I teach early childhood special education, and I have been frustrated for years that the students qualify for early childhood special education, yet once they ‘leave’ my program, it may be YEARS before they fall behind enough to qualify for LD services (I teach 6-12 LD), by then they are often frustrated and hate school. Does anyone else see this or is this just our district/state problem?
Re: Early Childhood to LD services
If kids are in a pre-school special ed. class here, they often start with the label developmentally delayed. In that case, they can move on into regular school and keep that label until age 8, at which time they have to be reevaluated and a new label determined. If a child starts out as speech-language impaired, they can also keep that label and services until they no longer qualify. The problem is the way LD is determined. Tests like the WJ-III simply score kids too high on word attack and word ID to show a reading problem before about third grade. It is hard to get the IQ-achievement discrepancy. Yet, if the child had been given the GORT and CTOPP, the problem could be identified MUCH earlier. I am hoping the reauthorization of IDEA comes through with big changes to LD classification.
Janis
My son qualified for early intervention. As he was going to K, he was reevaluated. There was a big meeting with lots of people from public school there and his speech and language therapist. The decision was made to classify him going into K. He was classified as speech delayed. The feeling was that he was a kid at risk, which has certainly proved true.
We lived in a suburb of Buffalo at the time.
Beth