Educational Diagnosticians

Marnee Loftin is has had the unique position of being the LSSP for the School for the Blind.  She tells us about the special considerations we should have when testing children who have significant visual impairments.  She also shares her view on co-morbid diagnosis for children who are visually impaired.

Dr. Mark Shinn could be considered one of the Founding Fathers of special education. He led the way in research to find ways to measure progress for children with disabilities.  His work on developing CBMs lead to the development of DIBELS and AIMSweb, both of which are widely used in schools today.  Together with other pioneer researchers, he and others helped influence the federal IDEA and its revision in 2004. He sees interventions as the tool to closing the gaps between the haves and the have nots, but he feels like strict adherence to giving IQ tests stands in the way of the adoption of intervention practices and therefor our ability to truly realize social justice through education. 

Dr. Schultz tells us about the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education report from 2002.  The recommendations in this report drove the revision of IDEA in 2004.  At the time, SLD identifications were reported to have grown by 300%.  The recommendation was to include Response to Intervention.  The question here would be, with the lack of focus on good RTI practices, is our rise in referrals a sign that we are Repeating History? Dr. Schultz argues that CSEP is the answer in the context of the state of RTI at this time. 

Allison Hollis joins to tell us about all the special considerations when managing a transition assessment.

Nancy Mather tells us about the Test of Dyslexia and how to assess for dyslexia. 

The Law Dawg tells us about the Texas Legislature and we discuss what we can look forward to in this legislative session. 

Dr. Fletcher explains how he attempts to establish that Learning Disabilities are real. Likewise, he also describes the hypotheses in research surrounding subtypes of dyslexia.  

Meet our OSEP director.  Hear about recent cases heard in courts regarding child find and LRE, and get ready for subtypes of dyslexia!

According to the NAEP published on October 23, 2022, 66% of fourth graders are not reading proficiently to make good scores on college entry exams by the time they get into high school.  Covid reflects low scores across the country.  This begs to question: are our norms still valid?

Last year the number of AU identifications surpassed the number of OHI identifications.  What are some the reasons for rising numbers of AU identifications? Is this a good thing or should be concerned?