ksagnostic

Hey phlebas. I can help with this one. This is a variation of a myth that has been promoted by people like conservative commentator Thomas Sowell (except he was talking about speech-language pathology and special education diagnoses). Yes, school districts do get extra funding for special education purposes (because it is a federal mandate). However, in most cases the funding a district receives does not approach the costs of actually providing the services (although it should be noted that this varies from district to district and especially state to state, the negative discrepancy between costs to provide services verses amount paid is the rule rather than the exception). Certainly, in my experience, school districts/special education cooperatives seem motivated to under identify, rather than over identify, students who need additional services.

Furthermore, ADHD is a medical, not an educational, diagnosis. This means that a diagnosis of ADHD does nothing for funding for schools.


I remember it, it was by some guy named (I believe) Jonathan Leo (and I presume he is not the conservative political columnist John Leo). I couldn't find anything about him, or his qualifications regarding this subject. I was disappointed that SKEPTIC ran it.

Anyway, I thought the article was a load. Using the author's logic, twenty five years ago schizophrenia would also have been a bogus diagnosis. I would agree that there does seem to be a disturbing amount of variation in identifying people as ADHD. However, a similar variation (although not as great) still exists regarding the diagnosis of autism, and I don't know of many people arguing that there is no such thing as autism.

[ February 11, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]

[ February 11, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]

[ February 11, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]</p>

Boshko

My mom's a gifted and talented and remedial reading teacher (fun combo ) and according to her the perception that kids are being overperscribed for simply acting up a bit is an enourmous exaggeration. Don't know the exact details but apprently the medication that these kids get aren't tranquilizers at all but actually do a good bit to stimulate the frontal lobes. And she tells me that is VASTLY easier to teach these kids to read when on the meds (especailly the handful whose attention span was so short that they'd never really learned to even talk).

ksagnostic

My daughter is in exactly that population. I was stunned that she qualified for services, but the gap between her overall IQ, particularly in visual-spatial areas, and her reading and writing ability, was wide enough because in some areas she is gifted. Considering the struggles she has had with math (particularly story problems), social studies, and language arts, I'm glad she was identified when she was (and it was a lucky accident). It helped that I work in a special educational setting myself (I'm a speech-language pathologist), but not as much as I thought it would. I would have missed it.

Morat

My mother taught Special Ed classes for almost a decade, and is testing for her Masters degree next month. She's a diagnostician now, and I can verify that, at least in her school district (and she claims it's true in general at least for Texas) that the following is true: Administrators, to keep costs down, fight to mainstream as many students as possible, regardless of what's best for the students. Parents of students who should be mainstreamed often fight like banshees to prevent it.

And she is stuck in the middle. But she likes her job, nonetheless.