Poverty increases all other risk factors, including misidentification of disabilities.
I feel as though these words really capture the essence of this weeks reading. As learned from the book, low socioeconomic status, abbreviated as SES, has found to have a drastic effect on students with disabilities. On page 7 in the book Poverty is NOT a Learning Disability, we are shown five specific signals for student readiness, the next phrase is as follows; While not all children who live in poverty will have a difficult time learning, children who are underdeveloped in one or more of these readiness areas will have a greater chance of experiencing lower achievement than children with all areas intact, and they may very well become candidates for misguided referrals for placement as learning disabled (Dresser, Dunklee, Howard, 2009).
This quote admits the misidentification of disabilities with the words "misguided referrals". With entry to a learning disability comes other negative possibilities. For example, the book tells us on page 26 that "only 34% of the exiting learning disabilities students received a diploma".
These ideas and statistics presented are just the tip of the iceberg, and the fact is students living in poverty have a much greater chance of being labeled as disabled in some way or form, and unfortunately, with that tag come other negatives the students will have to live with at least the duration of their school experience.
Brendan,
ReplyDeleteI think your statement really captures the theme for the first two chapters of our reading. The quotes used are strong and drive home the point about misidentification. However, I have some mixed feelings about your ending statement about being unfortunate with a label such as LD. I'm not sure if I'm just misreading what you have written. We all have negatives that we could recall about our school experiences even with out being labeled. Also, not all students with special needs have negatives in school. I would love to talk with you more about it in class.
Melissa
Brendan,
ReplyDeleteI like your statement! From the reading and previous studies, it is obvious that low SES students are at a great disadvantage. The reading talked about the fact that low SES students come to school at least a full year and a half behind their middle-class peers. This is a very sad, and alarming statistic which i think ties into your statement of students being mislabeled. Because these students come to school a year and a half behind, school is overwhelming and very frustrating and if we can teachers don't take into account their home life, students may be misidentified. Overall, i think your statement was a great summary of the first two chapters.
-Stephanie