The legal dimension of response to intervention (RTI) has been the subject of considerable professional confusion. This brief article addresses the issue in three parts. The first part provides an update of a previous iteration that compared 12 common conceptions, referred to here as the "lore," with an objective synthesis of the…

This is an official document of the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD), of which Council for Learning Disabilities is a long-standing, active member. With this position paper, NJCLD addresses points of agreement in the field, common misperceptions, and unresolved issues in scholarship and practice, and makes recommendations…

Four studies into characteristics and instructional needs of students with learning disabilities are summarized in this article. These studies are also reviewed in the wider context of mathematics intervention research in special education. These studies generally rely on qualitative methodology, and they are best understood in light of a…

As a result of the upcoming Federal reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA), practitioners and researchers have begun vigorously debating what constitutes evidence-based assessment for the identification of specific learning disability (SLD). This debate has resulted in strong support for a method that…

In this article, we provide an overview of current knowledge on the underlying cognitive deficits associated with mathematics learning disabilities (MLD). We highlight difficulties surrounding the identification of MLD that include inconsistency in defining MLD, comorbidity with other disabilities, problems associated with assessment tools and…

This investigation extends the study of the reading comprehension practices used with students with learning disabilities (LD) via a case study, exploring the beliefs and practices in reading comprehension of "Wendy," a cross-categorical special educator nominated as effective in her work with sixth-grade students. Wendy's practices serve as a…

This short article provides a legal analysis of the Hale et al. white paper on specific learning disabilities identification. The white paper presents a purported consensus of experts that an approach combining response to intervention with severe discrepancy is consistent with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The analysis…

Because high stakes are now attached to standardized assessments of student progress, policy makers, administrators, practitioners, and parents must understand how to most effectively and accurately measure the performance of all students, including students with learning disabilities (LD). To accomplish this, test accommodations are provided on…

This article provides a synthesis of note-taking research among students with learning disabilities or other high-incidence disabilities. A search of the professional literature between 1980 and 2010 yielded nine intervention studies, which were evaluated either in terms of effect size or percentage of nonoverlapping data. The studies examined…

In the mid-1970s, Donald Hammill and his colleagues authored three scathing critiques of the two most trusted scientific traditions of learning disability treatment--movement education and psycholinguistic training (Hammill, 1972; Hammill & Larsen, 1974; Hammill, Goodman, & Wiederholt, 1974). These critical reviews of research rejected the older…