Learning-Disabled Enrollment Dips After Long Climb

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September 8, 2010

Learning-Disabled Enrollment Dips After Long Climb

By A. s

After decades of what seemed to be an inexorable upward path, the number of

students classified as learning-disabled declined from year to year over much of

the past decade­—a change in direction that is spurring debates among experts

about the reasons why.

The percentage of 3- to 21-year-old students nationwide classified as having a

“specific learning disability†dropped steadily from 6.1 percent in the

2000-01 school year to 5.2 percent in 2007-08, according to the most recent data

available, which comes from the U.S Department of Education’s 2009 Digest of

Education Statistics. In numbers, that’s a drop from about 2.9 million

students to 2.6 million students.

A learning disability—a processing disorder that impairs learning but not a

student’s overall cognitive ability—is the largest, by far, of the 13

disability classifications recognized by the main federal special education law.

Forty percent of the approximately 6.6 million students covered under the

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, fall into that category.

Student Classification

After climbing for years, the number of students between the ages of 3 and 21

enrolled in special education programs began to turn in the opposite direction

around the 2005-06 school year. Much of that decline can be traced to falling

numbers of students classified with " specific learning disabilities, " such as

dyslexia.

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics

The decrease in the category goes hand in hand with a decrease in special

education enrollment overall, though that change is not as large. The percentage

of all students covered under the IDEA fell from a high of 13.8 percent in the

2004-05 school year to 13.4 percent in 2007-08—from about 6.7 million students

to about 6.6 million students. Enrollment in the categories of emotional

disturbance and mental retardation also went down, but students in those groups

make up a far smaller slice of the IDEA pie. At the same time, though,

enrollment of students classified as having an autism spectrum disorder or

“other health impairment†rose.

Although the change in direction may appear to be small, experts say it is

noteworthy. But a probe into the possible reasons behind the drop in

learning-disability classifications suggests that the causes are less clear, and

that much is still to be learned about how to classify and treat students with

such disabilities.

A Positive Trend?

About 80 percent of children who are classified as learning-disabled get the

label because they’re struggling to read. So, scholars say, the dropping

numbers could be linked to improvements in reading instruction overall; the

adoption of “response to intervention,†which is an instructional model

intended to halt the emergence of reading problems; and a federally backed push

toward early intervention with younger students.

All those efforts could be serving to separate students with true disabilities

from those who just haven’t been taught well in the early grades. But which

program is making the most difference, and how long the effects should last, is

difficult to tease out, the experts add.

At the same time, other scholars say, some of the dropping numbers could be

unrelated to teaching methods. The decision to label a student learning-disabled

carries a sizable dollop of human judgment in a way that classifications like

blindness or deafness do not. That means it’s possible schools could be

nudging special education enrollment numbers down to avoid

academic-accountability sanctions or costly requirements driven by federal

mandates, some observers say.

A portion of the decrease could also be tied in part to shifting

classifications—moving students, for example, from learning-disabled to some

other disability category.

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But from the perspective of federal officials, the changes are due mostly to

educational improvements. They say the national focus on RTI, and improvement in

schools’ core reading curricula are working together in a welcome way to

decrease the numbers of students classified as learning-disabled.

“When you take all of this together, to me, that’s what makes all the

difference in the world,†said a E. Posny, the assistant secretary

overseeing the Education Department’s office of special education and

rehabilitative services. “I believe we overidentify children as

learning-disabled. A number of students have just not been taught how to

read.â€

As an example, Ms. Posny offered her experiences in Kansas, where she served as

the commissioner of education before moving to her current job in Washington.

After the state adopted what it called a “multi-tiered system of supports,â€

which is the state’s version of response to intervention, enrollment in the

learning-disability category dropped from 56,328 in 2005 to 55,834 in 2008, she

noted.

Reading First and RTI

The response-to-intervention approach was promoted by the federal Reading First

initiative, which came to life through the No Child Left Behind Act when it was

signed into law in 2002. Aimed at improving reading instruction among struggling

readers, the reading initiative required schools receiving the federal grants to

incorporate scientifically based reading lessons into their curricula.

“Rather than rushing in to identify a specific learning disability as the

primary means of providing support to a struggling student, an RTI approach

first considers the overall quality of the instructional program,†said

Beth Klotz, a nationally certified school psychologist and the current chair of

the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities.

Then, increasingly intensive instruction, or “interventions,†are offered to

students showing early reading difficulties.

In 2009, ph K. Torgesen, a psychology and education professor at Florida

State University, in Tallahassee, wrote an article noting a decrease in such

classifications among elementary schools in Florida that adopted Reading First:

In the first year of implementation, 10.4 percent of 3rd graders were identified

as learning-disabled. By the third year of implementation, the classification

rate among 3rd graders fell to 6 percent. Drops in identification rates were

seen in kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grades.

“We’re actually doing a slightly better job in teaching kids to read in

kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on,†Mr. Torgesen said. He suggests that

general education teachers are more attuned to offering differentiated

instruction to their students. In turn, those teachers are choosing not to refer

students for special education evaluation.

But Mr. Torgesen, and some other experts, also said that it’s not yet clear if

the trend marks a “cure†for those students or just a delay in their

classification.

“We don’t have enough knowledge in how they hold their gains,†he said.

Fuchs, a professor of special education at Vanderbilt University, in

Nashville, Tenn., cautions that any decrease in enrollment must be compared with

academic-achievement data.

“Where are the data to indicate these numbers are going down because of the

effectiveness of instruction?†Mr. Fuchs said. “It’s very important to be

critical—not negative, but critical—of what these prevalence numbers really

mean.â€

Early-Intervention a Key

Some evidence of the role that early-intervention services might be playing in

the enrollment trends came in a report earlier this year from the Education

Department’s Institute of Education Sciences,the first part of what will be a

multi-report evaluation of special education. In it, the authors noted increases

in the numbers of infants through 5-year-olds served in special education.

For example, in 1997, 564,270 preschool children ages 3 to 5 were identified for

services under the IDEA. By 2006, that number had risen to 706,242. That’s

good news for supporters of early intervention, whose mantra is catching

learning problems early before they become entrenched.

The 2004 reauthorization of the IDEA allows districts the option of using 15

percent of their federal allocations for special education on early-intervention

services. When a district is found to have significantly overidentified

minorities for certain special education categories, the Education Department

requires those early-intervention services to take place.

Margaret J. McLaughlin, a professor in the University of land College

Park’s department of special education, pointed to early intervention as an

important factor in explaining falling learning-disability enrollment.

“There’s a number of forces that kind of converge and come together,†Ms.

McLaughlin said. But while early services “may prevent the big bulge [in

classification] at the 4th grade,†she said, “there still may be a big bump

at middle school. We don’t really know anything about the kids who get

‘declassified.’ â€

D. Deshler, a professor of special education at the University of Kansas,

in Lawrence, said that programs for early learners are widely supported, and

“who can argue against it? It’s like arguing against motherhood.â€

But even the best early-intervention programs cannot catch all children, and

some energy must be saved for older students, he believes. “We are always

going to have, in certain places, kids falling between the cracks,†Mr.

Deshler said. “You’ve got to have some investment in what’s happening with

older kids.â€

Nonschool Factors?

However, a number of the reasons offered for the decline in learning-disability

classifications have little do with teaching, and more to do with the structures

of school and federal policy. But the effects of those factors are hard to

prove, much less quantify.

A 2003 report Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader from the federally funded Special

Education Expenditure Project estimated that, nationwide, districts spent an

average of 1.6 times more on a student with learning disabilities than they did

on a general education student. Mr. Torgesen, of Florida State University, said

that costly voter-approved mandates on matters like class-size reduction may be

prompting cash-strapped Florida schools to not identify students. Administrators

“do a lot of negotiation around the issue of classification,†Mr. Torgesen

said, because they have to use money to keep class sizes low rather than pay for

extra assistance for students.

E. Brock, a professor of special education and school psychology at

California State University, Sacramento, wrote a paper in 2006 saying there is

evidence that the growth in low-incidence categories such as autism spectrum

disorder and “other health impairments,†or OHI—a catch-all category that

includes attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—correlates with a drop in

the learning-disabilities category.

In addition, Candace Cortiella, the author of “The State of Learning

Disabilities 2009,†a report she wrote on behalf of the New York City-based

National Center for Learning Disabilities, believes that it is suspicious that

the drop in special education numbers corresponds so closely to a shift in

federal policy, under the No Child Left Behind law, that requires schools to

highlight the performance of their special education students, among other

population groups, for accountability purposes.

Schools and districts may choose not to count subgroups for accountability

purposes if the subgroups are so small they are statistically unreliable. Ms.

Cortiella suggested that the risk of sanctions may prompt some schools to keep

their enrollment in the special education subgroup low.

“There’s too much correlation between the implementation of No Child Left

Behind and the drop in the numbers,†she said.

Ms. Posny of the Education Department said that school districts actually have

an incentive to place students in special education because they receive some

federal money to educate them. “Yet, I believe that states are stepping up to

the plate and saying, we may not need to identify these kids,†she said.

Labels are less important than results, Ms. Posny added. Special education does

confer on students certain protections, such as the right to a free, appropriate

public education in the least restrictive environment, and those are all

protections Ms. Posny said she supports strongly.

But a specific classification isn’t needed for those protections, Ms. Posny

said. “When it comes to what we need to know to provide that child’s

needs,†she said, “the label doesn’t help us with that.â€