Specific Learning Disabilities Test for Children
ABSTRACT
Delayed identification of specific learning disabilities (SLD) is known to create serious problems in the educational outcomes of children. These students learn less efficiently and are twice as likely to drop out of high school than their non-affected peers. This paper provides the outline of and preliminary evidence for the SLD Test, a novel instrument which identifies SLD as early as first grade. In a sample of 112 students from a Miami elementary school, 20.5% of first grade students met criteria for SLD, indicating the ability of the instrument to detect SLD at an early age. All of the test positive students were confirmed to have SLD by the school psychologist, bolstering support for the efficacy of the test in identifying SLD. Follow up data one year later in second grade indicated that SLD students fared worse than their non-affected peers in reading, spelling, and math, thus underscoring the need for early detection and intervention.
This test is unique in that it not only identifies SLD students, but it determines the severity of the learning disability. It also identifies the student’s preferred mode of learning, and it documents the student’s learning weaknesses and strengths. This test is easy to administer and can be supervised by any college educated adult. Although no psychologist is necessary for the test, any SLD positive student requires a psychological evaluation to determine if the student meets Federal or State requirements for special education as an SLD student. A full confidential report is emailed to the parent, who can provide a copy to those who need to receive it.
INTRODUCTION
“Specific learning disability means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations.”
— U. S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
DEFINITION OF “LEARNING DISABILITIES”
The term specific learning disability (SLD) includes conditions such as Dyslexia, (a severe form of reading disorder and verbal language difficulty with phoneme and word confusion issues), Dysorthographia (spelling difficulty), Dyscalculia (math difficulty), Dysgraphia (writing and language difficulty), and Developmental Aphasia (difficulty with the spoken word, or with expressing oneself verbally). SLD poses serious threats to children’s educational outcomes. If they remain unchallenged for too long, young students will drastically fall behind their peers, resulting in long-term difficulties both within and outside the classroom environment. Students with SLD are twice as likely to drop out of high school than their non-affected peers. Typically, SLD is diagnosed through a psychological evaluation, which can be a cumbersome task to accomplish. The evaluations generally take several sessions and can be quite difficult to schedule, given school holidays or other unexpected roadblocks. This difficulty in scheduling can result in months of delay before the psychological evaluation is completed, while the student continues to fall further behind their non-affected peers.
In response to this clear need for accessible testing, the author began his research to develop a simple, inexpensive, and easy to administer test for SLD in students before the end of first grade. By detecting SLD early, students will have earlier access to intervention programs and there will be a reduction in long-term academic delays as a result. The author devised the SLD Test, an online test which takes 30 minutes to administer, can be quickly scheduled, and only requires supervision by a college educated adult. This is a vast improvement to typical school psychological evaluations, which can take up to several months.
The aim of this study was to examine the SLD test for accuracy in identification of 6–8-year-old students with SLD.
METHODS
Participants were 112 first grade students over a two year period from a Miami elementary school. The Miami-Dade County School Board authorized the study, with agreement from the school principal, the school psychologist and the school support staff. Prior to participation, written informed consent was obtained from the students’ parents.
The SLD Test
The SLD Test uses groups of questions to determine if a first-grade student is learning at a normal rate. The SLD Test questions were selected to detect if the first-grade educational milestones are fully developed, as they are normally by the end of first grade, or by the age of seven years. If not, the test can identify the SLD, as defined by the U.S. Department of Education.
The Specific Learning Disabilities Test is composed of 50 questions to identify or determine if the Department of Education’s definition of SLD has been met. In addition, the students’ answers to the test questions will determine if the normal educational milestones usually achieved by the end of the first grade have or have not been achieved.
Test questions cover the following 10 topics:
1. Visual identification of numbers
2. Visual identification of upper-case letters
3. Visual orientation of numbers and letters
4. Visual attention span for numbers
5. Visual memory for numbers and letters
6. Visual word recognition
7. Auditory discrimination
8. Auditory sequential memory for unrelated symbols
9. Auditory attention span for sentences
10. Meaning of the spoken word
Each answer to a test question has a potential score of two points. Two points are deducted for every incorrect answer. The total number of points at the end of the test (as a percentage) is known as the Learning Quotient (LQ). Students with no evidence of any significant learning disorder will have a normal LQ of 77–100%. Students with SLD have LQ scores of less than 77%. The lower the LQ score, the more severe the learning disorder.
The completed test is known as the Cantwell SLD Test for 6–8-year-old children and can be found here.
Procedures
All first-grade students took the SLD test. To assess the accuracy of the test, all students who screened positive for SLD were then evaluated by the school psychologist to confirm the presence of SLD. The school psychologist made determinations regarding eligibility for special education under Federal and State requirements. Some tests were administered by parent teacher association (PTA) volunteers who received brief training on how to function as a test supervisor. As a measure of inter-rater reliability, the author retested some of the students supervised by the PTA volunteers, and the results were consistently similar.
The SLD Test positive students were then followed up into second and third grade. At mid-year in second grade, their teachers were asked to rate their academic achievement levels in reading, spelling and math, using a rating of 1 (above grade level), 2 (at grade level), or 3 (below grade level).
RESULTS
The table below shows the results of the Test.
Table 1. SLD Test Results in First Grade Students (Over 24 months)
*Family history of SLD was only available for 87 of 112 students tested
23 students screened positive for SLD according to the SLD Test, an incidence of 20.5%. 100% of the 23 test positive results were confirmed by the school psychologist who conducted a full psychological evaluation, indicating the diagnostic accuracy of the instrument in detecting SLD. Inter-rater reliability among students who were tested by PTA volunteers and the author was high, indicating that the test can be easily administered by any college educated adult with limited formal training on the test.
Follow up data on the test positive students indicated poor academic progress one year later. The student with the lowest SLD test score the year prior had been retained in first grade due to inadequate academic progress. Another student had moved to a special education class at a different elementary school. All other SLD positive second graders were rated a 3 (below grade level) in reading and spelling, and 30% were rated a 3 in math. Several of the test positive students were receiving special education in the second grade. Three students were known to be taking Methylphenidate (Ritalin) at follow up; two were prescribed for their SLD and learning difficulties, and another was receiving the medication for attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD).
The author further observed that of the 23 SLD test positive students, 14 of them, or 61%, had behaviors consistent with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This high rate of ADHD is consistent with the author’s own observations in his private practice for more than 20 years.
These results provide further medical evidence to confirm the accuracy of the SLD Test to identify SLD in first grade, before academic underachievement was noticeable. Lastly, the significant learning problems predicted by the SLD Test in first grade became evident in second grade. Further follow up showed it continuing in third grade.
CONCLUSIONS
The SLD Test is an online test that evaluates first through third grade students for significant learning disorders, such as SLD and Dyslexia. The test is easy to administer and can be supervised by a college educated adult without special training. The SLD Test does not require the services of a school psychologist, unless the SLD Test is positive. Then that student requires a full psychological evaluation to establish the presence of at least average intelligence, to exclude possible mental health issues, and to determine that the student meets Federal and State regulations regarding the definition of Specific Learning Disabilities.
The test is unique in that it is the only single research proven test for SLD that not only identifies students with SLD, but it also measures the severity of the learning disorder, through the use of the Learning Quotient (LQ). The test also determines the student’s preferred learning style as a visual or auditory learner. It identifies the student’s learning weaknesses and strengths, which in turn can be helpful in creating an individualized corrective learning plan. Furthermore, it can help the teacher avoid inaccurate feedback or comments to the family of the student, such as “I wish she would try harder,” or “he is simply immature for his age.”
This simple SLD Test can be taken online on any computer at any convenient day or time under the supervision of any college educated adult.
The percentage of students who met the criteria for SLD was higher than some psychologists had expected. This may be explained by the fact that this test identifies students who have mild as well as more severe forms of learning disabilities. While students with the milder form of SLD will not meet the Federal and State regulations to be classified as SLD special education students, recognizing less severe learning deficits remains crucial to fostering students’ long-term success in the classroom setting.
The follow up data confirmed the fact that the learning disorders captured by the SLD test were causing significant learning impairment. Data indicating that a higher percentage of test positive students were performing at an appropriate grade level for math is supportive of practical experience suggesting that Dyscalculia is less common than other forms of SLD related to reading and spelling. The SLD Test has been proven to be effective in the identification of students with SLD as early as first grade. When accompanied by appropriate special education, this will result in long term benefits such as increased literacy rates, lower high school drop-out rates, and increased high school graduation rates. It allows special education needs to be identified at an early age, which is welcomed by administrators, parents, pediatricians, teachers, and the students themselves. Pediatricians who have an interest, can offer to families the SLD Test for use in quickly assisting their 6 to 8-year-old patients who may be struggling to learn.
RONALD J. CANTWELL, MD FAAP FRCP (Ed.)
Clinical Associate Professor of Child Development,
University of Miami School of Medicine (Retired)
Dr. Cantwell is a U.S. Board Certified Developmental Pediatrician with a strong interest in the early identification and management of students with Learning Disabilities. He is a medical graduate from the University of New Zealand in Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
He trained at the J. F. Kennedy Institute for Child Development at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. There, he worked with child psychologists, developmental pediatricians, special educators, speech pathologists, and psychiatric social workers in the evaluation and treatment of children with developmental learning difficulties. He was a member of a team investigating the cause, and treatment of students with developmental or Learning Disorders at the University of Miami Center for Child Development.
Later he developed Cantwell Academy, a clinical school for children with Learning Disabilities who had been underachieving in public schools. He was elected President of the Florida Association of Children with Learning Disabilities and was their representative on the board of directors of the National Association of Children with Learning Disabilities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He has been honored for his services to children by the Miami-Dade County School Board and by the Broward County Board of Public instruction. Finally, he developed the only successful online SLD Test for 6–8-year-old students.
