Learning disabled left behind

Link: Learning disabled left behind.

Learning disabled left behind - Joan Ryan Thursday, March 30, 2006

There's a girl I know who is a straight-A student in high school. She is poised, bright and organized, the kind who answers the extra-credit questions and keeps color-coded files for every class.

But she reads as slowly as a grade-schooler. Her writing is barely legible. She can't spell. Like 2.5 million other students in the United States, she is dyslexic. At school, she comes in early and stays late to finish tests that require reading and writing. She uses a laptop so teachers don't have to slog through the tortured handwriting and misspellings to access the content of her work.

She is soon going to face the SAT, just as my learning-disabled son will be. Her parents had assumed the purpose of this influential test is to assess a student's actual knowledge and capabilities. They gathered the required documentation about her dyslexia, which was diagnosed in second grade, and applied for accommodations so her SAT score would reflect as accurately as possible her probability of college success.