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Concluding the Abilities of An LD Kid After Assessments

13th June 2022

The topic of learning disabilities (LD) has always been a matter of discussion because various students with learning disabilities show various kinds of characteristics. Each student does not have similar kind of traits where the strengths and weaknesses of every student are different. Special education teachers, therefore, assess each of them separately when it comes to their academic achievements.

Kids with learning disabilities have behavioral problems and are associated with psychological comorbidities. Children whine, throw tantrums, and are moody quite often. Because of this generalization, parents cannot understand if their children are having learning disabilities or not. As a matter of fact, once these kids start going to school, some of them are diagnosed with learning disabilities.

There are different kinds of learning disabilities like Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, etc. Around 10-60% of students with LD are having ADHD and there lies a gigantic challenge. That is why special education programs are always recommended for these special kids. While sharing their experiences with us, the special education teachers said that while they were pursuing online learning disabilities courses for teachers, they really understood how difficult it becomes for these kids to cope with other students academically.

They have learned various teaching methods and practices that they execute now in the classroom. Special ed teachers have also told us about having a different personality and attitude while teaching specially-abled children. The teaching strategies used by them have individualized education programs (IEP) included. However, major issues arrive while evaluating their achievement tests.

Special education assessment tests go through multiple evaluation tests and based on these intelligence tests, the progress of students is being calculated. We hate to break this but only private schools are having these facilities where standard deviation evaluation is focused to evaluate the merit of students having learning disabilities. Specially-abled students are privileged to go through such an evaluation process in government schools.

Average scores of students are calculated to draw a conclusion about a special child’s abilities and how much she/he has grown. Now, what is meant by average? An average test score is the sum of all the scores on an assessment divided by the number of students who have appeared on the test. Above-average score, average score, and below-average score are the three parameters based on which the merit of a classroom is judged and teachers start teaching students aiming at improving their scores.

Some special ed teachers use statistics to figure out the academic status of students. Teachers and teachers for specially-abled children may use averages to monitor the rate at which the class is growing academically. Teachers also use averages to estimate where an individual student's scores and compare that score to the rest of the class.

Learn things that you should never tell a person who’s having LD:
 

This is quite essential for students with learning disabilities. Educators may also use averages to measure how individual students' abilities rate on tests used to diagnose learning disabilities.

There are teachers who use alternative methods like using a percentile. This is quite interesting. Let's say a child has scored 70 percentile, therefore, it shows that a child has scored more than 70% of the students who have appeared in the test.

Another very important kind of test that is conducted by teachers specially meant for kids with learning disabilities is standard deviation (SD) evaluation. In order to calculate the standard deviation, a teacher must have the average test score. Standard deviation can be defined as the average distance (or the number of points) between all test scores and the average score.

One SD (15 points) from the average or standard score (100 in this case) isn’t statistically significant. “Statistically significant” means that the difference isn’t due to standard error. If a child with LD has a score of only one SD lower than the average, the score is still considered average. However, if it is two standard deviations (30 points) above or below the average, that’s quite significant.

Special education services have observed that 68 percent of the population falls into the average score range between 85 and 115. Anywhere in that range is considered average. However, some teachers can distinguish marks like high-average marks or low-average marks.

Based on these evaluations, teaching strategies are adopted by special needs educators. Some schools focus on phonetics, some help kids to learn mathematical calculations, and so on. Rote learning methods are adopted by many teachers where the main focus is to improve the academic grades but in this case, the overall growth or development of a child having LD is not given much priority.

In countries like India which is a multilingual country, specially-abled children are supposed to get over LD using their mother tongue. According to the standard assessment procedure for learning disorders, one class is taken as one standard deviation. When a child performs two classes below her/his actual standard/class, then she/he is diagnosed as LD. Whereas, if the performance is one class below, then it is diagnosed as a learning difficulty.

There is a massive social stigma that prevails in many parts of India where a special child is not treated with love and often, they are considered ill omens. This is absolutely pathetic and disgusting. They are labeled as dull, lazy, mischievous, troublesome, and so on without knowing the real cause behind this. Acceptance from friends, family, neighbors, etc., become extremely tough, and because of this, the rate of dropouts from schools and colleges is incrementing.

Having said all of those, special education services and special needs teachers having a certification in online learning disabilities courses for teachers are really contributing a lot to helping kids with learning disabilities. They are trying to provide every help these gifted children require so that they can grow and develop a lot by escaping the shackles of challenges they face.

If you want to know how these special education teachers help kids, call our toll-free number: 1800-212-6400.