The special education system is highly flawed and am open to hearing all methods of reform. I would love to hear your evaluation of IEP procedures. However, I believe that the system has every incentive to under identify children with disabilities and that any reform needs must provide help to the kids that are falling through the cracks.

Jul 5, 2008 - 9:15 am 6. Jay P. Greene:

Robin,

We do not claim that educators consciously consider the financial incentives when over-identifying. In our original PJM column we wrote:

“We’re not saying that anyone is cynically gaming the system just out of greed for a bigger budget. Of course it’s possible that’s going on in some places, but we think it’s much more likely that schools are just trying to provide as much help as possible.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-special-education-epidemic/

And on my blog I wrote:
“I don’t mean to suggest that educators are cynically gaming the school finance system or are even aware of its details. My point is that the systems that school districts have adopted for the evaluation and identification of disabilities are shaped by these financial incentives so that even well-meaning practitioners will tend to over-identify disabilities when there are financial rewards for doing so.”
http://jaypgreene.com/2008/06/02/responding-to-response-to-intervention/

And I fail to see hypocrisy in urging McKenna to focus on evidence rather than emotional appeals. I also urge anyone who resents the rising costs of special ed to focus on the facts. Nothing hypocritical in that.

Jul 5, 2008 - 9:19 am 7. Smarty:

Perhaps what we can all agree to is that the current version of feel-good, lawyer-laden special education is a broken system, and we would be better off changing to perhaps a modified, but more traditional practice?

Special ed teachers and special ed classes for extra help are the best. If there is a child so bright that he is afraid of the “stigma” of special ed, then he will be motivated to put in the extra work in regular ed classes. That would return us to sanity.

Jul 5, 2008 - 10:07 am 8. Jay P. Greene:

Laura’s response is mostly a reductio ad undecim argument (mine goes to eleven from Spinal Tap). Repeating “Local schools have NO incentive to label kids with learning disorders” does not make it true. If there is no financial incentive increasing special ed enrollments, why do we find significantly faster special ed growth in states with “bounty” systems? (See http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_32.htm ) And why does Julie Cullen at UC San Diego similarly find that special ed grows faster in response to funding incentives? (See http://www.nber.org/papers/w7173 ) You have to rebut evidence with opposing evidence.

Laura misunderstands how special ed is funded and how disabilities are identified. It may be true that schools and districts want to hold their costs down, but they also want to increase their revenue. That’s why they over-identify disabilities (to increase revenue) while skimping on services for those they do identify (to keep costs down). And states may also want to hold costs down, but once they establish the funding formula, it is out of their hands.

It is simply not the case that “If [states] have to give schools more money for special education, then they hold back money for regular education,” at least at the level of the individual school or district. The formula for funding special ed is on top of the formula for funding general ed. If districts under “bounty” systems increase their special ed enrollments, they get more money. This may come out of the hide of other districts if the state really does keep total education spending constant. Or, more typically, the increased spending on special ed simply increases total education expenditures and either comes at the expense of other government services or higher taxes.

Nor is Laura accurate in claiming, “Diagnoses usually happen only when the child is taken to a medical professional for a proper evaluation.” Most disabilities, especially in the high-growth and relatively mild category of learning disabilities, are identified by school staff without consulting outside medical experts. Doctors are mostly involved in identifying more severe disabilities that come with more obvious medical symptoms.

Laura makes a valid point when she says that proving a relationship between financial incentives and special ed enrollments does not necessarily prove “false diagnosis.” It could be that without “bounty” systems we under-identify disabilities.

The problem is that it is hard to know what the “true” rate of disabilities should be. We do know that with financial incentives there has been a doubling in the identification of learning disabilities, causing total special ed enrollments to increase to more than 13% of all students. And all non-LD categories combined have hardly changed over the last three decades. To believe that the funding incentives are simply correcting for previous under-identification, we would have to believe that the under-identification was almost entirely contained in the category of learning disabilities. And we would have to believe that nearly 1 in 7 children has a bona fide disability. We argued in our post that this is simply not plausible.

Jul 5, 2008 - 10:26 am 9. obladioblada:

Because of my years as a special education advocate with a protection & advocacy agency and as the parent of a child with dyslexia, I agree with Laura. Most of the time parents have problems getting children in to the LD category or provided with accommodations under Section 504 of the Rehab Act of 1973.

Anecdotal? Yes, but at least in the states with which I’m familiar, parents would scoff at the assertion that schools are motivated to get students categorized as LD. Also, in those states, the individual school districts’ special ed funding is capped and there is a disincentive to provide IDEA services.

The states generally use only discrepancy criteria (the difference between IQ and achievement) to identify learning disabilities. Comparing only the results of a short form WISC test to those of an achievement test does nothing to uncover underlying problems. The parents of a child with dyslexia is likely to be left with the implication that the child is merely slow. In depth testing by a speech and language pathologist and related professionals outside of the school setting will identify the specific cognitive problems that are impeding performance. Generally, parents are left to foot the costly tests on their own and provide the results to the school in order to get the school to accept the LD diagnosis. This is true whether the parents are trying to procure services under IDEA or merely accommodations under Section 504.

My suspicion is that children of affluent parents are over-represented in LD categories because affluent parents are more likely to have the education and income to seek and fund private testing and services for children with learning disabilities. Reliance on the discrepancy criteria used by the schools reduces the rate of identification.

However, outside of the LD arena, I also believe that many people are confused about the services that are provided under IDEA. For instance, most states provide speech, occupational and physical therapy as a related service (some states have provisions that are more generous than the federal requirements). The purpose of related services is to “assist the student with a disability to benefit from special education”, it is not to provide habilitative services. In this regard, many children with disabilities are under served– insurers and legislatures don’t provide the habilitative services required, explaining that the services are already provided under IDEA. The IDEA services are limited only to those that are “educationally relevant” and are not habilitative.

Jul 5, 2008 - 11:59 am 10. TalkinKamel:

What? Schools are diagnosing kids with disabilities, then refusing to provide services?

I’m shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED!

/Sarc.

(This is something parents of developementally disabled kids have known for years.)

Jul 5, 2008 - 12:21 pm 11. obladioblada:

Within their limits, states and school districts generally allocate greater per-student funds to individual schools based on the severity of the individual students’ disabilities. An LD student would receive the lowest funding level, and with district caps, could generate little or no additional revenue for the individual school. A student with severe developmental disabilities and/or one who is medically fragile generates the highest funding because of the level of services required.

Some creative administrators have been known to use severely disabled students to maximize individual schools’ revenue. For instance, a struggling school could set up a sort of magnet program for severely disabled students, walking a tightrope with LRE requirements. Funding is maximized, but is not required to be actually spent on the students with severe disabilities. The “excess” funds are used to set up services that benefit LD students and the general population and help meet NCLB requirements. In the schools in which I saw this maneuver used, the administrators’ provided little or no classroom supports for the students with severe disabilities and their teachers were left to scavenge.

Jul 5, 2008 - 12:22 pm 12. laura:

So, if you concede the point that your study does not conclusively show that financial incentives lead to increased rates of “false diagnosis,” then all you are left with is the normative statement that you just can’t believe that 1 in 7 kids are really disabled. Maybe they are. I don’t know. I would like to see some actual studies on this matter from people in the medical community. Simply repeating “those kids aren’t really disabled” doesn’t make it true.

Jul 5, 2008 - 2:02 pm 13. Jay P. Greene:

A national spot-check audit, that we suggested and you rejected, would resolve the issue more conclusively. We could determine whether the large increase in learning disabilities caused by financial incentives is correcting a previous under-identification or creating over-identification. We think it is very likely to be the later because the current rate is so high (1 in 7 is a lot of kids) and because it makes no sense that the corrected under-identification would only occur in LD. If the lack of financial rewards prevented “true” disabilities from being identified, why were the vast majority of those under-identified disabilities exclusively in LD? I think we are drawing reasonable conclusions from the evidence, not just repeating a claim.

Jul 5, 2008 - 2:56 pm 14. obladioblada:

Just curious– have you ever studied the relationship between the incidence of LD and the relative affluence of the state? Were affluent states more like to provide per capita funding to schools? Is there any correlation between the incidence of LD and predominantly urban or rural states?

Jul 5, 2008 - 3:52 pm 15. laura:

It’s the LD area of special education that has made such advances in recent years. Dylexia, apraxia, nonverbal learning disorders, audio-processing disorders — these are all disabilities that have only recently been given names and appropriate treatments. Other forms of disabilities are more obvious and those kids have been labeled for a while.

There are also a lot of kids on the autism spectrum who are misdiagnosed and given the LD label. That mild area of the autistic spectrum is also only recently understood.

If there was some pretty good evidence from multiple sources that kids were being mislabeled, then let the national spot-check begin. But I haven’t gotten there yet.

When my son was ready for pre-school, his significant language delay qualified for him to get tested to see if he was eligible for the special education pre-school. He was tested by five people, outside of the school district, who all said that he needed help. After he didn’t make any progress in his program for a year and a half, we took him to a neurologist who said that things were much worse than the first five people thought. So, then he was tested by another five or six people, who said again that things were bad.

I’m not sure if our experiences in this town are typical, but there have been an awful lot of people poking at my kid. If a kid is mislabeled as LD in my town, it would involve a conspiracy of experts.

Jul 5, 2008 - 4:22 pm 16. XTeacher:

Here is my experience as a former teacher with special ed students in a mainstream classroom. Teachers are overloaded, and the professional diagnosis of students with special needs usually does not mean that there is assistance to the teacher in helping/dealing with the student with special needs.

EX: a student w severe ADHD who will do the work IF he gets extensive one-on-one tutoring, but neither the overburdened teacher nor the single parent working two jobs has the time for that. Nor does the school district have any special tutoring funding for the ADHD student.

I know a parent with an 18 year old with Arsperger’s syndrome. Mentally quite competent, but minimal social interaction skills. She had to fight long and hard for the school district to come up with a plan for her child. This is ultimately money well spent, because while a person with Arsperger’s ( spelling?) Syndrome will have social problems, the same mindset can make the Arsperger’s Syndrome person a very productive member of society,

Jul 5, 2008 - 5:17 pm 17. Ben Sutherland:

I’d be curious to see your data, guys. There’s truth to what you are arguing, here, I think. Though, without seeing the data and only judging from study and experience, at this point, I think you have also likely identified correlation that is not necessarily causation.

I am a special education teacher who is a wholehearted supporter of vouchers, charter schools, and every possible conceivable form of school choice. I am squarely in the corner of Milton Friedman and his commitment to a free market in education and giving parents and students the freedom and opportunity to be responsible for their educational choices. And I think this is one of the more serious issues in a field where attempts to explain failure, by students, by teachers, and by schools, is often cloaked in a language of disability with very weak scientific evidence and reasoning to justify a substantial number of diagnoses, especially in the field of learning disabilities.

Having said that, my experience is that financial incentives do not explain a number like 2/3 of diagnoses. What your study seems to demonstrate, from your description here, is that once proactive measures are made to remove an incentive for special education diagnoses, that diagnoses are not made as often without a financial incentive. That makes enormous sense.

It does not, though, I don’t believe, demonstrate causation. What it demonstrates is opportunity that, coupled with other and I would bet more likely causes – namely an often too desperate attempt by well-intentioned folks to both get help for students, to explain away failure on the part of students, teachers, and schools, a tendency to pity children who are struggling academically rather than create more effective opportunities for success, and other reasons for student academic failure that often gets explained as a “learning disability,” generally with very little actual hard scientific evidence to substantiate that diagnoses (certainly not to the standard by which we diagnose, say, cancer or heart disease) – makes special education diagnoses more likely, without teachers and schools explicitly seeking greater bounty, primarily. I do think that plays into the reasoning of teachers and administrators. But I don’t believe that it rises to the level of causation that you seem to be implying or claiming. I think there are other reasons that would offer a better explanation. I would bet that with a more robust data set that evaluates other variables, you would have a better explanation than this good but, I believe, incomplete explanation.

Your solutions, though, are good ones. And more individual choice and responsibility for school and academic choices would go a long way towards offering more real opportunities for student success, I think. It would certainly shift focus from explaining failure to creating success, especially with those for whom such a shift in mindset, attitude, choices, and developed ability matters most – students – which would be a very welcome development. And, given the very low level of scientific rigor typical to special education diagnoses, especially in the area of learning disabilities, I think you would likely experience a drop in those diagnoses and at least a modest rise in student academic success (and likely a much more serious rise, over time, and with more opportunities for choice on the part of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and schools).

Nice reasearch, though. I really appreciate folks working on this question. I think many students, parents and teachers believe that finding a diagnosis of disability will relieve them from the disappointments that academic failure inevitably bring. But I think they will find that reorganizing our efforts around creating the environment for more success – which a commitment to school choice is more likely to do, I believe – will be a much more satisfying and substantial effort, in the long run.

Keep up the good work.

Jul 5, 2008 - 8:18 pm 18. House of Eratosthenes:

[...] Pajamas columnists respond: McKenna’s responses to our evidence fall into four [...]

Jul 5, 2008 - 8:27 pm 19. Baker Mitchell:

As the operator of an 800 student K-8 charter school, I wondered why our sped population jumped several years ago. I was pleased at first, because educating special needs children was one of our missions. I assumed that our successes were becoming known in the community.

However, in tabulating the number of sped students by year in 4 neighboring traditional public schools, these data suggested an alternate explanation.

One sees a steady increase in the number of sped students in surrounding schools until about 2004-05. Most of these schools reported enrollments of 45 -60 sped students prior to that time. Afterwards, the numbers dropped into the mid-30’s and our numbers increased, thankfully.

The financial incentives were constantly present during the entire time, so what changed? Was our reputation becoming that pervasive? Before patting myself on the back too much, I believe that the change was wrought by AYP enforcement.

The federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) criterion requires that a school meet performance goals in each one of its disaggregated subgroups of students. Every school must report its progress for each subgroup – racial subgroups, financial subgroups, and ability subgroups. A single failing subgroup results in a failed AYP designation for the entire school – “Did not meet AYP!” The key factor was that, in order to be required to report a subgroup, the school had to have 40 or more students in that subgroup.

Thus, the data and timing of the downward sped population trends suggests that these schools, fearful of failing to achieve the academic criterion for the sped subgroup of their AYP, chose to forego the financial incentives and instead, reduce their sped populations to 39 students or fewer so that their sped students’ scores could be thrown out and not count against their AYP qualification. We had parents tell us that their formaer local school had suggested that “that charter school can really help your LD child!”

Schools that fail to meet AYP several years in a row risk being taken over by the state. It is interesting to observe how the various contingencies play against each other – loss of revenue vs. loss of control.

Of course the main objective in classifying a student as a sped student and gaining extra dollars is to have the resources to bring the student up to grade level and free them of needing an IEP. But then one looses the extra dollars – the school is financially punished for doing a good job.

If only contingencies were arranged so that school administrators could contact reinforcement for educating their students, perhaps all our schools would improve. But that is what school choice is all about – please parents by educating their children, and you will reap great rewards.

Jay, keep up the good work.

Jul 6, 2008 - 5:29 am 20. MaE:

Thank you for this article.

One of the problems in education these days is the refusal of ‘academics’ to accept statistical correlation to particular issues. In this case, Laura refuses to accept there’s a relationship between the states who have ‘bounty’ systems and the number of children diagnosed with a LD.

Not to mention, there’s no mention of the financial incentives for parents of diagnosed children. In DC, a parent is eligible for city funds for their LD diagnosed child. DC has one of the highest sped student ratios in the country.

Jul 6, 2008 - 5:43 am 21. Richard:

Let’s face it, while “It’s the LD area of special education that has made such advances in recent years. Dylexia, apraxia, nonverbal learning disorders, audio-processing disorders — these are all disabilities that have only recently been given names and appropriate treatments. Other forms of disabilities are more obvious and those kids have been labeled for a while.”

May be true, there’s alot of picking-ur-nose-itis diagnoses going on, and “lazy” teachers, who CAN’T be fired, as well as “lazy” parents who don’t give a flip either way are all part of the problem. I don’t necessarily call more unique and “special” something which the State deems a disability. That’s PC jargon, mishmash, which just grates my damn nerves.

This is merely the Government’s idea of placating the above 2 groups, while “discovering” New and Improved “disorders” to facilitate the State’s hold on American children. Where there’s a money incentive, there’s at LEAST the temptation towards corruption, if not the whole hearted indulgence thereof.

And one more thing. IF let’s say…a young child is DIAGNOSED as , ADD or ADHD, is given a NARCOTIC for the better part of his (yes most ADHD diagnosed children are boys) developmental years, will he be UNABLE legally to purchase a weapon, as his newly affirmed 2nd Amendment rights say? Or, and here’s my bet, will he (yes he) be deemed mentally “disabled” and therefor flagged, and unable to purchase a rifle?
The answer coming up, and soon.

Jul 6, 2008 - 6:46 am 22. Another view:

Children are identified as LD when they are failing academically. If this is early in their school years, I applaud the label and the help such a label can get them. My son has a processing speed problem but because of his high IQ it has not effected his grades yet so he cannot be labeled and get the help that would make his straight A’s come to him much easier. The school psychologist told me that there are so many children failing academically in elementary school that they need the funding first.

I really do not have a problem with intensive extra help in elementary school to aid students academically. If my child were failing the second grade, I would want some help from the school.

My problem is that these kids just keep failing throughout elementary school and into high school. The special help just keeps continuing.
It should stop and the IEP should plan for the eventual end of extra help for LD kids. I am talking about kids who are labeled LD because they are failing school. I am not talking about Aspergers, hearing impaired or some other categories in IDEA.

I teach 10th grade biology. This is a required course for all students because of the graduation test requirement in our state. These students with IEP’s required me to rewrite tests so that the IEP students had more time, help with reading and writing from a structured study hall teacher.
The rewrites I am talking about is removing key vocabulary because the big words are intimidating, removing essay questions because writing is intimidating, removing anything resembling math including graphs and charts because math is intimidating and providing a word bank because you just want to make sure they get the concepts and skip the rest. The typical students in the class are aware of these differences and resent how much easier the “SAME” exam happens to be.

By high school, all this extra help these students are being given should be a thing of the past. IEP’s should have an end point in middle school or at least by high school. If these kids still cannot perform up to standard than an alternative curriculum should be tried that would lead to providing them with job skills once they are out of school.

Jul 6, 2008 - 4:21 pm 23. Adoptive Parent:

Until we change our words, nothing will change. We are parents of ADOPTED Special needs twins, physically and mentally challenged. This was our choice! We need to have a PEACEFUL rally to secure funding for education of our children. The Fight on drugs, a war rally, and anything to do with these words has made things worse and out of control, NOT BETTER! We must LIGHT the way through the darkness and make positive change by inviting “the powers that be” to see that the old way needs to be remodeled to reflect the needs of our children. They must be the priority in all financial and educational decisions…the parents should rally on the government to make change!!
Rally in peace and make a change by joining forces and creating a better world! As a wise man once said, “Stand TOGETHER or fall apart!” We have the power by joining our hands, in a peaceful way, together NOW and march for our cause, the children of our future! They are ALL everyone’s children!!

Jul 7, 2008 - 7:09 am 24. Charles:

I believe No Child Left Behind (NCLB)has had an appreciable impact upon the number of students identified with learning disabilities (LD).

Here is my reasoning:

1. LD is the “fuzziest” of the classifications and typically, the most acceptable classification in the eyes of parents. Diagnosis is still driven by discrepancy formulas rather than Response to Intervention (RTI). (RTI promises to make diagnosis even more complicated and confusing, in my opinion.)

2. Testing modifications and other accommodations available to students with disabilities — coupled with demand for “accountability” on the part of teachers and administrators — has led to higher rates of referral to the CSE (as well as to Section 504 teams).

3. LD represents the “path of least resistance” when it comes to obtaining test mods and accommodations.

4. Many parents are grateful that their children have been classified LD, for they know that under the draconian NCLB their offspring will have a decent chance of passing high-stakes tests and graduating.

I would add that the real crisis in special education lies in the area of emotional disturbance (ED). Many kids with significant emotional and behavioral disorders are being funneled into LD because the classification is “politically correct.”

I am also doubtful that districts are motivated to classify at a higher rate due to financial incentives, and think we should provide better funding to public schools rather than support the voucher system. Privatizing education is what Forster & Greene are all about, and it is a bad idea that will only lead to significant cuts in funding for special education.

Please note my blog, “Kids in Pain,” may be accessed by clicking on my name.

Jul 7, 2008 - 8:15 pm 25. Curtis Hier:

On another thread, Greg refused to comment on the theory that special ed. numbers have increased because of the poor job of teaching reading that happens in the early grades.

Jul 8, 2008 - 7:35 am 26. Charles:

Curtis, I visited the site you mentioned and read your comment about reading instruction. It seems you think the whole language movement failed a number of kids, and that as a result we have more kids classified LD.

I don’t have any reason to disagree with you, but also find it hard to agree that whole language (reading) instruction has fostered illiteracy. I say that because an entire generation of post-war babies received the equivalent — basal reading instruction (”Dick & Jane”) — in the ’50’s, and without the benefit of phonics.

I would look to television and videogames as possible culprits before I looked to whole language.

Jul 8, 2008 - 2:15 pm 27. David:

My six-year old boy is something straight out of Calvin and Hobbes. On his own, he will write massive epics of space invasions, and once a thirty-page magazine “for kids only.” Some of the spelling is creative, but I can live with that since he’s attempting to write words that many high schoolers can’t spell. But he’s also a royal pain in the a**, easily bored with repetitive yada-yada his first grade teacher has to do to try drag a whole class of slow students along. I sat and watched them. They are slow. A number of them are holdbacks. My wife volunteered for the class, spending hours a day in the school, and slowly discovered a lot that she, the parent, wasn’t supposed to discover. Such as, seven of the boys in that class were already on ADHD medication. (I let the school know, as an aside, that the first hint of such a “diagnosis” by the teacher would result in a major lawsuit, charging the teacher and the principal and whoever else played along with practicing medicine without a license. I found out later that the mother of one of the worst hellraisers, a sweet little blonde girl, has a sister who is an attorney, and they had already made a similar visit. The teacher had been building a case on our son, but when she found we were building a case on her, the move to diagnose him as ADHD stalled.)

The teacher was, frankly, incompetent. The children ate breakfast around 0700, were made to sit in class (no recess) until their lunch hour at 1210 with no snacks, lunch “hour” ended at 1220, and then began the only short recess period of the day. How any child could do that without breaking out at some point, I can’t imagine, but it probably helps to be drugged. At first the teacher made the “disciplinary challenges” sit out recess back in their classroom, until my wife insisted that if the children were in the classroom, the teacher had to be, also. My wife certainly wasn’t going to watch them, if only for liability reasons. So after one or two unhappy recesses in the classroom, off the children went to the principal’s office. Why the principal put up with it, I’ll never know.

I should add that many of these children were theives, pickpockets, bullies of the first order. Their own parents failed to supply them with school materials, and they stole from our son relentlessly, despite repeated warnings to the teacher. They reached into his pockets to steal cough drops. When he fought back or complained, he was punished. When the teacher won’t protect him, imagine how alone and defenseless he feels. Only in the last month of the school year, when the teacher found her purse empty of both money and car keys, did she finally admit what we had been telling her all along.

At the end of the year, we found that our son, who scored not only highest in his class for reading, but higher than most second-graders, was put back in the slow class for second grade. Thanks to a friend, we found that in the school’s “confidential” (read: no parents to know) assessment system, our son was labeled a problem child.

So what I found most interesting in Dr Greene’s articles is the note that students aren’t to be labeled LD or similar when the problem is poor teacher performance. But who watches the teachers?

Every day in government schools only reinforces the value of home schooling, if only we were in a position to do so ourselves.

Jul 9, 2008 - 1:42 am 28. BlackOrchid:

David, that’s a scary story!

But I saw similar things – how about a Pre-K class with 4 boys on Ritalin already? – in our local parochial (Catholic) school. So it’s not just government schools.

Ugh I dread next year (my oldest starts kindergarten). And my son is already like yours at three – he’s going to be a handful by six!

Should be interesting. Good luck to you next year!

Jul 9, 2008 - 1:40 pm 29. Charles:

Black Orchid -

If you are seeing pre-K kids on Ritalin something is very, very wrong, because ADHD should not even be diagnosed in children so young. And, unless there are 80 kids in the parochial school classroom, on a statistical basis at least it would be over-diagnosed.

No more than 1/20 kids is diagnosed with ADHD on a national basis. Most are boys, of course.

Jul 9, 2008 - 8:14 pm 30. Krodeb:

There is very little discussion here of another relevant point, I think. There is tremendous pressure both by the school and societally on the parents of a child TO have them be labeled as “learning disabled”. It doesn’t help that the clinical definitions of things like ADD and ADHD are so vague and all-encompassing that nearly any school child (especially boys) could easily be fit into their parameters. So a parent had a child who is misbehaving at school, causing some problems at home not wanting to do homework, fidgety etc. The school comes home with the implication that “there may be an issue here” and suggests a visit to a specialist. The specialist does the “tests” and determines, Indeed, your son/daughter IS fidgety, misbehaving and doesn’t want to do homework — that seems to fit the ADD/ADHD profile (oh, and by the way, it’ll make you my patient for a long, long, time) and so then the parent is left having to decide whether they should slog along without medication and dispute the diagnosis, or fall in line, take the meds, which, as expected, calm the child into submission and play along in the game. Am I saying that there is not child out there who really has ADD/ADHD problems? No. Nor am I saying that there is no child out there who shouldn’t be on the medication. I am also not saying that every doctor out there doing the tests is just in it for the money. But I AM saying that all of the pressures, when one has a child who might just need some maturity and/or better discipline, are towards diagnosis with a “disorder” and then subsequent medication. It is NO ONE’s natural interest to NOT have that diagnosis. The parent doesn’t want to have to do all the hard legwork to deal with the difficult child or face up to the idea that their current methods of discipline aren’t working. The teacher doesn’t want to have deal with helping implement a discipline plan in the classroom for this child when putting him/her on meds has a much quicker and easier calming effect, and the Doctor has no incentive to send the child away without a diagnosis because he/she will have just lost a patient- coupled with the very fuzzy guidelines for ADD/ADHD it is difficult NOT to diagnosis a child with this– and don’t even mention the drug companies who have a HUGE incentive in promoting the idea that these “disorders” not only exist but are prevalent and can ONLY be helped through their (latest) medication. All of these factors likely heavily distort the LD designation, over and above the potential funding factor cited in the original article. (Please note, I am NOT talking about dyslexia, or autism or Asperger’s here which are all clearly medical issues that can be truly tested for in an empirical manner)

And to add to the anecdotal nature of this comment thread let me say that my experience in this comes from one relative who has had a child diagnosed ADHD and put him on medication, one friend who had the same diagnosis and after seeing the side effects of the medication on her child chose to fight the behavior issues without it for 10 years now (the girl is now a wonderful teenager whose behavior is all the better for the years of work), and a boy who I mentored for several years who was put on meds in 2nd grade largely because of his behavior which likely had nothing to do with ADHD and more to do with his miserable home life, lack of good parenting, and spirited personality (in fact, he was tested after nearly 6 years on the meds and that doctor said he had absolutely NO distraction problems). The medication he was on ruined his appetite, stunted his growth (he would grow during the summer when off the drug and not grow during the school year while on the drug) and God know what else. His mom finally took him off the meds in 8th grade although the school really resisted it. She felt bullied all along by the school in the process even though, legally, the school was not supposed to suggest drugs AT ALL to parents.

Jul 9, 2008 - 9:42 pm 31. BlackOrchid:

Charles, I knew something was very very wrong, and that is why my children aren’t going to that school (despite my long-held plans to send them there). This was a class supposedly for 3-4 year olds (I was visiting) and I was questioning the principal and teacher about the much older boys there – one was 6! They not only believed very strongly in diagnosing “developmental” problems in this pre-K, they also believed very strongly in holding back. They made this especially clear to me because my daughter has a summer birthday (she will be starting Kindergarten this year regardless, which is one of the reasons I am nervous, since so many parents around here “redshirt”).

Krodeb, you are on to something. Again, this is my own anecdotal evidence, but I have seen very similar things. I was just making the point that this is not just an issue in public elementary schools – it’s in parochial schools (which aren’t necessarily the same as private schools) too. At least where I am.

And the pressure on parents to toe the line is very high.

Jul 10, 2008 - 7:50 am 32. Kim:

In our state (CT), parents who want to homeschool special needs kids are denied and have protective services called on them. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the schools don’t want to let them go–it would cost them too much money.

Jul 10, 2008 - 1:02 pm 33. Charles:

Black Orchid, I checked my DSM-IV manual, and there are no -strict- age guidelines, but the manual definitely contains cautionary language about diagnosing ADHD in a pre-schooler. As a psychologist, I would certainly never do so; and think most psychologists feel that way. Still, there are pediatricians and doubtless some mental health professionals who are arrogant enough to think they could make that call.

Kim, I have a very hard time believing what you say holds true for the entire state of Connecticut. Some backwater school districts, maybe . . . but the State? Frankly, it soulnds like you have an axe to grind.

Jul 10, 2008 - 3:18 pm 34. Charles:

Kim, I looked into homeschooling in Connecticut for you. Here is a good link:

http://www.cthomeschoolnetwork.org/

Homeschooling is alive and well in your state, it seems.

Jul 12, 2008 - 1:00 pm 35. Amy:

Someone above suggested looking at the correlation between LD problems and affluent school districts. That would be interesting. Why is it always one of my affluent, over-educated baby-boomer peers who’know’ that their child has ADD or some type of language delay or other assorted learning problem which causes their child to be, perish the thought, less than ‘highly gifted.’ The testing necessary to tease out many of these problems is upwards of $2500 and done privately. My inner-city neighbors-of-color are not going to private neurologists for these tests, but my fellow parents who want to get their kids into public school Gifted and Talented Programs and fast-track private nursery and grammar schools are.

There is a lot of good that has come out of the ability to diagnose and treat an array of learning problems, and hopefully with more articles by Jay Green and company, the evidence will be overwhelming and the conclusion will be widespread that a government-run, public school system is uniquely UNqualified to deal with anything other than teacher-pleaser type students who are able to function adequately within the mold that the public school system markets as being the only reliable education model possible.

Jul 13, 2008 - 12:40 pm

Write a Comment

Name:	(required, displayed)
Email:	(required, not publicized)
URL:	(optional, displayed)
Comments: