Educating Education Writers: Pretty Lousy
You know what would be great? If one of the learning disability advocacy organizations has a goal of getting accurate information into the supermarket weeklies. Good stories about kids who have addressed their LD issues and are successful. Good stories about programs that actually work. Stories about the great services provided by the Masons, with free reading-remediation that actually works.
Woman's World is a supermarket tabloid aimed at middle-American women. In the January 17, 2006 issue, they ran a two-page spread by Andrea Florczak Saving At-Risk Readers. The story missed a lot of opportunities to educate their readers, but did spend a lot of space promoting the Create-a-Reader software, developed by a team lead by Robin Hubbard, the mother of a child, Will:
Test results were devastating: Although Will's IQ was high, his learning disabilities were so severe, "he should be in a special school"!
But then he'll always feel different! Robin reeled.
(In Woman's World, utterances are rarely, merely, "said". The speakers "soothe" or "gulp" or "breathe" or "cry")
Will did learn to read, and now is a student at Columbia. How did he accomplish this?
His mother, Robin Hubbard, did it, apparently without help from any proven program such as an Orton-Gillingham based approach.
She scoured everything she could find on learning disabilities, grilled every expert she could reach. Then she plunged in.
She read food labels and street signs to him, even taught him sign language to help activate the stalled language processing center in his brain.
(There does not seem to be any reputable evidence that signing will help a dyslexic child's reading skills. The problem in dyslexia seems to be in converting sounds in to symbols, and symbols into sound. There's one article on sign language and dyslexia. The authors are referring to hands-forming-letters version, not American Sign Language. Some dyslexic, college-bound kids learn ASL in place of a foriegn language, but not because it "activates the 'stalled' language processing center.)
She enlarged every book his class read on a copier to make the words big. Then she cut a hole in an index card to show him one word at a time.
She wrote easy stories about a fox, mouse and pigeon with different strengths and difficulties, just like him, and cheered "Great job!" for every syllable he sounded out.
[snip]
And all that stimulation was about to pay off...one day, a book of dinosaurs in his hands, Will's voice moved from one sound to the next and the next....
You're reading! Robin cried.
I'm doing it! Will breathed. I'm just like everyone else!
Soon he was reading above grade level.
And as word of their miracle spread, schools welcomed robin into classrrooms--where she got inner city kids reading too!
And for every struggling child, Robin helped develop Create-a-Reader, a fun interactive, self-paced free program for schools and libraries.
This is pretty sad, equating a child with diagnosed learning disabilities with inner city kids. And there's nothing that indicates that Create-a-Reader is a good investment of the child's time.
The article seems to be flogging the Create-a-Reader program, but offers absolutely zero sound advice to parents of a child with a learning disability.
No advice on what your child should be able to do by first grade, or hints as to signs of trouble.
No advice on how to have your child tested for learning disabilities, or how to find someone competent (another outline here), or where to go for help if the school district isn't following through.
No advice on how to select a remediation program.
No advice on assistive technology that can help kids with reading issues, like Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic or the Kurzweil equipment.
It sounds like Create-A-Reader might be useful for those families who have internet access (it is also in some libraries, as ReadNet), and whose kids just need a boost. But it will do nothing to really help kids with learning disabilities.
Create-A-Reader.com is a literacy program that takes a student from beginning reading to a third grade reading level. It performs as a one-on-one tutor, custom tailored to your child's pace of learning. It covers all four areas of English language aquisition: Phonology, Discourse, Syntax and Semntics. Create-A-Reader is a supplemental tool that can be used with any literacy program. It also includes over 1500 words that can be used in custom spelling lists. Imagine letting your child practice all of the words listed in a particular children's book and after doing the online exercises being able to read that short book in its entirety.
You know what would be great? If one of the learning disability advocacy organizations has a goal of getting accurate information into the supermarket weeklies. Good stories about kids who have addressed their LD issues and are successful. Good stories about programs that actually work. Stories about the great services provided by the Masons, with free reading-remediation that actually works.
Look at the circulation figures:
Family Circle about 4.6 million circulation
Woman's Day has about 4.2 million circulation
Woman's World has about 1.6 million circulation
Learning Disability Organizations:
Learning Disabilities Association
International Dyslexia Association (IDA)
Division for Learning Disabilities, part of the Council for Exceptional Children
Liz, your comment is timely.
This weekend, at a meeting of the executive board of the Division for Learning Disabilities, I shall present a plan to create a media or press kit about LD. We may not be able to dent the tabloids, but we'll be working to promote accurate and sensitive reporting about LD.
Posted by: John Lloyd | Tuesday, January 24, 2006 at 06:50 PM