Outstanding teachers, such as those selected for the Milken Teaching Award or those who achieve National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification, regularly communicate with the parents of their students. These teachers appreciate the value of home-school communication because experience has shown that understanding the family is essential to effectively work with the student.
Some young children show signs that they may not be learning in an expected manner, even before they begin kindergarten. These children may exhibit problems in areas such as language development, phonological awareness, perceptual-motor abilities, and attention, which have been considered precursors of learning disabilities in older children. However, under current state and federal guidelines, these children are unlikely to meet eligibility criteria for having a learning disability. This is because formal identification of a child’s learning disability generally does not occur until there is a measurable discrepancy between the child’s aptitude and academic achievement, often not until the second or third grade.
For the first time, researchers have shown that the brains of dyslexic children can be rewired — after undergoing intensive remediation training — to function more like those found in normal readers.
