Learning Disabilities as Operationally Defined by Schools
Donald L. MacMillan, University of California, Riverside, & Gary N. Siperstein, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Learning Disabilities Summit: Building a Foundation for the Future White Papers
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DEVELOPMENTS FURTHER EXPANDING THE CONCEPT OF LD IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
In this paper we have described the process followed by school personnel primarily to explain that there is subjectivity at each of the three stages considered and that this subjectivity is additive. We believe this subjectivity explains, in part, the lack of congruence between those whom the schools identify as LD and the criteria specified in education codes and authoritative definitions. Since LD emerged as a formally recognized disability category, there have been changes in the definition of mental retardation which, in turn, affected the definition of LD and extended boundaries of SI LD (MacMillan, 1993). Increasingly schools have opted to ignore the "exclusionary criteria" (mental retardation and cultural impoverishment) in order to serve students in need. This has been particularly true since changes in the definition of mental retardation have put more and more children into a gray area: those who do not meet the criteria either for mental retardation or for LD. Moreover, provisions of P.L. 94-142 diminished the importance of differential diagnosis and, in fact, provided the schools with the means to minimize the extent to which they used the diagnosis of mental retardation. Both the eligibility decision-making process employed by the public schools and the characteristics of children served as LD were altered markedly by these developments despite little or no change in authoritative definitions of LD or criteria specified in state education codes.
DELETION OF "BORDERLINE MENTAL RETARDATION"
When Kirk introduced the term "LD" in 1963 he referred to a segment of students who encountered academic difficulties but were not eligible for special education services under already existing categories (e.g., mental retardation, emotional disturbance). In other words, mental retardation and emotional disturbance had "territorial rights" to groups of children already defined. The LD category was crafted to make eligible those children who were not heretofore eligible. In recognition of the preexisting categories, certain "exclusionary" criteria were employed, acknowledging, in certain instances, that children with already recognized disabilities were not subsumed under the umbrella of this new category. "Children assigned to this new category were defined primarily by what they were not: They were not learning, and they did not have visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage that restricted their learning" (Raymond, 2000, p. 97). In the reauthorization of IDEA in 1997, the notion of exclusionary criteria is further expanded to include children who have not had the opportunity to learn--they are not to be identified as having a learning disability under these more recent guidelines (Council for Exceptional Children, 1998).
Consider the changes in the definition of mental retardation, specified as one reason for precluding eligibility as LD, and the impact it had on criteria for identifying students as eligible as LD. When LD came into existence, the authoritative definition of mental retardation was the 1961 American Association on Mental Deficiency (AAMD) (Heber, 1961) definition. Mental retardation constituted the largest disability in special education at that time. It continued to be the category with the largest enrollments when President Ford signed P.L. 94-142 into law in 1975. The Heber definition specified an upper IQ boundary of -1 SD (roughly IQ 85) and represented the most liberal or inclusive definition of mental retardation ever seen (Clausen, 1967). In 1973, AAMD (Grossman, 1973) reversed the trend toward inclusiveness, and shifted the upper IQ boundary to -2 SDs (or IQ 70). If eligibility as LD required excluding students who qualified as mentally retarded, then the segment of children with IQ scores between 70 and 85 (roughly 13% of the general population) was suddenly disenfranchised. The definition of LD and the criteria for establishing eligibility were intimately linked to the definition of mental retardation, and "changes in the LD definition" in fact occurred when mental retardation was redefined in 1973; suddenly 13 percent of the general population was cured of mental retardation. Were any of these children, described by Forness as being in a demilitarized zone, now eligible as LD? Academics might debate whether this disenfranchised group should be eligible for services as LD if they exhibit the requisite discrepancy (standard score or regressed?), but the public schools could not await resolution of that debate. State education codes revised criteria for mental retardation to be consistent with the Grossman (1973) definition and, in effect, directed school districts to cease identifying children in the IQ range of 70-85 as mentally retarded. However, school districts had to do something about a segment of children exhibiting severe and chronic low achievement accompanied by low cognitive skills. As we will describe below, it appears that the schools chose to serve them in substantial numbers in special education and did so by expanding the LD category.
HOW THIS EXPANDED THE LD CATEGORY
Faced with the practical problem of low cognitive students with chronic and persistent academic problems and the increased exclusiveness of the mental retardation criteria, schools had to decide a course of action. It is our position that the decision the schools reached was to expand the boundaries of LD to include these low cognitive children and serve them where they appeared. Doing so dramatically increased the heterogeneity of the SI LD population and widened the discrepancy between definitions of LD and characteristics of children served in public schools as LD. The essence of the reason for widening the gap was captured by Gerber (1999-2000) in the following passage: "In 1973 we stopped teachers from nominating students with IQs between 75 and 85, simply removed the categorical label that once defined these students, simply defined educable mental or familial retardation out of existence. Did these students or their difficulties in learning go away?" (p. 38). No, they did not. In fact, they continued to present a significant challenge to teachers in whose classes they were enrolled. In turn, these teachers continued to refer them. Confronted with this situation many public schools chose to continue to serve them, but did so as LD.
It is important to note that evidence on the prevalence of former "borderline" and mild cases of mental retardation clearly shows that the condition is intimately related to poverty (see Richardson, 1981). An extensive research base documented that cases of "borderline" or MMR were a phenomenon arising from factors linked to poverty (Haskins, 1986). A series of investigations was undertaken to explore the extent to which the adverse effects of sociolinguistic/economic disadvantage could be reversed with early intervention programs targeting areas in which disadvantage was believed to affect academic performance (e.g., Garber, 1988; Ramey & Finkelstein, 1981). While the LD field has since its inception attributed the learning difficulties to intrinsic factors, the presence of many children of poverty with low cognitive skills in school populations of LD students certainly challenges the attributions dominant in the "LD literature" and requires a reconsideration of these assumptions at least as they pertain to SI LD.
The ignoring of exclusionary criteria is not restricted to MMR. Reluctance to classify children as emotionally disturbed (ED) is also evident, and is illustrated by a study conducted by Duncan, Forness, and Hartsough (1995). They examined 85 cases of students served as severely emotionally disturbed (SED) in two counties of California. At the time these students were initially certified as eligible for special education, 53% were identified as LD, 31% as SED, 11% as speech and language impaired, and 5% in other categories. The authors reported the age of the child when a problem was first noticed, the age at which the first intervention was initiated, the age at which the first special-education IEP was developed, and the age at which the first SED placement was made. SED placement was found to occur some 4 to 6 years after the problem was first noticed. The following passage illustrates the point made herein that LD is being used as a nonspecific diagnosis:
His problem first came to the attention of someone outside the family when he was about 5 years old. Formal intervention for these problems was initiated when he was about 6, and his first special education placement occurred when he was about 8....There was a likelihood that his initial special education diagnosis was in the learning disabeility category, but he was ultimately found to be eligible as SED. (p. 17)
Either the schools are reluctant to use the ED designation or the schools are using LD as an initial nonspecific category, appending an acceptable label because it is less stigmatizing and pessimistic in its prognosis, to be used until the treatments provided are deemed ineffective and inappropriate. Nevertheless, the presence of children classified as LD whose achievement deficiencies are primarily due to low cognitive functioning or behavioral excesses that impair learning serves only to contaminate the LD category.
VARIATIONS IN LD CHARACTERISTICS ACROSS SITES
As we have alluded to, it is our contention that the dramatic increase in the number of children identified as LD is in large part due to the fact that public schools violate the most fundamental exclusionary criteria for LD by enrolling children as LD who in fact qualify as mentally retarded or even ED. In addition, the schools' categorical approach to establishing eligibility tends to obscure cases of comorbidity (the presence of characteristics defining two or more disability categories simultaneously). That is, a child is to be placed in one, and only one, disability category when found eligible for special education. For schools, LD has become the "disability of choice" because it is less stigmatizing, more acceptable to parents, and more optimistic in the prognosis it conveys. The result is that classification of children as LD does not constitute a diagnosis; rather, it has become a catchall designation for eligibility and planning for services.
MacMillan et al. (1998) provide an example of the generalized use of LD as a catchall designation for eligibility for services when they described their referred sample of children who were ultimately classified as LD by the public schools. Their research was conducted in California, which reported that 5.93% of its students were classified as LD. These investigators had classified all referred children using research criteria as being mentally retarded, learning disabled, having attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), emotionally/behaviorally disordered (EBD), or ineligible for special education by virtue of not qualifying on research criteria for any of the four categories. Of the first cohort of 150 referred children, 61 were ultimately classified as LD by the schools. When the research categories into which these students were placed were examined using research criteria, the heterogeneity of these 61 cases was apparent. Table 1 shows the 61 cases cast by either the single category suggested by applying research criteria or the comorbid cases (e.g., child met criteria for LD and EBD; or mentally retarded [MR] and EBD). Approximately a third of the cases did meet the LD criteria only; however, almost the same percentage (n = 18) did not qualify as LD but did qualify as mentally retarded (either solely or comorbidly with ADHD, EBD, or ADHD EBD MR), in which case they achieved a FSIQ on the ''WISC-III of 75 or less. Ten cases were classified as LD by the schools but failed to meet research criteria for any of the four possible designations.
Table 1. School-identified students as LD and classifications based on research diagnostic criteria.
The evidence clearly documents that the public schools similarly disregarded the "exclusionary criteria" specified in the authoritative definitions of LD. By focusing on absolute low achievement and forgoing the requisite discrepancy, schools knowingly include children with subaverage general intellectual functioning in eligibility classifications of students with LD. In other words, with regard to absolute low achievement being the basis for LD placement, actual school practices mirror the concern with low achievement definitions of learning disabilities articulated by Fletcher et al. (1998) who wrote:
This approach treats IQ as a measure of cognitive capacity that functions much like a threshold ability, using IQ to determine whether the child has sufficient cognitive ability to be successful at a complex cognitive skill such as reading. In essence, it integrates the classification of mental retardation and learning disabilities into a unified system, whereby deficiencies in complex skills below an IQ of 80 are ascribed to the child's cognitive capacity, but deficiencies in children with IQs of 80 or higher are ascribed to failures in the specific component skills, behaviors, experiences, and attitudes that determine successful performance of that skill. The validity of this distinction has not been established and the cut point of 80 is completely arbitrary. (p. 199)
Gottlieb et al. (1994) reported on data collected over a 10-year span in a large urban school district, and their findings bear directly on our concerns that the exclusionary criteria are patently ignored in current placement situations. The current LD population in many settings includes substantial numbers of children who fit the criteria for mental retardation more closely than those for LD; furthermore, the failure to rule out sociocultural disadvantage as a contributor/cause of the learning difficulties is evident. These authors noted that in the 1960s and 1970s the IQ band for placement in educable mentally retarded (EMR) programs was between 55 and 85, varying somewhat by year and the most current definition. Gottlieb et al. found that the mean IQ for children classified as mentally retarded in their districts was 54 in urban districts and 55 in suburban districts--highly similar, to say the least. In marked contrast, they found the mean IQ for children classified as LD in urban districts to be one and one-half standard deviations lower than was found with their suburban LD students. They wrote: "In our 1992 research, for example, the mean for the urban learning disability sample (N = 175) was 81.4 (SD = 13.9) and the mean for the suburban sample (N = 55) was 102.8 (SD = 13.4)" (p. 455). In another sample of 320 children classified as LD collected in 1984, they found 41% achieving IQ scores between 70 and 85 with an additional 7.5% with IQ scores of below 70. In yet another more recent survey of 175 students classified LD, approximately one quarter had IQ scores of 90 or above, while 16.6% had IQ scores of less than 70. The findings of Gottlieb et al. regarding substantial proportions of the SI LD cases being low cognitive students are consistent with our own findings (MacMillan, Gresham, Siperstein, & Bocian, 1996); however, they also reported data illustrating the failure to rule out poverty and disadvantage.
THE NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE URBAN SPECIAL EDUCATION
Earlier we discussed the difference between RI and SI; however, it is equally important to acknowledge that among SI LD students there is a dramatic difference between urban and suburban LD students. Data reported above by Gottlieb et al. attests to this situation simply on the basis of mean IQ of LD students in urban and suburban districts.
Cultural, environmental, and economic factors, rather than serving as a cause for rejecting the diagnosis of LD, often weigh heavily in the school's decision to classify a child as LD. Nowhere is this more evident than in studies that contrast the decision-making process in urban and suburban school districts. Differences in populations classified as LD are obviously a function of the social class of the families served in a school. Stated differently, the meaning of LD is quite different in a poor urban school district than it is in an affluent suburban school district. The large urban district in which Gottlieb et al. (1994) collected their 1992 data (N = 139,780; 165 urban public schools) enrolled a majority of poor children. More than 80% of the children in that district live in poverty. These authors demonstrated that for the general education population of that urban district, a "poverty index" (based on average class size, percentage of Hispanic enrollment; percentage of teachers with fewer than 5 years of teaching experience, number of children qualifying for free meals or other forms of welfare, and the extent of overcrowding) accounted for 65% of the variance in schoolwide reading scores. On average, only 34% of the children in the general education population read at or above grade level. When they looked at the LD students specifically, they found that 90% were on some form of public assistance and 95% were members of a minority group (note: 93% of the entire school population was minority). They also characterized these LD students as "an immigrant population" with 19% being foreign born and 44% coming from homes where English was not the primary language spoken by parents. What then is LD in a large urban district? Gottlieb et al. described the operational definition of LD as "[l]ow-achieving, low-ability children who do not exhibit aggressive or bizarre behavior and whom teachers cannot accommodate in their general education classrooms" (pp. 458-459).
