Educational Diagnosticians

Candace Vielma talks with Jan Cook and Diane Burke about Reading by Design, a Texas approved dyslexia curriculum.

This episode is a follow up to a discussion we had on 2/4/2022. At the time Dr. Dehn was helping Mr. Romstad to norm this new test that evaluates the fluid reasoning of culturally and linguistically diverse learners without discrimination or bias. We did a follow up because the test is now normed and is available on Dr. Dehn's Schoolhouse Education Services website. Here's the website if you'd like to learn more. https://www.schoolhouseeducationalservices.com/assessment-of-nonverbal-contextual-reasoning-ancr/

Dr. Piltier drops in to help us out as we discuss the difference between an SLD in Basic Reading and Dyslexia. She says it's like saying H20 for water. Let's stop arguing about it and get to work helping kids learn to read!Thanks Dr. Frith for the suggestion to invite Dr. Piltier on to address this topic!

The science of reading requires us to assess morphology, but the tools for an assessment of morphology are less established than those of oral reading fluency and word reading. With the support of federal funding, Dr. Apel has created a test of morphology. Listen to what he has to say about it! Here's a link to his study: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sqf6EVz29Xxm1pmbk0k7GXjMIS0N9BX-/view?usp=drive_link Here's a study as well: https://alliedhealth.ceconnection.com/files/UsingMultipleMeasuresofMorphologicalAwarenesstoAssessitsRelationtoReading-1360187360413.pdf

Some current professors and professors in training join to discuss features of various conferences for educational diagnosticians and dyslexia therapists. Some of the conferences discussed are TEDA, HuMat, the CLD, and the IDA.

Dr. Branton Shearer utilizes the Howard Gardner's theory of intelligence to help educators help students find their strengths. Helping children find their strengths is a great way to add a special touch to our FIEs and hack deficit thinking. As long as we are focused on deficits, that's all we will see. Everyone has something the world needs, and families are depending on us to help the world see how children with disabilities can add to our society once we help them identify and build their strengths. His test, the MIDAS, is not a personality test or a learning style test. It has much more utility and validity that those types of measures. For more information, see this website: https://miresearch.org/

Dr. Dombrowski joins to tell us about the low achievement model for identifying SLD and the criticisms he has for PSW methods. Here are some links to articles he has written: 1) A Systematic Review of the PSW Diagnostic Accuracy Evidence: Is it Time to Abandon PSW? 2) After the Demise of the Discrepancy: Proposed Learning Disabilities Diagnostic Criteria 3) Beyond the Rhetoric of Evidence Based Assessment: A Framework for Critical Thinking and Clinical Practice

The new team of Diagnostician Clubhouse reporters, Candace Vielma, Candace James, and Valencia Ashley join Nazzie to share various tidbits of information that is on their minds. Dr. Schultz joins to comment as well. Candace Vielma: Talks about a court case that found the school district liable when a dyslexia program was not implemented with fidelity. Candace James: Gives us a new diag tip for converting PDFs to word documents. Valencia Ashley: Tells us about the upcoming IDA conference. Nazzie Pater-Rov: Shares a review of the Sattler book.

Nazzie presents 3 sources that attempt to describe what constitutes Evidence Based Assessment. Amy Smith and Becky Robinson join in to comment. The 3 sources are: 1. Psycho-educational Assessment and Report Writing by Stefan Dombrowski. 2. Identifying and Teaching Students with Significant Reading Problems by (Vaughn & Fletcher, Winter 2020-2021) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OUiZywTZkTS38OgRItggARaxE1XmWXf8/view?usp=drive_link 3. Evidence-Based Assessment of Learning Disabilities in Children and Adolescents (Fletcher et al., 2005) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z2djJn__14zeR3Ayy8iSaDbfcZ4UqkDE/view

Amy Smith, Candace Vielma, Lori Melton, and Zarvonia Gibbs pitch in to add commentary to Nazzie's summary of the FAQs of the the dyslexia handbook.