It’s the LD area of special education that has made such advances in recent years. Dylexia, apraxia, nonverbal learning disorders, audio-processing disorders — these are all disabilities that have only recently been given names and appropriate treatments. Other forms of disabilities are more obvious and those kids have been labeled for a while.
There are also a lot of kids on the autism spectrum who are misdiagnosed and given the LD label. That mild area of the autistic spectrum is also only recently understood.
If there was some pretty good evidence from multiple sources that kids were being mislabeled, then let the national spot-check begin. But I haven’t gotten there yet.
When my son was ready for pre-school, his significant language delay qualified for him to get tested to see if he was eligible for the special education pre-school. He was tested by five people, outside of the school district, who all said that he needed help. After he didn’t make any progress in his program for a year and a half, we took him to a neurologist who said that things were much worse than the first five people thought. So, then he was tested by another five or six people, who said again that things were bad.
I’m not sure if our experiences in this town are typical, but there have been an awful lot of people poking at my kid. If a kid is mislabeled as LD in my town, it would involve a conspiracy of experts.
