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Progress Monitoring:Direct daily measurement, the cornerstone of the behavioral approach to education introduced in Chapter 4, entails obtaining a measure of the student’s performance each time a specific skill is taught.Direct daily measurement provides information about student learning on a continuous basis, enabling the teacher to modify instruction in accordance with changing (or unchanging) performance rather than intuition, guesswork, or the results of a test that measures something else (Heward, 2003).Some teachers of students with learning disabilities use a special system of direct daily measurement called precision teaching. Precision teachers make instructional decisions based on changes in a student’s performance (e.g., number of words read correctly per minute) as plotted on a standard celeration chart.When monitoring progress using CBM, decision rules specify that a change of instruction is indicated if three consecutive data points fall below the aim line.

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The Recent Decline:  From 2002 to 2011, the number of students served under the learning disability category decreased by 18%. Possible reasons for this decline include the expansion of early childhood intervention, improvements in reading instruction in general education classrooms, and the shift in how learning disabilities are identified (e.g., RTI) since the reauthorization of IDEA in 2004 resulting in early intervention for struggling students (Cortiella & Horowitz, 2014).

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Placements and Supports: IDEA requires that students with disabilities be educated with students without disabilities, have access to the core curriculum to the maximum extent possible, and be removed from the general education classroom only to the extent their disability necessitates. Elbaum noted that when making placement decisions for a child, IEP teams “should guard against a priori assumptions about the benefit or detriment of specific placements to students’ self-concept. Each student’s social and emotional needs, as well as the student’s own preference with regard to placement options, ought to be taken into account” (pp. 222–223).A consultant teacher provides support to general education classroom teachers and other staff members who work directly with students with learning disabilities. A resource room is a specially staffed and equipped classroom where students with learning disabilities come for one or several periods during the school day to receive individualized instruction.The academic achievement deficiencies of some children with learning disabilities are so severe that they need full-time placement in a setting with a specially trained teacher. In addition, poor work habits and inappropriate social behaviors make some students with learning disabilities candidates for the separate classroom, where distractions can be minimized and individual attention stressed. IEP teams are not to view a student’s placement in a separate classroom (or any other educational setting) as permanent. A student should be placed in a separate classroom only after legitimate and supported attempts to serve her effectively in less restrictive environments have proven unsuccessful.

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Evidence Based Practices: (READING) Commercial DI reading programs, such as SRA/McGraw-Hill’s Reading Mastery (Engelmann & Bruner, 2008) and Corrective Reading (Engelmann, Osborne, & Hanner, 2008), incorporate key principles. DI programs are systematically designed so that reading skills are broken down into small steps that progressively build on previous learning. Instructional design and delivery are consistent with the tenets of explicit instruction, including frequent active student responding and feedback.In addition to basic reading skills, children with learning disabilities also need reading comprehension instruction. Evidence-based practices for teaching reading comprehension include answering questions, using self-questioning to monitor comprehension,completing graphic organizers, examining text structure, and summarizing (e.g., Jitendra, Burgess, & Gajria, 2011; National Reading Panel, 2000; Rouse, Alber-Morgan, Cullen, & Sawyer, 2014). (WRITING) In addition to the complex thinking skills, written expression requires the synthesis of many basic skills such as handwriting, keyboarding, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Each of these component skills can be improved with explicit instruction, including frequent practice and specific feedback (e.g., Mason, Harris, & Graham, 2011; Sundeen, 2012). Additionally, students can learn to self-monitor their writing and correct errors. Technology tools can also help struggling writers. Students who struggle with keyboarding and spelling may benefit from word prediction and speech-to-text software. Text-to-speech software can help students monitor what they are writing and editing. Technology tools such as Inspiration® and Kidspiration® provide prompts and graphic organizers to help students plan their writing (e.g., Smith & Okolo, 2010). Gillespe and Graham (2014) found strategy instruction to be the most effective of six interventions for teaching complex writing skills such as planning, organizing, and drafting to students with learning disabilities. Self-regulated strategy development is an explicit and systematic method for teaching writing strategies to struggling students (Graham & Harris, 2005).A well-researched strategy for persuasive writing is POW-TREE: Pick my idea, Organize my thoughts/notes, Write and say more–Topic sentence (tell what you believe), Reasons (3 or more), Ending (wrap it up), Examine (have I included all the parts?) (Sandmel et al., 2009).  (MATH) Based on decades of research, Jayanthi, Gersten, and Baker (2008) made the following recommendations for teaching mathematics to students with learning disabilities: use explicit instruction, provide many teaching examples, have students verbally state the steps as they solve problems and make visual representations (i.e., draw pictures), provide continuous assessment to inform instructional decisions, use peer-mediated instruction (e.g., classwide peer tutoring, cooperative learning groups), and teach learning strategies for problem solving. An example of a learning strategy for solving mathematical word problems is SOLVE (Freeman-Green, O’Brien, Wood, & Hitt, 2015), which is a mnemonic for

Study the problem

Organize the facts

Line up a plan

Verify your plan with action

Evaluate your answer                                                                                                                                            Math lessons in a concrete-representational-abstract sequence are effective for elementary and secondary students with learning disabilities (Flores, Hinton, & Strozier, 2014; Poch, van Garderen, & Scheuermann, 2015; Strickland & Mancini, 2013).

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Identification: Assessments commonly used with students with learning disabilities include standardized intelligence and achievement tests, criterion-referenced tests, curriculumbased measurement (CBM), and direct and daily measurement. Standardized IQ tests and individual achievement tests are typically administered during the referral process to determine eligibility for special education services under the learning disabilities category. These tests are widely used as diagnostic tools with children with learning disabilities because a discrepancy between general intellectual ability and achievement remains a primary factor in determining eligibility for special education services (Zirkel & Thomas, 2010).Criterion-referenced tests differ from norm-referenced tests in that a child’s score on a criterion-referenced test is compared with a predetermined criterion, or mastery level, rather than with normed scores of other students. The value of criterion- referenced tests is that they identify the specific skills the child has already learned and the skills that require instruction. A criterion-referenced test widely used by special educators is the Brigance Comprehensive Inventory of Basic Skills (Brigance, 2010). The pretest assesses the student’s entry level to determine which aspects of the program she is ready to learn; the posttest evaluates the effectiveness of the program. Criterion-referenced tests can be, and often are, informally developed by classroom teachers. Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) (also called progress monitoring) entails measuring the growth of students’ proficiency in the core skills that contribute to success in school (Deno, Lembke, & Anderson, n.d.). CBM is a formative assessment method in that it provides information on student learning as instruction takes place over time. By contrast, the results of a summative assessment cannot be used to inform instruction because it is conducted after instruction has been completed (e.g., at the end of a grading period or school year). CBM probes are brief, reliable assessments that indicate proficiency of basic skills such as reading, spelling, or math.The basic premise of RTI is that a low-achieving student’s response to increasingly intensive, scientifically validated instruction can reveal whether the student’s learning difficulties are the result of poor or insufficient instruction or of a disability for which special education is needed. RTI has two functions: screening/identification and prevention. A child’s failure to progress in response to scientifically validated instruction eliminates instructional quality as a viable explanation for poor academic growth and suggests evidence of a disability (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Compton, 2012).

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Suspected Causes: Three classes of suspected causes include brain damage or dysfunction, heredity, and environmental factors. Neuroimaging technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have enabled researchers to discover that specific regions of the brains of some individuals with reading and language disabilities show activation patterns (i.e., function) during phonological processing tasks that differ from the patterns found in the brains of people without disabilities (e.g., Miller, Sanchez, & Hynd, 2003; Richards, 2001). Other studies have found that the brain structure of some children with reading disabilities differs slightly from that of children without disabilities (Collins & Rourke, 2003; Leonard, 2001). Research has located possible chromosomal loci for the genetic transmission of phonological deficits that may predispose a child for reading problems later (Kaplan et al., 2002).Although virtually impossible to document as a primary cause of learning disabilities, environmental factors—particularly impoverished living conditions early in a child’s life and limited exposure to effective instruction in school—undoubtedly contribute to the learning problems experienced by many children who receive special education. The tendency for learning disabilities to run in families also suggests a correlation between environmental influences on children’s early development and subsequent achievement in school. Evidence for this relationship can be found in longitudinal research such as that conducted by Hart and Risley (1995), who found that infants and toddlers who received infrequent communication exchanges with their parents were more likely to show deficits in vocabulary, language use, and intellectual development before entering school.Another environmental variable that is likely to contribute to children’s learning problems is the quality of instruction they receive.

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Encompassing All Students: Difficulty reading is by far the most common characteristic of students with learning disabilities. About 90% of all children identified as learning disabled are referred for special education because of reading problems (Bender, 2007). Although students with learning disabilities are an extremely heterogeneous group, it is important to remember that “the signature characteristic of students with learning disabilities is severe low achievement despite generally effective instruction and intelligence in the normal range” (L.S. Fuchs et al., 2015, p. 135).

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Three Criteria for Identification Include :

1. A severe discrepancy between the student’s intellectual ability and academic achievement

2. An exclusion criterion—the student’s difficulties are not the result of another known condition that can cause learning problems

3. A need for special education services