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Signature Assignment

Research Paper on Specific Learning Disability (SLD)

Alma Busch

Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Global

CSPU 510: Introduction to the Ethical Practice of School Psychology

Lore’K Garofola

October 20, 2024

Introduction to Specific Learning Disability (SLD)

Specific Learning Disorder (SLD) is a disability that has an impact on one’s

comprehensive skills such as reading, writing, spelling, math, etc. This phrasing and terminology

for this diagnosis has been used in the United States for only roughly 50 years. New to the field,

just as school psychology is, this diagnosis has many things about it that make it easy to pass up

when confronted with it at hand. A lot of children can go undiagnosed without this disorder, as

they can do other things if not properly brought to the attention of their parents and or educators.

It is crucial that parents are made aware of the possibility of a suspected disability, as such,

because it is the sooner that they can have them evaluated and supported sooner. This disability

makes it hard to do well in a mathematics or written language class, which would cause

derogatory marks and the possibility of parents being able to utilize due process to protect their

child and other kids.

When it comes to the protection of these students, there are several ethical principles that

professionals involved should think about and consider when making a referral. This only adds

to the list of the many things that teachers should be well-versed in, as they are more often going

to be the ones who see these things in the students first and foremost. There are five areas in

which ethics are questionable when considering a student has a Specific Learning Disability

(SLD): Beneficence, Autonomy, Confidentiality, Informed Consent, and Competence.

Beneficence is the first goal, being that of the student’s well-being. Just like being diagnosed

with anything, this student can be a victim of inappropriate interventions that might not be the

best support for their academic and health needs. Autonomy is a tough one as children don’t have

full autonomy over themselves, making sure to involve the family throughout the entire process
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of diagnosis and testing is critical, as they are the one with the best interest at heart for them and

are the ones with legal power for them. Confidentiality is one of the biggest pieces of diagnosis

as this helps hold decency and respect for the child, as they are a human who deserve to be

viewed just as anyone else does. Informed consent refers to the fact that the families should be

notified and fully informed of not only the assessment process, potential outcomes, options of

intervention, but also that they are allowed to stop services whenever they see fit or want. Laws

are protecting them and their students to make these decisions and have them fully respected.

Finally, competence is important as only professionals should be the ones administering

assessments and are the most adequately trained to identify SLD and find the best interventions

to help support the student.

Ethical principles are important for maintaining the integrity of the student, their families

and their privacy, but there are laws in place that also help protect these people in the education

system. Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a federal law that makes sure that

children with disabilities, which includes SLD, receive free and appropriate public education

(FAPE). In addition to this, there is also Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act that is a civil rights

law that prohibits discrimination, including against those who are disabled, and they have the

right to be included in federally funded programs that ensure those with SLD have access to

education. Referring back to confidentiality being an ethical principle, it is also a legal principle

through the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). This protects a student’s

educational records such as grades, diagnosis, etc. and can only be shared with professionals in

which the family has consented. Additionally, there is Due Process, which allows parents and

families to question and challenge decisions made by professionals in a school setting regarding

their child’s services and assessments. This would include hearings in court, to which legal
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documents, data from assessments, and professionals from the school, are required to be made

present. From all of this, timeliness is also a very important aspect of diagnosis for a child with

any disorder, like SLD, as anything longer than the timeframe given is considered a delay in

services which violates the student’s right to timely services.

Specific Learning Disability is often overlooked or missed for a few reasons. There aren’t

many people who know what it is, it may present as something else or overlap, there might not

be enough resources at the school they are at, and there isn’t the best response to students who

struggle at school. Like I mentioned first, there aren’t enough people who have adequate

information to be able to tell what SLD looks like. Flowing into the next part, this disability

might present as another that is more commonly known, like ADHD or having issues with social

or emotional situations which manifests into a different disability. Next, there aren’t always

enough resources at a school, this can mean maybe not properly equipped teachers to be able to

tell that a child is struggling specifically in these areas and maybe no school psychologist who is

present all the time or maybe one that is familiar with this at all. Also knowing the response time

is incredibly important in supporting a student or family through diagnosis as they might feel

hopeless in how this will help them perform better. When students have issues and are unable to

voice their concerns or what they are struggling with, this might look like a bundle of different

things like behavioral or mental problems.

Through a multistep identification process, a student can be fitted for a multitude of great

services used to help them. Teachers might see a student really struggling with particular areas in

reading/writing/talking and/or math skills and computation and can suggest to the parent or other

support services what is going on and to get them further support. In this, after receiving consent,

a school psychologist can do observations, assessments and use screening tools to help identify
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where the learning disabilities lie. Then through referral, evaluation, assessments like cognitive,

functional, etc., they can go from there to see where they are at to determine how to find the best

support. Oftentimes after evaluation, individualized education programs (IEPs) or 504 Plans, will

be set in place to help the student receive goals and accommodations or supports to continue

their education and get the help that they need to succeed. This would be done through progress

monitoring and adjustment, which is why meetings are held regularly to see if the child is

improving, which is the ultimate goal.

Previously, specific learning disabilities have been looked at for the past few centuries

with many names and can be frequently misunderstood as Dyslexia. Fortunately since the early

1900s, people have had more intelligence of the brain and cognitive processes and how

disabilities can impact learning, but are definitely still achievable.

Literature Review

In learning more about and understanding specific learning disabilities, it is clear that

there is a lot of lacking information and those who are qualified to be able to tell what it is. I

think that there needs to be an updated form of providing knowledge to teachers and faculty of

the different types of disabilities and how they can present themselves. In doing so, this would

allow for professionals to be reached out to at a more appropriate time to help these students get

the support they need.

In a research summary done by Jack M. Fletcher and Jeremy Miciak of the University of

Houston for the Texas Center for Learning Disabilities, they identified SLD to be one of the most

common disabilities that students receive services for through IDEA. They emphasize the
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importance of being able to identify the disability and the best practices to move forward with.

They clarify that the student must have a learning disability that prohibits their understanding

and ability to read or compute math within a general education setting. Through varieties of tools

and assessments, a student has to meet the criteria for specific learning disabilities by doing: oral

expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading skill, reading fluency

skills, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, or mathematics problem solving when

provided appropriate instruction. Through validity research on Cognitive Discrepancy Methods,

IQ-Achievement Discrepancy is common as one could view overall achievement as one’s

intelligence without playing into account those with impairments that prohibit their abilities.

These findings reveal that studies may have weak validity without using the proper tools to

figure out testing and intelligence. The validity of this research must be questioned (Fletcher &

Miciak, 2019).

In an article published by the American Psychological Association in 2019, authors

discuss the recognition of SLD in the United States, as well as the manifestations, comorbidity,

and treatments. As they mention, this disability interferes with adaptation at school and in society

as one is lacking the same skills that others share. “Word blindness,” or what we know as what

could be Dyslexia now, were terms used when describing those with brain injuries or have had a

stroke and are unable to properly read printed words. In addition to this, mathematics was a

struggle in these cases too, which stood another mystery as this wasn’t correlated. Comorbidity

was common and allowed for overlap to happen, although they state that these are correlated

factors having to do with academic and cognitive abilities but they are not interchangeable. They

also bring up how these impairments will be prevalent throughout the lifespan of someone,

without intervention. Figure 1 shows a rising almost three million people who were served with
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SLDs going up from the 1980s to the 2000s. Interventions can include: teachers providing

different model skills and strategies and allowing for this instruction to be individualized. This

would allow for better data collection as well as comprehension for the student. Their overall

thoughts serve to provide ideas for appropriate evaluations for SLD, assessments to be done

timely and using the right data so that they are being provided the right skillset to have that

explicit comprehension (Grigorenko et al., 2019).

In a study reported in 2020 by the American Psychological Association, authors looked at

the relationship between student-level variables and SLD identification. They looked at growth

rate, academic achievement, global cognitive ability, and demographic variables. Through using

RtI slope, this regression was done with data points given from students’ scores and the

frequency of the administration. They were also using scores from standardized achievement

assessments and standardized cognitive assessments and compared using the variable of

students’ demographics (race/ethnicity, gender, and FRL status). Reports were randomly selected

from two populations within the groups of kindergarten to eighth grade from August of 2015 to

May of 2019. Results were that those with demographics that were statistically against them,

would achieve lower scores than participants who were white. Those with FRL did correlate with

students with SLD. The RtI slope (p = .86), global cognitive ability (p = .18), and gender (p =

.74) did not significantly predict being a student with SLD. These results allow for more

literature of those who are underrepresented with SLDs but still encourages proper

psychoeducational evaluation data to be taken and interpreted (Maki et al, 2020).

Finally in another report published by the American Psychological Association in 2021,

authors used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to help identify what factors impacted

those with SLDs. LIWC is a software that analyzes verbal or written speech to better understand
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their emotions while writing that helps within psychometric evaluation. This can detect positive

and negative emotions. The method was through a larger study that examined the data that was

taken from school psychologists during evaluations from a Regional Education Service Agency

(RESA), which also included RtI methods. The sample consisted of one hundred and sixty

reports that were randomly selected from records between August 2015 to May 2019 for students

with suspected SLD. The measures taken were through the LIWC software and the four

measures that include: positive emotion, negative emotion, achievement-related language, and

social processes. The results showed that students with SLD and those without SLD had drastic

differences in emotions towards the language used and indicated that there was a greater amount

of achievement-related language in the reports for those with SLD. This means that the influence

of language throughout assessment is extremely important to better understand where the needs

of those with SLD are at (Barrett et al, 2021).

In a case law that was argued in 1998 and decided a few months later in 1999, the

Ridgewood Board of Education v. N.E., as Guardian Ad Litem for M.E…, v Frederick Stokley,

Superintendent…, a seventeen year old high school student had been dealing with diagnosing

issues surrounding his diagnosis of SLD since he was in the first grade. This was brought to the

courts through his parents as they were on top of his learning disabilities since he was initially

held back in 1988. When asked if he had a disability, the school notified M.E.’s parents that he

did not have a disability and was very intelligent. Throughout failing and incomplete classes and

lack of support, transferring schools and finally being diagnosed with learning disability, his

parents allege that Ridgewood intentionally withheld this report. They were upset at the

continued general education and lack of services and transparency provided and this had also put
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a huge strain on M.E.’s self-esteem and how well he functioned in any classroom setting

(Ridgewood Board of Education, 1999).

Knowledge as a School Psychologist

Not only do I find it incredibly interesting about how disabilities have been discovered

and how they present themselves, but I find it fascinating the way that the realm of school

psychology has grown with the knowledge it is added constantly. As a school psychologist, I

hope to always be on my toes with the ways I can help a student, their family, the community

and overall betterment of the field with my knowledge. I’m not sure if I have anything to add to

findings and literature at this point, although I doubt that I do, but until then I will make myself

the most knowledgeable in order to provide exceptional services to my students and their

families.
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References

Barrett, C. A., Burns, M. K., Maki, K. E., Clinkscales, A., Hajovsky, D. B., & Spear, S. E.

(2022). Language used in school psychological evaluation reports as predictors of SLD

identification within a response to intervention model. School Psychology, 37(2),

107–118. https://doi-org.umassglobal.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/spq0000485

Fletcher, J. M., & Miciak, J. (2019). The Identification of Specific Learning Disabilities: A

Summary of Research on Best Practices. Grantee Submission.

Grigorenko, E. L., Compton, D. L., Fuchs, L. S., Wagner, R. K., Willcutt, E. G., & Fletcher, J. M.

(2020). Understanding, educating, and supporting children with specific learning

disabilities: 50 years of science and practice. American Psychologist, 75(1), 37–51.

https://doi-org.umassglobal.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/amp0000452

Maki, K. E., Barrett, C. A., Hajovsky, D. B., & Burns, M. K. (2020). An examination of the

relationships between specific learning disabilities identification and growth rate,

achievement, cognitive ability, and student demographics. School Psychology, 35(5),

343–352. https://doi-org.umassglobal.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/spq0000400

Ridgewood Bd. of Educ. v. NE for ME, 172 F.3d 238 (3d Cir. 1999).