Learning Disabilities

Historical, Definitional, and Legal Aspects of Learning Disabilities

Learning disabilities comprise the most prevalent disability among students receiving special education services, with 4%–6% of public education students in the United States being classified as having a learning disability. Reading difficulties represent the overwhelming majority of learning disabilities, though difficulties in other academic areas (writing, spelling, mathematical calculations, speaking, and listening) also constitute learning disabilities.

Appreciating the role of learning disabilities in classroom management hinges on understanding what is meant by learning disabilities and how they manifest in the classroom. Although precisely defining the term learning disability is among the most controversial aspects of the field, the intended, practical meaning is that of unexpected underachievement in one or more specific academic skills.

Despite initial introduction of the term by Samuel Kirk in 1962 and inclusion of specific learning disability in federal special education legislation since the 1975 Education of All Handicapped Children Act, differing perspectives on which students do and do not qualify as having learning disabilities persist and preclude simple explanation. Learning disability might best be understood by picturing an archetypal student; the classic image of a student with a learning disability is one who is successful in many domains but experiences persistent trouble making meaning from text, performing mathematical operations, or understanding language.

The definition of learning disability shapes the means for identifying students as having such difficulties. Historically, the dominant approach to identification was a literal manifestation of the idea of unexpected underachievement: identification criteria under federal legislation for decades relied on the use of standardized assessments to demonstrate a difference between a student’s average or above-average intellectual ability and his or her performance in academic skill domains, and this difference had to be deemed unrelated to other disabilities or environmental disadvantages. The specific distance between these domains, or the discrepancy formula, varied from state to state and sometimes from district to district.

The discrepancy approach no longer dominates the identification process. Today, concerns focus both on failure to find meaningful differences between students identified in this way and other struggling learners and on the wait to fail approach it fosters in which students are only eligible for special education services once their achievement scores become sufficiently poor to create a wide enough gap. In 2004, reauthorization (under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act) of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which is the federal legislation governing special education, made it possible for districts to use a response to intervention approach to identify students as having specific learning disabilities, stating that a discrepancy was no longer required for such identification and opening the door to greater use of clinical judgment. Under this model, lack of improvement in skills despite the use of targeted, evidence-based interventions can play a larger role in diagnosing learning disabilities.

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