Parents are usually the ones to first identify that a problem at school is apparent. This is due to the child’s dropping self-esteem that shows up at home, or the child refusing to go to school and not letting the parent know why. Yes, teachers can also be the first to identify a problem, but parents are often the ones who see the emotional shifts showing up at home in their child.
The parent then approaches the teacher and asks them for advice. Teachers can respond in a variety of ways including agreeing with the parent, or saying the problem is not significant and could be just a developmental issue. The use of the word developmental often relates to the teachers opinion that time will take care of the issue and the child will slowly develop the abilities necessary to be successful at school. One just has to be patient, and things will get better. Other teachers might agree with the parent, and begin the process to see if the child can be assessed for possible learning problems. Depending if you live in Canada or the United States, and depending what province or state you live in, a sequence of events take place to monitor the child’s progress and to determine if assessment is necessary.
At some point, some of these children are assessed either by the school system or privately. Most often the child is in Grades 3, 4 or 5 by now, and struggling with the work load at school, and likely underachieving in basic skills. A date is set for the assessment. A psychologist or educational assessor will conduct a series of tests to identify possibly learning difficulties. In terms of the assessments used, this often includes a measure of intelligence, cognitive ability and achievement. The intelligence measure is used as the definition of Learning Disabilities North American wide includes the fact that a child needs to have at least average IQ to be classified or diagnosed with a Learning Disability. As well, discrepancies, or differences within measures, are used with IQ tests and measures of achievement (reading, writing, spelling and math). That is, if the child has average IQ then they need achievement scores well below what is considered average intelligence in order to also be classified as having a learning disability. The psychologist or educational assessor will then determine achievement levels by administering tests of reading, writing and math.
If the child has a learning disability the assessor will report that in the full report (i.e., psycho-educational assessment). At a meeting the psychologist or assessor will tell the parents and teaching/administration staff whether the child meets the local district or states definition of a learning disability. If the child does have a learning disability than services are discussed with the parent. This may include some kind of pull-out special education service such as small group reading instruction, study-skills support, learning resource help and accommodations such as extra time on tests, scribe to help with writing, or use of technology – like a laptop to be used in class. The focus on this meeting is how to help the child bypass the weaknesses that result in the learning problems.
This method of assessment is flawed. First, the assessment is often brief. Psychologist or educational assessors are not given enough time to really assess the child’s learning profile. They often are permitted two or three hours of testing – just enough time to do an IQ test and achievement measures to determine if a diagnosis is possible. Thus, many areas of brain functioning are not assessed. This provides an inaccurate assessment of the child’s ability to learn, and can miss key neurological weaknesses that will impact the child’s ability to succeed in the regular classroom – such as Oral Language functioning or Social Perception skills. This is not the fault of the psychologist or assessor, but rather the limits put on these individuals to spend time with the child. The second reason that this method of assessment is flawed is that it does not lead to appropriate remediation of the learning disability. The focus of the assessment is to diagnose the problem in order to get the funding necessary to provide the staffing necessary to support the bypass techniques used in the school. The assessment is not designed to pinpoint the neurological weaknesses and then to create a program to directly remediate them. Learning disabilities result from neurological weaknesses in the brain, in fact this is part of the definition of Learning Disabilities used thoroughout North America. If we can identify these neurological weaknesses do we have to tools to improve these brain functions? Yes, there are now cognitive remediation programs that can do this directly. The third reason that the current method of assessment is flawed is based on the reality of IQ testing. Again, to diagnose a learning disability a child needs average IQ. What is interesting about IQ is that it is alterable – it can change depending on the child’s environment. That is, the brain is plastic and can improve capacities such as language processing, visual-perceptual thinking, working memory and visual processing speed. These are measures tested on most IQ batteries. If a child is tested and comes out having a Low-Average IQ (not Average) does that mean the child should not be diagnosed with a Learning Disability, and thus not receive special education services? What if we can provide cognitive remediation to improve brain functioning and thus raise that child’s IQ? Should we not rethink the use of IQ testing and assessment all together, and rather figure out how to determine what child can best respond to cognitive remediation training.
Assessment practice should be directly linked to remediation, and not be designed for labelling and funding, which it often is today in schools across North America. As well, we need to realize that assessment should be focused on cognitive functioning and how to improve these weaknesses in children that underly the reason for the existence of learning disabilities in the first place. If we focus on the assessment of reading, writing and math we are in reality missing the underlying reason that learning disabilities exists in the first place.
