James wrote: Its also a good thing we have wonderful pharmaceutical companies ready to help our children with their special needs.
Nice strawman, James. The most common disability is reading failure (not surprising, as Maryanne Wolf writes).
There is no drug treatment for dyslexia (or reading disability,or specific learning disability-reading — whatever you call it).
Several studies have shown that effective remediation changes the brain.
The hitch? Effective remediation usually involves one-on-one teaching, intensively. It is expensive. And it tends not to happen, leaving the child further and further behind. As a commenter on my blog wrote:
I am an instructional support teacher at two elementary schools. We use response to intervention as a tool for remediation as well as possible spec. education placement. I struggle with what interventions to use with each individual student. I know that to make a real difference, the student needs lots of one on one time, however; my schedule does not permit more than 30- 45 minutes per student. I am supposed to only spend about 20 minutes per student which is just ridiculous.
For more information on reading and reading failure, do visit the Florida Center on Reading Research. I particularly recommend #8, the introduction to dyslexia.
