Washington Summit on Learning Disabilities ELI's proven therapeutic program will significantly correct learning disabilities.
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Summit Objectives: To provide an overview of all of the current research, policies and practices, and to provide an objective picture of what is known and validated.

Four Program Co-Chairs for the Summit had special experience and expertise and reflected major constituencies concerned with learning disabilities: Research (Reid Lyon, Ph D., National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development); Public Policy (Tom Hehir, Ed.D, Director, Office of Special Education Programs, Department of Education); Practice (Andrew Hartman, Ph.D., National Institute for Literacy), and Consumer Interest (Ann Kornblet, Learning Disabilities Association of America).

Overview

Summary Page 3:

Although approximately 15% of the population are affected by learning disabilities, they frequently go undetected due to lack of awareness by teachers, physicians and parents.

Among the array of learning disabilities, deficits in basic reading skills are the most prevalent and often the most debilitating to children and adults.

Although some learning disabilities are now known to be biological in origin, the treatments are more often educational.

For the concerned parent and teacher, the cottage industry of treatments for those with learning disabilities can be confusing, often expensive, sometimes contradictory and very frustrating.

Summary Page 4: The most recent scientific discoveries about learning disabilities have exciting implications for helping children, but they have not been quickly translated into appropriate interventions for students with learning disabilities, particularly in the education system.

The field of learning disabilities is somewhat fragmented across a number of academic and professional disciplines. Each of these groups has focused on different aspects of LD, which has led to disagreements and differences in priorities; there are few formal communication channels.

Summary Page 5: Despite the substantial gains that have be made via federal legislation for those with learning disabilities since the passage of Public Law 94-142, known now as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) , and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the uneven and uninformed implementation of the law has led to many tragic failures.

Statistics: The Numbers and the Tragedies

50% of all students in special education in the public schools have learning disabilities -- 2.25 million children; Source: U.S. Dept. of Education 1992

75% - 80% of special education students identified as LD have their basic deficits in language and reading; Source: National Institutes of Health

35% of students identified with learning disabilities drop out of high school. This is twice the rate of their non-disabled peers. (This does not include the students who are not identified and drop out); Source: National Longitudinal Transition Study (Wagner 1991)

60% of adults with severe literacy problems have undetected or untreated learning disabilities; Source: National Adult Literacy and Learning Disabilities Center 1994

50% of juvenile delinquents tested were found to have undetected learning disabilities; Source: National Center for State Courts and the Educational Testing Service 1977

Up to 60% of adolescents in treatment for substance abuse have learning disabilities: Source: Hazelton Foundation, Minnesota 1992

62% of learning disabled students were unemployed one year after graduation; Source: National Longitudinal Transition Study (Wagner 1991)

50% of females with learning disabilities will be mothers (many of them single) within 3-5 years of leaving high school; Source: National Longitudinal Transition Study (Wagner 1991)

31% of adolescents with learning disabilities will be arrested 3-5 years out of high school;
Warning! Learning Disabilities DO NOT correct themselves!

Source: National Longitudinal Transition Study (Wagner 1991) Learning disabilities and substance abuse are the most common impediments to keeping welfare clients from becoming and remaining employed, according to the 1992 report from the Office of the Inspector General. Source:

Office of the Inspector General on "Functional Impairments of AFDC Clients".

Key Issues

The evidence is overwhelming that many children with learning disabilities are failing under the present implementation of IDEA in the public education system.

Summary Pages 7-8: Individual states currently use one of several forms of "discrepancy formulae" to determine eligibility for services for children with learning disabilities. In order to determine this gap or discrepancy between IQ (aptitude) and achievement, students essentially must fail for two years. This criteria actually causes and promotes school failure for students with learning disabilities, and we know that school failure leads to lack of self -esteem, school dropouts or other negative outcomes. Research funded by the NICHD has now established that the discrepancy formulae are invalid for the purpose of identifying children with reading disabilities, the most prevalent type of learning disability.

Summary Page 8: Research indicates that 75-80% of students identified as LD have their primary deficits in basic language and reading skills, very specifically manifested in deficits in phonological awareness.

Studies show that 74% of students who are unsuccessful readers in the third grade are still unsuccessful readers in the ninth grade.

Clearly, the poor, or non-readers do not acquire the same knowledge, academically, as their peers as they move through school, a recipe for disaster.

Recommendations

Panelists repeatedly pointed out that early intervention is less costly in the long term both fiscally and socially.

The central aim in social and educational policy must be redirected towards the prevention of educational failure.

Teacher Development

Presenters on all panels emphasized the basic necessity to improve Teacher Preparation, not only with regard to educators in the preschool and school arena, but also those employed in adult and correctional education.

Summary Page 9: The one area of significant research progress for those with learning disabilities has been in the domain of reading. There is now a great deal of knowledge about the cognitive and linguistic characteristics of reading disability and how these students need to be taught. The tragedy is that we are not exploiting what we know, as these substantial research gains are not being translated into interventions that would reduce reading failure. Illiteracy is at extraordinarily high levels in the United States, and improving the teaching of reading would have great societal value.

Only 29 states require elementary teachers in training to have coursework specific to reading instruction, and even in those states only 12 hours of graduate training is mandated.

Collaboration

A formal collaborative strategy needs to be developed, beginning with what First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton described as "a coherent strategy at the national level".

Public Awareness

Summary Page 10: It is time that a major National Public Awareness Campaign be undertaken to ensure that both the public and professionals have a clear idea about what a learning disability is and what it is not. No other disabling condition affects so many people and yet has such a low public profile and low level of public understanding as LD. LD.

Funding

Summary Page 10: Under IDEA only 20% of the money promised is appropriated, making the law an unfunded mandate.

Summary Page 20: Funding support is essential to place teacher preparation the upgrading of an entire profession high on the national agenda.

Summary Page 21: (We must) develop a national commitment of funding education which equals the lofty ideals expressed in much of the recent educational reform legislation, such as Goals 2000. Currently, research for education is far outstripped by funding for all other nationally supported research.

Notes on the Summary Report of the 1994