When looking at the origin and history of learning disabilities it is necessary to think about it from several different perspectives because the term has different implication based on how it is defined. This article is going to look at the term learning disabilities from the three perspectives of legislation, research and history.
When looking at learning disabilities from a legislative perspective, you have to consider both federal and state laws and rules. In laws regulating learning disabilities you will find a definition for learning disabilities. You will also find rules and criteria about how to implement what has been laid out in legislation. As states build and maintain a Special Education infrastructure, they must incorporate the definitions and criteria. School districts and special education teachers must follow the law and its regulations as defined by their State Plan for Special Education.
If there are questions about what a state has defined in its Special Education Plan, Guides, Manuals, definitions, and the State Plan are typically available on the state’s Department of Education website or can be accessed from the state for a nominal fee.
A point, to underscore for school districts, is that in order for them to access Special Education funding for serving children, they must adhere to the state and federal definitions of learning disabilities. Although there are numerous clinical and research driven definitions, these do not meet the criteria defined in Special Education law and thus, will not qualify a student for federally funded Special Education and Related Services.
Clinical and research-based definitions of learning disabilities are not eligible to be used by public schools for diagnosing learning disabilities for a number of reasons. One of those is that many times these definitions are looking at only a small segment of learning difficulties and are not as global as the federal definition.
In addition, the evaluation instruments used in these clinical and research studies often do not meet the stringent standards and criteria set for under federal and state law i.e., the WRAT-R being used to measure intelligence. Another issue with using clinical and research study definitions is that the data collected in these projects are often times aggregated and reported as if they are typical of the entire population of students with learning disabilities when in reality they are not. Most often these studies have a very heterogeneous group of subjects that do not correlate with the large population of students with learning disabilities.
An interesting aspect of learning disabilities is that it is a broad category in the law and because of this there are students who exhibit difficulties with math only, reading only, writing only, or a combination of one or all of these. No two students with learning disabilities presents with the same profile.
This diversity is due in part to the fact that when Congress was debating passing the first Special Education law (The Education for All Handicapped Act of 1975) there was a serious battle going on between different learning perspectives as to which perspective would get to go into the law and thus have federal funding for research and for services for students that met the specific criteria for that perspective. Some of the big boys in this battled were the language/linguistic proponents and the proponents of perceptual motor deficits.
When the 11th hour arrived and Congress firmly confirmed they would not include both perspectives in the new law, the camps quickly came to a compromise and agreed on creating the term (and thus the category) of learning disabilities encompassing both perspectives. Although the debate was put to rest, the separate research agendas continue to this day and this is not a bad thing.
One of the earliest definitions of learning disabilities, developed in 1968 by the National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children stated:
“Children with special learning disabilities exhibit a disorder in one or more of the basic, psychological processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written languages. These may be manifested in disorders of listening, thinking, talking, reading, writing, spelling, or arithmetic. They include conditions which have been referred to as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, developmental aphasia, etc. They do not include learning problems which are due primarily to visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, to mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or to environmental disadvantage” (Special education for handicapped for handicapped children, 1968).
When Congress passed Public Law 91-230, the Elementary and Secondary Amendments of 1969, this definition was adopted and when Public Law 94-142 or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was passed this same definition was accepted. The current IDEA definition of learning disabilities remains unchanged since 1969.
