An earlier version of this article appears in “Math Education in the U.S.” Footnotes appear after the list of references at the end of the article. In a well-publicized paper that addressed why some students were not learning to read, Reid Lyon (2001) concluded that children from disadvantaged backgrounds where early childhood education was not available failed to read because they did not receive effective instruction in the early grades. Many of these children then required special education services to make up for this early failure in reading instruction, which were by and large instruction in phonics as the means of decoding. Some of these students had no specific learning disability other than lack of access to effective instruction.
Thanks for this post and for this blog in general. Going beyond the type of intervention or remediation is the question of whether any intervention or remediation is taking place in public schools in the first place.
I volunteer at the tutoring center of my local high school -- a well funded and high performing school. The other day, for example, a student came in with some "geometry" questions. The questions involved two opposite angles of a parallelogram, one labeled 2x, and the other something like x + 40. The student had no idea how to set up the problem, nor how to solve for x. Another question involved subtracting 19 from 29 -- the student could not do this in his head nor could he set it up on paper. The student had difficulty speaking at times -- it seemed like he might have tourette's -- and it was clear to me he had some kind of learning disability, so therefore he must have an IEP. So the question I would like to ask is why in the world does his teacher think he should be working on problems designed to integrate geometric and algebraic concepts, when he cannot even set up nor solve a basic subtraction problem?
Its pretty clear to me that this student needs to be spending 100 percent of his time in math working on basic numerical proficiency, whether that involves learning the "tricks" that common-core emphasizes or the now-hated standard algorithms. An ideal progression for him would seem to be basic proficiency in addition/subtraction/multiplication/division and then hopefully later a good understanding of ratios, percents, etc. But instead, despite all of the resources and attention given to the development of this student's IEP, the school and/or teachers still seem content to pass him right on through -- in a sense, pretending he understands concepts that he clearly does not.
Another thing I noticed about the student was that, although he could not add/subtract by hand nor solve basic algebraic equations, he was able to use a calculator and an online equation solver to find the answers. So it could also be that his teacher is content with his lack of proficiency so long as he demonstrates the resourcefulness to use online tools or a calculator in order to solve problems.
Either way, it seems clear to me that, beyond the content of instruction, many students with learning disabilities simply do not receive any individualized or explicit instruction whatsoever, and are instead just passed along from class to class and grade to grade -- and perhaps teachers or the school rationalize this by assuming that so long as the student can use a calculator, he will manage fine enough.
Thanks for this post and for this blog in general. Going beyond the type of intervention or remediation is the question of whether any intervention or remediation is taking place in public schools in the first place.
I volunteer at the tutoring center of my local high school -- a well funded and high performing school. The other day, for example, a student came in with some "geometry" questions. The questions involved two opposite angles of a parallelogram, one labeled 2x, and the other something like x + 40. The student had no idea how to set up the problem, nor how to solve for x. Another question involved subtracting 19 from 29 -- the student could not do this in his head nor could he set it up on paper. The student had difficulty speaking at times -- it seemed like he might have tourette's -- and it was clear to me he had some kind of learning disability, so therefore he must have an IEP. So the question I would like to ask is why in the world does his teacher think he should be working on problems designed to integrate geometric and algebraic concepts, when he cannot even set up nor solve a basic subtraction problem?
Its pretty clear to me that this student needs to be spending 100 percent of his time in math working on basic numerical proficiency, whether that involves learning the "tricks" that common-core emphasizes or the now-hated standard algorithms. An ideal progression for him would seem to be basic proficiency in addition/subtraction/multiplication/division and then hopefully later a good understanding of ratios, percents, etc. But instead, despite all of the resources and attention given to the development of this student's IEP, the school and/or teachers still seem content to pass him right on through -- in a sense, pretending he understands concepts that he clearly does not.
Another thing I noticed about the student was that, although he could not add/subtract by hand nor solve basic algebraic equations, he was able to use a calculator and an online equation solver to find the answers. So it could also be that his teacher is content with his lack of proficiency so long as he demonstrates the resourcefulness to use online tools or a calculator in order to solve problems.
Either way, it seems clear to me that, beyond the content of instruction, many students with learning disabilities simply do not receive any individualized or explicit instruction whatsoever, and are instead just passed along from class to class and grade to grade -- and perhaps teachers or the school rationalize this by assuming that so long as the student can use a calculator, he will manage fine enough.