The Play's the Thing

Abstract

The modern special education theater in the United States has hosted many plays, none with a larger or more diverse cast than the learning disabilities (LD) play. During the prologue the children with LD were waiting in the wings, not yet identified as LD but there, nonetheless. With the advent of compulsory education in this country, our awareness of these children and our concern for them grew. My vantage point from which to observe and participate in LD in the 1960s was that of close association with Kirk, my doctoral advisor, and Engelmann, the creator of direct instruction, the highly effective pedagogy. Then, in the early '70s law school called. I hoped to find tools to persuade schools to adopt proven, available teaching methods and materials. Now, 30 years later, it appears that hope may be realized through the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB; 2001) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1997, 2004) (IDEA), as both compel attention to the research base for the services we provide. ACT ONE At center stage in Act One of LD was the Wayne County Training School in Michigan. In the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the cast there included predecessors and pioneers of the LD field--Doll, Strauss, Werner, Cruickshank, Kephart, Lehtinen, Kirk, and others. There, Kirk was immersed in the study of mental retardation, brain injury, and more. That work, plus his work with Monroe in remediating reading disabilities, laid the foundation for his leadership in the emergence of the LD field in the 1960s. ACT TWO In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the time was ripe for LD to move onto center stage. The social and education scenes were influenced by a powerful, optimistic spirit of can-do, fix-it, environmentalism. John F. Kennedy was president, Camelot was tangible, and the infant Head Start and Follow Through projects were thriving. The Peace Corps said it-can-be-better and it was, in far away places. Kirk had the leading role in LD as it emerged from its roots in language disorders, reading, and brain injury. From his extensive background in mental retardation, brain injury, and reading disabilities, he distilled the three conceptual linchpins of LD, the first of which was the educability of intelligence. He spoke often of Binet's insistence that once we could measure intelligence, the next imperative was to improve it. Second, Kirk believed that pronounced intraindividual differences were the hallmark of LD. The first children labeled LD at the Institute for Research on Exceptional Children demonstrated huge peaks and valleys among their cognitive and other abilities. Kirk emphatically distinguished these children from those who have mental retardation and, therefore, relatively flat profiles. Lastly, Kirk believed that while traditional psychological/psychiatric diagnoses led to labeling (e.g., as in DSM-IV), educational diagnoses should lead to recommendations for what and how to teach. The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) (1) (Kirk & McCarthy, 1961) launched the contemporary LD field. Three major premises underlay Kirk's ITPA: (a) specific psychological, linguistic, and cognitive abilities can be assessed, in contrast to global assessments such as IQ or reading level; (b) specific deficit areas can be improved by direct teaching; and (c) it is important to have a psychometric tool capable of demonstrating gains in specific areas of remediation. These premises were shared by the authors of other assessment tools widely used during this exciting emergence of LD--Frostig's Developmental Test of Visual Perception (Frostig, Maslow, Lefever, & Whittlesey, 1964); the Beery Test of Visual Motor Integration (Beery, 1967); and the Purdue Perceptual Motor Scale (Roach & Kephart, 1966). Deficits were precisely identified and specific remedial materials provided to decrease the intraindividual differences and move the child's profile closer to normal. …