LD students and reading

Click on “for teachers” in the row of buttons at the top of the page — there are teaching strategies and inclusion articles and a ton of ideas.

www.powerof2.org is a site *full* of inclusive stuff, including collaborative lessons.

My experience is that LD students usually get to me after failing general ed. and general ed. interventions. The processing deficits are real and often significant. They need special instruction, specific teaching techaniques, lots of teaching and guided practice. I have not found the general education classroom to be the generally most effective class to remediate. If you want to modify and accomdote and delude yourself into thinking you are helping, then the collaborative inclusion model is the way to go.

Modify and acommodate and delude, yes that is exactly what the co-taught sped class was like for my son. I had to do it myself by providing every therapy I could think of to remediate his deficits and use scientifically proven teaching techniques to get him to read. I have no problem with accomodations that allow the child to show what they can truely accomplish but accomodations accompanied by a modified curriculum with little actual remediation will lead only one place.

I read recently that only 10% of sped kids make it to college. If we give them a dumbed down curriculum and insist on trying to circumvent deficits rather than dealing with them, those statistics will remain. Many these kids have high IQs and are full of potential.

I have no question in my mind that my child will go to college. I wish he had a teacher like Anitya, Victoria, Janis or Shay who would help me to help him rather than just ‘placing’ him. Without such help, I will help him myself.

Thanks to the all the teachers that get this.

A great big gigantic hug for you, {{{{Linda}}}}! You inspire me to work hard to deserve the honor of being listed with those others.

For the record, I totally agree with Anitya and Linda. Inclusion is not the answer. Intensive, small group or individual remediation is absolutely necessary. Inclusion for another part of the day along with the remediation may be okay. But inclusion is never a substitute for remediation.

Janis

I agree Janet. However all too often the pull-out services are woefully inadequate. In many cases our children are better off with the full inclusion at school and the support at home.

We had a great general ed teacher last year - and my son learned a lot from her. This year, the general ed teacher isn’t so good - so we provide lots more support at home. But when he went to the resource room for remediation, he was given worksheets to do by himself - that were never graded and he never received feedback for them. He started to be a behavior problem - somthing he had NEVER done before. He doesn’t go there anymore.

I want to echo Linda’s thanks to all the wonderful teachers here, who give freely of their time and energy to support as many children as they can. The future is a much brighter place because of your generosity of spirit.

Lil, I agree with you, too! I should definitely clarify, the intensive remediation may not even be available at the school. At the moment, not one single LD resource teacher in my district is trained in Phono-Graphix, Orton-Gillingham, or Lindamood-Bell. I am the only one and I have a small caseload of mostly hearing impaired and 1 LD child. So my child goes to a charter school where the LD teacher is trained in PG and Visualizing and Verbalizing. She hopes to take another training this summer. So when the special ed. teachers are not trained, then inclusion or homeschooling are the only options, and the mother or tutor must do the remediation outside of school.

Janis

My poor guy was FINALLY diagnosed at the end of 2nd grade (forget about all the markers that any reasonably educated-or at least thoughtful person should have/could have noticed).He started pull out services for about 20% of his time. he HATED it- shredded his self esteem- the resource teacher thought she was being helpful with whole language and picture clues (no, sadly I am not kidding) when I saw the i)worksheets, ii)heard the sp ed director tell us books on tape were a good alternative, and that 0.5 grade equivalent per year was good since he does have a LD (never mind that this would have him graduated reading at a 5th grade level- considered illiterate by the US census), iii) the elementary co-ordinator for sp ed ask us- the parents- that’s right- for a definition of multisensory , iv) have the different teachers tell me that my son reading at the 14th percentile (while his IQ placed him in the 85th percentile)was DOING WELL, and most importantly,v) hear my kid characterize himself as a stupid freak that can’t read (this could be a very long list,but i’m sure you’ve heard it all before) we decided to take the bull by the horns and sent our guy to LindamoodBell for a summer (tres $$$- but holey smokes- like magic-spelling though is still a bear cat)so presently we are drafting letters for complaints, due process, legal briefs, blah, blah, blah- to try to recover this dough. IF WE HADN”T have done thisI have no doubt that our on would be so turned off, down, depressed that he’d join those heartbreaking stats on school drop outs, juvenile incarceration, etc, etc.
PULL OUT- i suppose if it’s remotely useful that’sthe way to go-our experience was that is was so counterprductive that we might as well do inclusion-at least his self-esteem isn’t shredded. Since the school is incapable or unwilling to teach my son he way he learns- so we educate ourselves and we’ll attend to it. thanks for letting me blow off steam.

Sandy, sadly, I think this is far more common than the scenario where school staff is knowledgable about proper remediation. Change is so slow in big bureacracies. It makes me crazy as no one listens to a lowly teacher. But I do my own thing, and at least it makes a difference for a few. I am thinking about starting a parent LD association, though. :-)

Janis

I had a very similar experience. I am very glad I took the bull by the horns. I don’t know where my little guys self esteem would be if I had left it up to the school.

All their daily whole language reading specialists couldn’t do a thing. I taught him to read the summer after first and wouldn’t you know, it wasn’t even that difficult.
We dealt with his math issues through therapies that addressed the underlying deficits. Treating the actual deficits, what a concept.
Ongoing vision therapy has made a positive improvement in his reading but he still struggles to read for prolonged periods. He still rubs his eyes and says, “I’m tired.” So once we do more VT I am guessing that will stop because he is a master decoder and reads fluently for short periods.

I will teach him to write this summer and then they can’t say boo to me. He will just melt into the regular ed classes and I can finally free myself of the IEP torture room.

Ok, that was my turn to blow.

nt

Great Linda, we now have 2 members! :-) My little girl is home sick today which is why I can be on the computer. I think it will not be welcomed in some circles if I start an LD parents group, but it will be for parents of homeschool, private, charter, and public school children.

Janis

Sign me up as a charter teacher/tutor member

My goodness, what an esteemed group we have! Victoria, you could come and be the first speaker. The only slight problem with this organization-to-be is that we have zero dollars to fly you in.

Seriously, I’ll keep you all informed as to how this goes. I’m having a private reading eval done for my child on April 14th, and after that I’ll know whether she qualifies as LD or not (she has APD and receives speech/language services now). It will be much easier for me to get away with starting the group if I can say I am doing it as a parent.

If my colleagues ever discover LD Online, it sure is going to limit my free speech!

Janis

I have a couple thoughts to add to this interesting conversation. As an 8th grade special ed teacher I felt inclusion was very important for my students’ education and self esteem. I team taught two English classes in different teams so that my students could be successful, learning members of their team. The curriculum was rich and the kids worked hard to be part of a class/team they valued. Too often a pull out special ed class becomes a place that students resent and feel unchallenged. Motivation and effort improved greatly in a collaboration class. Some students in special ed too long begin to think they can’t do the work and that they are stupid. Inclusion allows them to access interesting curriculum taught by excellent teachers and students see that they can succeed. BUT at the same time that my student were included in a co-taught class, I had them for a pull-out study skills class where I could review concepts and structure the assignments that were given in the regular ed class. I feel that at 8th grade this helped my students’ and their parents evaluate the child’s skills so that they could plan for high school. As a parent, I made sure my son had challenging regular education classes because I wanted him to get an education. Special ed classes are often so remedial and repetitive that the child looses interest in learning. Unfortunately, I found that most of his special ed teachers had no idea what to do with his reading disability and the district had no interest either. So, why have him spend his day in a remedial class that isn’t going to teach him to read. I educated myself (because I didn’t know how to teach reading) to help my son and my students, but with my class sizes and my need for materials and support I found I could not get going on the intensive reading instruction my very low reading students needed. I fought for improvements and saw some changes beginning. My son though was facing high school and I refused to continue in a place that I saw as ignorant and unwilling to utilize the research about how to teach him to read. I moved and placed him in a private college prep LD school where he says he is in “shangri-la”. I am also blessed to work in another district that has trained me and allows me to really teach children to read.

Angela, thanks for sharing your story. I think many of us have been in the same situation. I am glad to hear you found a better place for your son and a better school system in which to teach.

A principal actually asked me last week why I sent my child to a charter school and said that the former superintendent always said that if the system was good enough to work in, it should be good enough for our kids! I pointed out that my child had some special learning needs and that the charter school was actually making the effort to seek training in effective methods. I told her that not one single LD teacher in our system is trained to remediate reading. And that is NOT good enough for my child!!!!!!!!!!!

Janis

Oh, and one more thing, in our ideal situation, kids would be fairly remediated by the time they got to middle school, so inclusion classes should be the norm in that case! Sounds like you’re doing a great job!

Janis

Janis, I wanted my son to be successful in my public school district. I tried so hard to get them to train teachers. They would plan paid training days and there would be nothing about reading (year after year)(one year I muscled in and brought a PG trainer to the August trainings). I hired an advocate against my own district to get them to provide some relevant instruction for our son. It was all a nightmare. Finally we just left. I went to a board meeting and said why I was leaving. We’re paying for private school ourselves so there are no strings attached. In my new district I have training, materials, a consultant available. I teach one-to-one in a clinic setting in a public school district that believes it can improve the lives of children by teaching them to read. Our son is doing beautifully. He is learning, fitting in, shining and preparing for the college of his choice. If he had stayed in our public school none of that would have happened, unfortunately.

Angela,

Thank you for sharing your story. I have taught special eduction classes for many years and find your experience of great interest. It is unfortunate that you feel special education students often resent and feel unchallenged in their SPED pull-out classrooms. It has been my experience that it is here, in the SPED classroom, where students often are motivated and feel safe to explore what they are capable of achieving. While some students in special ed may begin to think they can’t do the work and that they are “stupid” (your words), it is the responsibility of the educator to nurture and encourage their dreams so that they may be successful. Although you may believe that inclusion allows them to access interesting curriculum taught by excellent teachers, I question the capabilities of your SPED educators and the administration which “governs” them. If your special ed classes become remedial and repetitive at best, such that a child looses interest in learning, I suggest an evaluation of your school, it’s goals, and the goals and objectives of your administration and district.
It is truly unfortunate that you found that most of your son’s special ed teachers had no idea what to do with his reading disability as well as your district. Could it have been that the SPED teachers were too busy filling out the proper paperwork, attending: IEP’s, Student Study Team meetings (SST), Multi-Disciplinary Team meetings (MDT), offering before and after school study support, attending assemblies, participating in fire drills and school lockdowns, monitoring the hallways and bus loading area, speaking with parents on the phone, composing e-mail…I digress. Please accept my apologies. I wish I could of had the opportunity to work with your son. There are some of us who still care. Thank you for your time.

Angela,

I applaud your efforts to challenge your own district and hire an advocate to provide relevant instruction for your son. It is unfortunate that they did not hear your concerns. All too often an administrative credential fosters a mentality of arrogance and an inability to see beyond personal agendas.

John,

While I’ll certainly agree with you that most special ed. teachers have too much paperwork and other responsibilities that take away from quality instruction, I’d have to say that Angela is right on target in saying the majority of special educators are not properly trained to teach reading. Not one teacher in my district (besides me) has either Orton-Gillingham, Lindamood Bell, Phono-Graphix, Wilson, or any other decent MSSL reading program training or certification. Yes, there are so progressive districts that offer these trainings, but I’d say they are few.

Janis

Janis,

You are correct…there are few progressive districts which offer appropriate training, however, where is the accountability for the universities which train these prospective educators? Given the revenue which is generated from our post secondary institutions, I find it shameful that they are not held to a higher standard and/or degree of responsibility for tomorrow’s future.

I want to comment on several different issues. First, I found inclusion a very satisfying place for my students. Many had been in special ed for so long and a safe inclusive environment was a good experience for them. They felt like they belonged and could hold their own in a diverse setting. Second, I know many caring special ed teachers, but some are too nice and too content to let children be happy in a fake setting that does not challenge them to find a way to get the job done. As many of you have said, most teachers do not have the training to really teach the learning disabled. And yes, it is the universitiy’s fault, the district’s fault, the school and the teachers, too. But presented with the idea of training teachers, everyone balks at the expense. It is easier for all to keep a child in special ed for their entire school career than to train and implement a program that will teach these children to read. I’d say 80% of my students were in special ed because they couldn’t read well enough to do the necessary work. As a teacher alone, I didn’t really understand how they got to eighth gradeunable to read. Then with my son’s experience, I understood. He was written off, pushed away, his many talents ignored because our society equates intelligence with reading. And I and all his teachers like me did not know the current research, or the programs that implement that research. Teachers, administrators, doctors and universities failed us time and time again. Thankfully, my husband and I are committed to giving our son a chance, regardless of the obstacles put there by the very people who should have been helping us. Who should help a child learn to read???

We are part of LAUSD in a high test scoring school. The resource teachers change each year. The current teacher has a special ed background and is very nice but can’t wait to get back to a regular class. She has no special training in any of the reading programs outside of Open Court, which the school uses. My son was drowning at second grade level (his own grade), so she is using first grade level with him. How did you finally find your current district? Here’s another comment - my child will not work with me. He works so hard at school and has had it when he gets home. I marvel at all these parents who are remediating at home. Thanks.

On our report card they put children into levels for reading, writing and spelling.

Interestingly my son was at a higher level last year when he was in sped even though his writing is better this year. I didn’t realize the extent of his problem then because he was getting a “modified” curriculum and a “modified” report card.
A modified report card is pretty useless to me as a parent who is trying to get her son up to grade level. I feel we lost ground in sped because of all the modifications.
I am glad to have someone finally tell me the truth. I think he could have graduated high school with my thinking he was doing just fine because of the modifications.

nt

nt

There are many things for you to think about and a fine line for you to walk. You want your son in a program where he is challanged but can be successful. You need to accept grades of C understanding that he is passing the class and learning. So, look at why your son is in special ed and honestly evaluate his strengths and weaknesses. Can he use his strengths in a regular ed class to demonstrate that he understands the curriculum? Are there modifications that can be made so that he can be successful?
Then what is being done in sped to remediate the reasons he is in special education. Is the teacher trained to deliver a specific program if that is called for? Is he making progress? Is he just being taught the same way that has proven unsuccessful time and again? You need to ask hard questions and expect reasonable answers.

angela,

i have read all of your posts on this thread, is your son in your public school district that you are talking about or are you sending him to another school?

and how did you ever find a public school that will let you do one-on-one?

i too believe remediation is almost pointless unless delivered one-on-one at least for the beginning when PA skills are being learned etc

even a group of two can seem large,

kids who struggle with reading need one-on-one for success,

how do we get public schools to understand this??

your efforts with your son were inspiring to read,

libby

as a parent- you can insist on objective quantifyable markers of progress (see wrightslaw.com) something like woodcock Johnson give nationally normed (i thnk) Grade Equivalents, age equivalents

well, i reckon, teachers get PAID to do so……….., but they don’t know how, and certainly aren’t ill-intentioned I guess insome cosmic alternate universe, the powers that be just figur this isn’t important!.

Thanks to you both. Sorry, my name isn’t Please that was an accident.

I feel that I get good feedback now that he is in a regular class. I asked her to treat him like everyone else and she does. (If we hadn’t remediated his underlying deficits to the degree that we have through outside interventions this would not be possible)

When he was in the sped class I do feel like I was lulled into a certain amount of complacency regarding his writing. Not being a teacher I don’t always know what is normal. Now that I know the extent of the problem I looked at possible underlying causes and am addressing them. Logic, visualization and a severe ocular motor deficit are impeding his written expression for long essays. He can write well if he just has to write a sentence. He can write the the definitions for his science words without the dictionary.

He gets all A’s in social studies and science a few A’s in math with some C’s and B’s(they grade each specific skill) It is only written expression that is a major problem right now.
I think he will be a straight A student in the upper grades and no one will look at his third grade report card for college admissions. Right now, I just need the truth.

It is the schools that should be teaching my son to read. Yet all the way up the line there is incredible resistance to implementing research and training teachers. Imagine, a medical condition treated the same way we treat a reading disability. I am sorry to tell you that my mother had more help finding treatment for my little brother with a life threatening illness, than I have had finding help for my son with a life affecting learning disability.

To continue my rant (sorry), I think in the negative sense we have an educational HMO that doles out treatment with only an eye on the $. That said, I now work for a district that has done a tremendous amount of teacher training, providing materials and a support team to help teachers implement programs. I work in a “clinic” type setting where children from throughout the district are transported to us for two hours a day, five days a week for intensive one-to-one instruction. We are trained and supported to implement powerful strategies and programs. This is my second year here and we are seeing wonderful improvements in student who can then go on and get an education because they have been taught to read and write. If a district is willing to change things, it can be done. The cost in the short term is far outweighed by the lives that are changed for the children who do not have to waste away in special ed for their entire school career because they can’t read.

Angela,

What a concept! I would love to hear more? What district are you in if you don’t mind me asking?

Michelle

I always say it is more cost efficient to do be effective. This is a tried and true principal accepted pretty much everywhere except in education.

Maybe with more people like you around that will change.

Forsaking the safety of anonymity for a moment I will tell you the good, the bad and the ugly. I was a special ed teacher for Bonita Unified School District (La Verne, Los Angeles County) for 14 years, during which time my son did not learn to read despite being very bright and very verbal. I realized how much I did not know about teaching reading and read a lot of research and found many excellent programs. My goal was to educate myself and my district so that my son could learn to read and so many kids like him would have help too. We went to doctors, universities, therapists and no one worked together, no one could guide us to an effective course of action and my child was getting older and older. Knowing that he would not probably not get a diploma and that his life path could be terribly impacted by staying in a district that could not decide how to teach reading to special ed kids, we sold our house and moved to San Diego so that our son could attend The Winston School (a college prep high school for LD students). Although I applied to many districts I was looking for one that was serious about teaching LD kids to read. God smiled on me and I am blessed with a position in the San Diego City School District in their Student Learning Center. Here special ed students are evaluated for progress and if there is not significant progress in special ed classes where teachers are trained and using specific methods, then a referral to the SLC might be made. Students come to us for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, transportation provided. They receive a personalized plan of one-to-one instruction for decoding, comprehension, fluency, auditory processing. A child may stay with us for up to two years. We have students from 1st through 12th grade. We are a Designated Instructional Service (DIS) and not in charge of the IEP. I have been trained in effective programs and then have consultants who visit to work with me to continually improve my instruction techniques. My son is not in this program. We no longer live in the district in which I teach, but I now feel capable to teach him myself and he is so happy at Winston. Back to my HMO (good or bad). Like a medical model, when your child is diagnosed with a learning disability, a knowledgeable team should develop a plan for treatment and guide the parents to choose ways to help the child. These treatments should go from most accepted, probably provided by the district to experimental that parents may need to pay for themselves. If I ran the circus…..

Be careful trying to get reimbursement through legal process. I was just at a conference and when presented with caselaw saw with my own eyes that parents rarely get reimbursed.

The attorney next to me didn’t appreciate it much when I said “I think I’ll spend my money on LMB b/c that’s scientifically proven and pretty much guaranteed, while the courtroom is not”.

Judges often turn down cases for reimbursement if the parent didn’t give the school an appropriate amount of time to remediate Johnny. Of course, while you’re waiting, you child ends up 3-4 years behind.

JMHO

n/t

Absolutely true stories:

Once upon a time, not very long ago (in my great-grandmother’s lifetime) doctors didn’t know how diseases were transmitted. They had some idea that contact of some kind was involved, but that was about it. Then a weirdo named Semmelweiss came up with a totally bizarre idea: he noticed that women who gave birth at home were much less likely to die of puerperal fever than those who came to the hospital. He looked at the difference, and noticed that doctors went straight from examining corpses to delivering babies. So he started forcing the doctors to wash their hands before seeing live patients, and the death rate dropped dramatically. Did everybody say thank you for saving lives and did the idea catch on like wildfire? Fat chance. The doctors in his own hospital fought him bitterly and he had to fire several and stand over the others. He was a figure of fun in the profession. Professors of medicine spoke against him and taught their students that he was wrong. It took two generations of doctors for this idea to really catch on, and in recent decades people have started backsliding again. The public was still arguing about whether or not they believed in the germ theory of disease up into the thirties.

Once upon a time, not at all long ago (in my grandmother’s and even my mother’s lifetime) doctors had very little idea of how drugs and medicines worked. Basically, it was a try-it-and-see system. Some doctors had complex theories of like calling to like, so they gave hot medicines to people with fevers and yellow medicines to people with jaundice (liver failure). Others had theories of purging the body and prescribed laxatives for everything. ( I still have children’s readers from the thirties in which this is the prescribed cure) Then a few came along with a scientific approach. They still didn’t know how the medicines worked, but they at least started doing measurements and recording successes and failures and doing double-blind studies (in which you don’t know if you’re getting the real medicine or a placebo, so you won’t bias the results with your hopes) and they figured out which medicines did some good, which were a waste of time, and which were actually harmful; also which medicines were good for which diseases. Did people welcome them with open arms? Fat chance again.It took at least two or three generations to get most people to accept scientific medicine, and as soon as someone comes along selling a new brand of snake oil, thousands rush to make him rich.

I believe that education, in particular teaching reading, is in a similar state to medicine in the nineteenth century. Professors are trained in complex theories with no scientific backing, and they have a vested interest in keeping their system going so they teach against any other. Accurate scientific measurement of effectiveness is still rare and not generally demanded by the public. Well, if it takes a few generations to get a change, now is the taime to start.

A great post, Victoria!

Janis

When my son was in second grade I hired an advocate. The school district basically tried to follow the letter of a very good IEP rather than the spirit. There was no way my son was going to learn to read given what they were going to do. I went all the way up to the district level (large district) and all I got was admittance that the sp. ed teacher was inadequately trained but that the programming was appropriate. They proposed training her in what would certainly be adequate programming for my son. It was keeping me up at night.

I decided against going the legal route. I would have had to have let my son fail in order to prove they were incompetent. There was no way I could in good conscience do that. I pulled my child out of school part time and taught him myself. The next year when the old teacher was gone and a new one who actually knew something was there, my son was the only one who could read.

I also thought my money could be better spent privately than on lawyers. I spoke to someone who had gone to mediation with parents and she told me what we could get through mediation would be better than what the school was offerring but still would not be adequate. Given the length of time for due process, I was unwilling to wait.

Beth

Same story here. I, too, have paid out the wazoo for all the therapies privately. Sad part is, some parents just don’t have the resources. I could have probably gotten the Multisensory reading at some point, but at what cost to my daughter? And how far would she have been behind b4 it arrived? I wasn’t willing to do that either. I am certain that my daughter would not be doing as well as she is if I had left her remedation to the resource room.

Sometimes I get grief from other parent/advocates who say “Well, if we continue to pay for the tutoring privately, we’ll never make the school do it”. I reply that I will not sacrifice my daughter on that altar. Now, my grandchildren? I will know the stuff, I will have EIPs, I will go into kindergarten knowing how Pete Wright uses bell curves and graphs to show no academic improvement.

Moms are bad, but I bet grandmoms can be worse!

Angela in CA,
Thank you for sharing your experience with me. It took me a while to find my thread to get back to you. I’m glad that at least one person thinks that inclusion is a good thing. I was wondering if you could be more specific about your collaborative learning environment. Also, since you have moved to a new district, what you have learned about teaching reading to LD students and what techniques you are using. I am glad that you finally found the help that you needed for your son, but it’s truly sad that your own school didn’t. Thank you again for your thoughts!
Jessica