What are learning disabilities? And why does special education make everything so hard to understand?
Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs): another big special education topic, more acronyms, and more jargon that attempts to explain the concept but only makes it more confusing. We are here to (hopefully) take the puzzle apart and put it back together in a way that makes more sense. Let’s talk about what SLDs are, what they aren’t, and next steps to take if you’re wondering if your child’s education is impacted by an SLD.
What are SLDs?
According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a specific learning disability is, “a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia…[The disorders do not include] learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of intellectual disability, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.” You can click here if you want to see where that definition came from and more context around it. Put simply, an SLD is a disorder that impairs a person’s ability to learn reading, writing or math skills, and that impairment is not the result of other specific underlying disabilities.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: don’t all of the disabilities identified by IDEA impact learning in some way? Isn’t that why they would be identified by IDEA as eligible to qualify kiddos for special education? Because these children may need to receive accommodations, modifications, and specialized instruction in order to make sure we support how they…learn? Wow, great questions. No, really. Those are great questions. The short answer is yes: all disabilities listed as eligible by the IDEA impact children’s learning in some way, regardless of whether the disability has its roots in cognition, emotions, neurology, physical body, or anything else. The long answer: no, IDEA has not classified all eligible disabilities as learning disabilities because we can’t seem to make anything in special education easy to understand.
Alas, though, here we are. So, let’s make the best of it! Okay, remember when we talked about the 13 disability categories under IDEA in our blog about IEPs? Learning disabilities, or SLDs as they are technically defined, are 1 of those 13 categories. Within the category of “specific learning disability,” there are 3 (loose) subcategories: reading, writing, and math. You may sometimes hear these categories referred to more specifically as dyslexia (impairment in reading), dysgraphia (impairment in writing), and dyscalculia (impairment in math). Within those 3 subcategories, there are 8 more official subcategories defined by the IDEA. Those 8 subcategories are used to determine the specific impairment area within the categories of reading, writing, and math. For example, your child may struggle with interpreting or pronouncing words from print to speech when they read (basic reading skills or reading fluency), or they may read fluently but struggle with understanding what they read (impairment in reading comprehension). Is this making sense? Not really? That’s understandable. It’s too many words for an already confusing topic. You know what, let’s make it a flow chart for how this all works instead. What took me so long?
Specific Learning Disability Flow Chart
SLD Flow Chart
Better? I know it is for me. Feel free to write to the government if you think I should translate all of their special education laws into poorly drawn graphics.
One more important additional note is that, while these are the official IDEA categories, there can be even more specific classifications of each subcategory as well. For example, “written expression” is the only identified subcategory for an SLD in writing. For children who struggle in this area, though, there are different forms the impairment may take. One child with a written expression disability may struggle with the motor skills necessary for the mechanics of writing, while another child with a written expression disability may have strong motor skills but trouble translating the words they hear to a print form.
After going through all of that, you may be thinking that you’ve heard of other disabilities that have been called learning disabilities but did not see them on the flow chart or in the description. You wouldn’t be wrong. Then why aren’t they up there? Another great question. Wow, the fun really never ends, am I right? Let’s try to answer that by talking about what are not learning disabilities in the eyes of IDEA.
What are learning disabilities not?
The most important thing to keep in mind when we wade through all of this information is that we are talking about SLDs and other disabilities through the lens of how IDEA understands them. The reason we are doing this is to help you make sense of the absolutely unreal amount of information and jargon in the special education world so that you understand the very specific lingo being thrown at you. So, when we talk about SLDs being very specific disabilities with very specific subcategories and what those subcategories are (see poorly drawn flow chart above), we are talking about them that way in order to be consistent with the IDEA language for clarity about special education guidelines.
What we are certainly not doing is invalidating any other experience your child or family has had with learning disabilities that may take other forms not listed above. For example, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is often referred to as a learning disability. While the IDEA does not categorize it as such, that does not mean that we or they are the authority on your experience. Another layer to consider (as if we need more layers), is that many disabilities, including SLDs, are often comorbid with other disabilities. That is just a fancy way of saying different disabilities tend to enjoy hanging out together. It would not be uncommon, for example, for a kiddo to be impacted by both ADHD and an “official” SLD.
All of this is to say: our mission is to help you understand the complex world of special education one flow chart at a time, but we empower you to describe and understand your experience in the way that feels authentic to your experience.
So, now that it’s (a bit) clearer, what are the steps you’d take in real life?
Kiddos learn at all different paces. They have different strengths and areas that need more focus. If your child’s reading, writing, or math skills appear a bit different than their peers at grade level, this doesn’t necessarily mean there is an SLD or other disability underlying it. However, if you’re concerned and want to do some digging to see if there is something more to it, here are a few things you can do:
You can request a special education evaluation for your child from their school. The best person to email is the director of special education. Their email can typically be found on the school’s website under the special education department. Different schools may name this department differently (e.g., Office of Student Support). If this seems too much to wade through, simply give your school’s front desk a call and ask who you would send a “written request for a special education evaluation” to and snag the email over the phone before you hang up.
You can email your child’s teacher(s) who teach reading, writing, and math. Let them know you’d like to chat over the phone or would like to ask them a few questions via email to understand more about how your kiddo is doing. Here are some questions you can ask: how do my child’s reading/writing/math skills compare to their peers? Do you think my child is going to have the necessary skills by the end of this school year to be successful in the next grade level the following year? Have you seen improvements in my child’s reading/writing/math skills throughout the year? If they do appear to be doing well, is it because they have required a lot of additional support to be successful? The answers to these questions will give you a good idea of what your child’s teachers observe on a daily basis and if there may be more support needed. Of course, you can always make the decision to request a special education evaluation regardless of the answers to these questions. As always, we encourage parents to trust their gut and feel empowered that they know their children better than anyone.
You can choose to have your child evaluated privately outside of the school district. Some parents choose to seek independent educational evaluations (IEEs) from psychologists and other qualified professionals for a variety of reasons. While these evaluations can yield valuable information, an important note is that, with the exception of special circumstances, school districts do not pay for these evaluations like they do with their own evaluations. Also, school districts are only obligated to “consider” the findings of IEEs, and will often request to conduct their own evaluation as well. If you’d be seeking an IEE simply for your own information and do not intend to use it to pursue special education for your child, no need to worry about how it can be used at school. But, if your hope is that an IEE could lead to special education services at your child’s school, you would first want to check with your school district regarding how that information will be factored into the determination of eligibility for an IEP. Remember that email that you’re going to call and get from the front office? You can email that same person to ask how an IEE would be used.
If you choose to evaluate your child for the purpose of receiving special education services and the testing indicates an SLD, your child then still has to meet the additional criteria to be considered eligible for special education. More on IEPs and the eligibility process in this blog.
TL;DR
It’s pretty confusing that some disabilities within the special education system would be called learning disabilities and some are not considering all of the eligible disabilities have the ability to impact a child’s learning. When we talk about learning disabilities in this post, we are talking about them through the lens of understanding specific special education processes, not to devalue anyone’s experience with learning disabilities that may not be recognized by IDEA. Learning disabilities, or “special learning disabilities,” for the sake of this post, are one of the 13 disability categories that qualify children for special education. Specific learning disabilities focus on impairments in the areas of reading, writing and math. An SLD can be diagnosed with educational testing conducted by your child’s school or an outside provider trained in testing children such as a licensed clinical psychologist. If testing indicates that your child has a SLD and you hope they’ll receive special education services to support their learning, they still have to meet the other criteria necessary to qualify or re-qualify them for an IEP. The full details on that process are in this blog post.
Have more questions or need some help navigating all of this? Consider checking out The Dream Team Community. We are packing it with real-life, compassionate parents and educators supporting each other to help these amazing kiddos live their best school life.