U.S. Department of Education
Office for Civil Rights
Washington, D.C.

Revised September 1998

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

In 1973, Congress passed Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of physical or mental disability (29 U.S.C. Section 794). It states:

No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States . . . shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance . . . .

The Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education enforces regulations implementing Section 504 with respect to programs and activities that receive funding from the Department. The Section 504 regulation applies to all recipients of this funding, including colleges, universities, and postsecondary vocational education and adult education programs. Failure by these higher education schools to provide auxiliary aids to students with disabilities that results in a denial of a program benefit is discriminatory and prohibited by Section 504.

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibits state and local governments from discriminating on the basis of disability. The Department enforces Title II in public colleges, universities, and graduate and professional schools. The requirements regarding the provision of auxiliary aids and services in higher education institutions described in the Section 504 regulation are generally included in the general nondiscrimination provisions of the Title II regulation.

Postsecondary School Provision of Auxiliary Aids

The Section 504 regulation contains the following requirement relating to a postsecondary school’s obligation to provide auxiliary aids to qualified students who have disabilities:

A recipient . . . shall take such steps as are necessary to ensure that no handicapped student is denied the benefits of, excluded from participation in, or otherwise subjected to discrimination under the education program or activity operated by the recipient because of the absence of educational auxiliary aids for students with impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills.

The Title II regulation states:

A public entity shall furnish appropriate auxiliary aids and services where necessary to afford an individual with a disability an equal opportunity to participate in, and enjoy the benefits of, a service, program, or activity conducted by a public entity.

It is, therefore, the school’s responsibility to provide these auxiliary aids and services in a timely manner to ensure effective participation by students with disabilities. If students are being evaluated to determine their eligibility under Section 504 or the ADA, the recipient must provide auxiliary aids in the interim.

Postsecondary Student Responsibilities

A postsecondary student with a disability who is in need of auxiliary aids is obligated to provide notice of the nature of the disabling condition to the college and to assist it in identifying appropriate and effective auxiliary aids. In elementary and secondary schools, teachers and school specialists may have arranged support services for students with disabilities. However, in postsecondary schools, the students themselves must identify the need for an auxiliary aid and give adequate notice of the need. The student’s notification should be provided to the appropriate representative of the college who, depending upon the nature and scope of the request, could be the school’s Section 504 or ADA coordinator, an appropriate dean, a faculty advisor, or a professor. Unlike elementary or secondary schools, colleges may ask the student, in response to a request for auxiliary aids, to provide supporting diagnostic test results and professional prescriptions for auxiliary aids. A college also may obtain its own professional determination of whether specific requested auxiliary aids are necessary.

Examples of Auxiliary Aids

Some of the various types of auxiliary aids and services may include:

Technological advances in electronics have improved vastly participation by students with disabilities in educational activities. Colleges are not required to provide the most sophisticated auxiliary aids available; however, the aids provided must effectively meet the needs of a student with a disability. An institution has flexibility in choosing the specific aid or service it provides to the student, as long as the aid or service selected is effective. These aids should be selected after consultation with the student who will use them.

Effectiveness of Auxiliary Aids

No aid or service will be useful unless it is successful in equalizing the opportunity for a particular student with a disability to participate in the education program or activity. Not all students with a similar disability benefit equally from an identical auxiliary aid or service. The regulation refers to this complex issue of effectiveness in several sections, including:

Auxiliary aids may include taped texts, interpreters or other effective methods of making orally delivered materials available to students with hearing impairments, readers in libraries for students with visual impairments, classroom equipment adapted for use by students with manual impairments, and other similar services and actions.

There are other references to effectiveness in the general provisions of the Section 504 regulation which state, in part, that a recipient may not:

Provide a qualified handicapped person with an aid, benefit, or service that is not as effective as that provided to others; orProvide different or separate aid, benefits, or services to handicapped persons or to any class of handicapped persons unless such action is necessary to provide qualified handicapped persons with aid, benefits, or services that are as effective as those provided to others.

The Title II regulation contains comparable provisions.

The Section 504 regulation also states:

[A]ids, benefits, and services, to be equally effective, are not required to produce the identical result or level of achievement for handicapped and nonhandicapped persons, but must afford handicapped persons equal opportunity to obtain the same result, to gain the same benefit, or to reach the same level of achievement, in the most integrated setting appropriate to the person’s needs.

The institution must analyze the appropriateness of an aid or service in its specific context. For example, the type of assistance needed in a classroom by a student who is hearing-impaired may vary, depending upon whether the format is a large lecture hall or a seminar. With the one-way communication of a lecture, the service of a notetaker may be adequate, but in the two-way communication of a seminar, an interpreter may be needed. College officials also should be aware that in determining what types of auxiliary aids and services are necessary under Title II of the ADA, the institution must give primary consideration to the requests of individuals with disabilities.

Cost of Auxiliary Aids

Postsecondary schools receiving federal financial assistance must provide effective auxiliary aids to students who are disabled. If an aid is necessary for classroom or other appropriate (nonpersonal) use, the institution must make it available, unless provision of the aid would cause undue burden. A student with a disability may not be required to pay part or all of the costs of that aid or service. An institution may not limit what it spends for auxiliary aids or services or refuse to provide auxiliary aids because it believes that other providers of these services exist, or condition its provision of auxiliary aids on availability of funds. In many cases, an institution may meet its obligation to provide auxiliary aids by assisting the student in obtaining the aid or obtaining reimbursement for the cost of an aid from an outside agency or organization, such as a state rehabilitation agency or a private charitable organization. However, the institution remains responsible for providing the aid.

Personal Aids and Services

An issue that is often misunderstood by postsecondary officials and students is the provision of personal aids and services. Personal aids and services, including help in bathing, dressing, or other personal care, are not required to be provided by postsecondary institutions. The Section 504 regulation states:

Recipients need not provide attendants, individually prescribed devices, readers for personal use or study, or other devices or services of a personal nature.

Title II of the ADA similarly states that personal services are not required.

In order to ensure that students with disabilities are given a free appropriate public education, local education agencies are required to provide many services and aids of a personal nature to students with disabilities when they are enrolled in elementary and secondary schools. However, once students with disabilities graduate from a high school program or its equivalent, education institutions are no longer required to provide aids, devices, or services of a personal nature.

Postsecondary schools do not have to provide personal services relating to certain individual academic activities. Personal attendants and individually prescribed devices are the responsibility of the student who has a disability and not of the institution. For example, readers may be provided for classroom use but institutions are not required to provide readers for personal use or for help during individual study time.

Questions Commonly Asked by Postsecondary Schools and Their Students

For More Information

For more information on Section 504 and the ADA and their application to auxiliary aids and services for disabled students in postsecondary schools, or to obtain additional assistance, see the list of OCR’s 12 enforcement offices containing the address and telephone number for the office that serves your area, or call 1-800-421-3481.

This publication is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. The publication’s citation should be: U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Auxiliary Aids and Services for Postsecondary Students with Disabilities: Higher Education’s Obligations Under Section 504 and Title II of the ADA, http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/auxaids.html, Washington, D.C., 2011.

Why am I so adamant about the difference between dyslexia, scotopic sensitivity, ocular motor deficiencies, and other disabilities that cause difficulty with reading?  Because professionals are preventing students from getting the appropriate type of assistance by continually calling every kind of reading difficulty “dyslexia.” Every reading disability is not clinically definable as “dyslexia,” and the sooner professionals start referring to different types of reading problems by their proper names, the sooner we can all (teachers and parents) begin to provide each child with the appropriate individualized solution to the child’s specific difficulty with reading.

“Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and / or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge” (International Dyslexia Association).  If a child has dyslexia, he lacks phonemic awareness.

Scotopic sensitivity is treated by having low-glare boards, pastel papers or colored overlays, or specialized glasses and is described in “Reading by the Colors”. If a child has dyslexia, providing special papers or print surfaces will not cure the child’s dyslexia because it does not address a child’s lack of phonemic awareness.

Ocular motor deficiencies are treated through vision therapy to enable a child to smoothly sweep his eyes back and forth for reading. You can learn the latest in regard to vision therapy in “Eye Power: An Updated Report on Vision Therapy”. Providing vision therapy will not cure dyslexia because it does not address a child’s lack of phonemic awareness.

Focal point issues, as addressed in “The Gift of Dyslexia”, are an entirely different matter rooted in attention, visual perception, and concentration for the purpose of maintaining a focal point.  Teaching a child how to find and maintain a focal point as taught in “The Gift of Dyslexia” will not cure true dyslexia because it does not address a child’s lack of phonemic awareness.

True Dyslexia requires direct, explicit, comprehensive, multi-sensory instruction to master each of the 72 phonemes in the English language, as well as explicit instruction in syllabication, blending and segmenting sounds for reading and spelling, and years of specialized instruction.  The required methodologies and appropriate programs for addressing a child’s true dyslexia are discussed at length in “Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level“.

If you are a professional, please be sure you are referring to a lack of phonemic awareness when you say a child has “dyslexia.” If a child has a sensitivity to glare and light spectrum-based reading difficulties, please call it scotopic sensitivity. If a child complains of words jumping around on a page and often loses his place while reading, he probably has ocular motor developmental vision issues and requires vision therapy.  If a child has grave difficulty distinguishing between b, d, p, and q, between n and u, m and w, or has pervasive reversals when writing, then the child may require focal point training.

With all of the information available on various forms of reading difficulties, I cringe whenever I hear a teacher or administrator indicate we do not know enough about dyslexia to effectively overcome it, or when they say dyslexia is too difficult to pinpoint and refer to a reading disability in a generic sense.  There are plenty of professional, career educators who sincerely do not think we can diagnose and treat dyslexia with any degree of accuracy or proficiency.

With all we know today, diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia is relatively easy and we have several viable solutions at our disposal for overcoming dyslexia.  There are methods for determining the precise root cause of any child’s reading difficulty and there are proven programs and methods for enabling the child to read, whether the root problem is dyslexia or some other condition. Being anything less than fully informed or failing to apply the correct solution to a child’s reading problem is a disservice to both the individual child and society at large.

Professionals need to be precise about our wording so we can help colleagues understand and know the difference between dyslexia and other reading difficulties, and we need to practice precision in pinpointing individual reading difficulties.   Being precise will help parents, teachers, tutors, and other providers formulate the best, correct solutions to specific reading problems for individual students.  If each professional can take it upon his self or her self to make a precision-based difference in the lives YOU touch, we can together help parents and students understand the different types of reading difficulties. Even better, we can help each individual child overcome his reading struggles by providing the proper solution to that child’s reading difficulty.

There is no muddy water with dyslexia. There is no mystery in regard to what dyslexia is or isn’t, nor is there any mystery in how to teach a child who has true dyslexia. There are many evaluations that enable us to make accurate determinations about whether a child has dyslexia or some other disability causing difficulty with reading. There are viable solutions to each kind of difficulty with reading given we identify the actual cause of the reading difficulty. There is no mystery and there is no excuse for failing to teach children to read with all we know about reading today.

Be a mover and a shaker and make a difference in YOUR school or in the lives of students you touch today!  When you touch the lives of your individual students and you ultimately make your community more vibrant and successful in the long run! Do not be an antiquated educator who continues to maintain “we can’t diagnose dyslexia” or “we don’t know enough about it.”  We know all we need to know to enable every child to be successful! Become fully up to date and informed and make a difference!

There are basically two options for having your child professionally tested–the public school system or a private practitioner.

The public school system is required, by law, to evaluate any child suspected of having a learning disability at no cost to you, however the old adage of “you get what you pay for” almost always applies. The school system will test your child and tell you if she has a learning disability in whatever area of disability they determine she might have, often without additional information about underlying causes.  For example, they may tell you your child has a disability in ”mathematical computation.”  You can probably surmise such disability indicators yourself! Additionally, if you go to the school system, depending upon their understanding of regulations (which is often very poor), they may THINK they can dictate what you do educationally and they can make your life miserable if they think in such a way.

The second alternative is having a professional evaluation by a private practitioner–which is only as good as the evaluator, so be careful who you choose. We have totally wasted our money before by picking someone out of the phone book based upon an advertisement and we have had excellent evaluations done by a highly qualified neuropsychologist.  We found our highly qualified neuropsychologist through a recommendation from a special education attorney’s office.

A conscientious neuropsychologist evaluates all aspects of a child’s cognitive functioning including short-term, working memory, long-term memory, attention, processing speeds, comprehension, executive functioning, etc.  While you have already determined your child is having difficulty, you really don’t know what underlying cognitive processes are CAUSING your child’s difficulties.

Without knowing the root cause, it is difficult to know precisely how to meet your child’s needs. If her working-memory is at issue, then you would need to work on strengthening the amount of information she can hold in her head and manipulate. If her verbal processing skills, processing speed, reasoning skills, etc. are at issue, then you would need to address whichever causes are at the heart of her learning difficulty.

The root causes are important because otherwise you can waste instructional time that will be ineffective in the long term. As a real-case example, two brothers were both diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder.  The oldest brother’s ADHD was specified as “Inattentive type, secondary to dyslexia and executive functioning.”  The younger brother’s ADHD was specified as “Combined type, Primary.”

What does that mean? It means the oldest brother’s attention deficits were caused by his dyslexia and executive functioning (planning, sequencing, etc.) difficulties. For the oldest, when his dyslexia and Executive Function issues were overcome, his ADHD disappeared. Conversely, for the younger brother, his ADHD was primary–it CAUSED his difficulties with comprehension, memory, etc. As a root cause, managing the ADHD itself enabled the younger brother to keep his mind on his studies a LOT better.

As a parent, you aren’t likely to be able to determine if your child’s attention issues are primary or secondary. If ADHD is primary, treating the ADHD is the key. If the ADHD is secondary, then you may need to address the underlying cognitive processing issues to eliminate the ADHD tendencies. It’s a chicken and egg kind of question where only a highly qualified neuropsychologist can determine which comes first.

By you obtaining a comprehensive evaluation, you will know specifically what areas of cognition you need to work on with your child. The biggest hurdle with such an evaluation is cost.. It is EXPENSIVE. A neuropsychologist runs about $2000-$3000 for a comprehensive evaluation. The evaluation takes place over multiple days and usually is not covered by insurance unless ADHD is the PRIMARY diagnosis–then it is sometimes considered a medical issue.

If you can’t scrape up the money for testing, and don’t want the public school trying to dictate your teaching, then I would recommend using multi-sensory instructional methods and cognitive processing exercises as a blanket attempt to meet your child’s unspecified needs.   We used Lexia Learning’s Cross Trainer (which used to be available as a computer program via CD, but is now only online).. You can check it out here:
http://www.lexialearning.co.nz/crosstrainer.html

For multi-sensory math instruction, Math-U-See is really good as is Cuisenaire Rods, Base Ten, or any other math program with manipulatives and preferrably an audio/visual component too.  Orton-Gillingham based reading programs are supposed to be multi-sensory (although some are very limited in their multi-sensory components).  You can learn more about learning styles and multisensory teaching at:
http://www.learningabledkids.com/multi_sensory_training/Page01-Welcome.htm

Depending upon the severity of your child’s problems, you may be able to get away without an evaluation, but just know that as you try various avenues, you may or may not be hitting upon meeting your child’s actual needs.

On a practical level, that means your child can have difficulty coping with various stimuli that come to him from the environment he is in. For children with Sensory Integration issues, coping with a traditional school environment can be very difficult. There are bright lights, lots of movement from all of the people, visual input everywhere, and lots of noises that can overwhelm the senses of the child making it nearly impossible for him to process everything he is experiencing. When the environment itself is overwhelming, it goes without saying that learning can be significantly hampered in a traditional school.

As a parent, what can you do? The first step is to arm yourself with knowledge about sensory integration disorder. You can watch this video for a clearer understanding of Sensory Processing Disorder:

If you need or want to know more about SPD, you might want to buy one of these books or see if your library has them:

The Out of Sync Child
Books about Sensory Integration

After you’ve acquired a better understanding of sensory integration issues and how to deal with the coping issues your child may have, you will need to consider how best to meet his needs educationally. Most likely, you will want to find a local provider who can help with sensory integration therapy. Contacting the nearest children’s hospital or a child therapy center would be a good place to begin seeking a provider.

If your public school has exceptional special education provisioning, they may be able to provide therapy at school in a low-key learning environment, sensory management, and otherwise help control your child’s learning environment sufficiently to enable learning to take place. Your child can still be overwhelmed by the stimuli encountered in traveling to and from the school if he travels by bus, in going from the classroom to other areas of the school, and by any number of other issues in the traditional school environment. If you find your child cannot cope well with the stimuli, then you will have difficult decisions to make.

As with many other disabilities, home schooling a child who has sensory integration difficulties can be of great benefit, particularly when the child is young. At home, you will be able to control the environment and level of stimulation much better than a school is able, and learning is likely to be improved by the calmer, more familiar environment the child has at home.

Keep in mind also, a child needs to be able to learn foundational skills of reading, writing, and math while he is young, and if possible, without getting far behind peers. If your child has sensory integration difficulties, you may want to consider homeschooling throughout elementary school to provide your child the best possible learning environment while he is learning essential academic skills.

As a child with sensory integration difficulties gets older, he usually improves in his ability to process and cope with incoming stimuli. Once a child reaches a certain level of maturity and sensory issues aren’t overwhelming him on a daily basis, placing the child into a small, but traditional school environment can be helpful for further enhancing his coping skills. If you do decide to place your child into a traditional program of any kind, you will want to be certain his sensory needs are understood and that he is not punished or belittled for being unable to cope with stressors. He must encounter supportive, reassuring interactions when he is overwhelmed, otherwise the environment will cause unnecessary stresses. If your child has particular sensitivities he is not yet able to mediate well, it is a great idea to be sure his teachers are aware of potential areas of difficulty in coping.

Organizations which may be of additional assistance include:

Sensory Processign DisorderFoundation

Pathways Medical Roundtable

Do you know ANYONE whose child comes unglued at the drop of a hat? If you share a link to this page with them, it might provide them with an AH-HA moment that improves the quality of theirs and their child’s life. Use the sharing tools below to help your friends:

As a parent who saw my child belittled and devalued by others, homeschooling was a way of rescuing him from the low self-image he was adopting for his self.  My son became depressed and had very low self-esteem as described here: http://www.learningabledkids.com/articles_about_homeschooling/overcoming_learning_disabilities_through_homeschooling.html
I shudder to think of what our outcome would have been had I not believed in my son, treated him with the love and respect he deserved, encouraged him to embrace his strengths, and given him hope that he could be or do anything he wanted. Every child–Your child–deserves no less!

The video also includes the message that God and Jesus can lift a person up in any circumstance.  Nick Vujicic says, “You can either be angry for what you don’t have, or be thankful for what you do have.  Do your best and God will do the rest.” There is an explicit Christian message in the video, so if you are easily offended by messages of faith, you might want to bypass watching the video. Otherwise, it is a very inspiring video to watch–uplifting in every way and encouraging to anyone whose circumstances have made them low on hope.

Here’s the video clip for your inspiration:

One of the first considerations is usually timing for each of the tests. Both the ITBS and the Stanford tests have “timed” testing guidelines. The Stanford is technically untimed even though they include timing recommendations for their tests. The timing helps with large groups if some students work very slowly, but timing is not required for the Stanford-10. Conversely, the ITBS must be administered within guidelines for timing.

One of the aspects I like about the Stanford is their published accommodations guidelines. If you’d like to see what standard accommodations are permitted under a NORMAL administration for the Stanford Achievement Test, please refer to their accommodations document: http://www.pearsonassessments.com/hai/images/PDF/6942-Accom_SAT10_Supp1_v2.pdf. Using their guidelines helps a lot if you are testing a child who may need some of the listed accommodations. I have been unable to find any documentation whatsoever for utilizing accommodations for students with disabilities at the ITBS site (http://www.riversidepublishing.com/products/itbs/index.html), so their choice to ignore the needs of those with disabilities makes me less inclined to recommend their standardized testing.

As a drawback, the Stanford has a restriction against testing your own child without ALSO testing with at least two unrelated children.  “Testers administering Stanford tests to children who are related to them or children who reside in their immediate household are required to include two or more unrelated children in each testing group”  (http://www.bjupress.com/testing/terms-conditions.php).   The ITBS can be administered directly to your own kids without additional children, as per the published testing guidelines. Thus, if you use the Stanford, you would either have to go with the group testing or invite a couple of families to test with your child in your home.

Personally, I have used both tests, testing in each of the different formats/groupings.  I have used the ITBS at home with just my kids and with other kids. I’ve also tested using the Stanford in a large group in a church classroom and at my home with a few additional children. In each case, whichever test it was, it all worked well for us, but the Stanford large group testing was the least viable for my kids’ needs. With the larger group, while things went well with the vast majority of testing, there were those couple of incidents that I believe affected all of the kids being tested at the time.

As far as the tests themselves go, I liked the flow of the ITBS better than the Stanford. I also preferred being able to complete each section at flexible times when my kids were physiologically ready for testing (they had good night’s sleep, were up and ready, no illness, no stress, etc.). If you use the Stanford and have others set to come over for testing, then you pretty much have to test when scheduled rather than when your kids are up and ready to test. With ITBS, we tested when we got ready each day, without feeling stressed or having the excitement of others coming to test.

The timed aspect of the ITBS can be an issue if your child has a slow processing or reading speed. I much prefer the untimed aspect of the Stanford, but I dislike their group testing requirement. If your child is prone to day dreaming, works very slowly, or likely to get “stuck,” then the ITBS timing could be more of an issue than testing WITH other people. For children who are highly distractable, testing in the group environment can be more of an issue, particularly with young children. While some parents want their children to get accustomed to testing in groups, I think there is PLENTY of opportunity to test with groups through the PSAT and high school level testing of other types (AP testing, testing in any classes they may take, etc.), which will prepare the kids for group testing for the ACT or SAT. Thus, for any child in elementary or middle school, I’d probably opt for the ITBS unless timing was a significant issue. For all other children, I would go with the Stanford.

Lastly, in regard to administration at home, you have to be careful to establish an interference-free testing environment. Turn off all of the ringers on the phones, put a note on your front door for anyone NOT to ring or knock.. Leave a notepad out there (if they want to leave a note) and ask them to quietly leave due to testing. Also, if you have any dogs, it’s a good idea to tend to them before testing so they will be crated and as far away from the testing location as possible so any sudden event won’t cause a lot of barking and interference (we had that one year!!).

In the end, I think the ITBS and Stanford both have their pluses and minuses, so a parent does best to weigh the options in relation to your individual child’s personal needs. Hope that helps!

This holiday season, I’ve seen a lot of great posts, greetings, photos, and more, but one video I watched really stood out from the crowd for me, and I love watching it.  SO, as my Christmas eve gift to all of you, please enjoy the uplifting video experience below (be sure to have your sound turned on). I wish I could have been there to witness this first-hand!

May you and your family share bountiful blessings without measure throughout the coming year.  You are all in my heart and in my prayers. Warm Wishes for a wonderful Christmas Day and a Happy New Year, Sandy

I found this first video as I was researching Multiple Intelligence theory. In this video, Ken talks about why we need to embrace multiple intelligence theory and how we need to value varied intelligences in our children. The beginning seems like it might be just a funny talk, off-topic, but at the two minute mark of the video, Ken begins talking about how his stories relate to creativity and intelligence. The initial stories are funny too, so it is worth listening to the whole video. It WILL make you think more clearly about valuing the skills and intelligences your child exhibits!

I am a trained Instructional Designer with a Master’s Degree in Instructional Design with focused studies on Universal Design for Learning. I have also successfully homeschooled my sons to overcome their learning challenges and I’ve helped countless other parents. I am hear to help you! My goal is to help you figure out what your child needs, to meet his needs, and to thereby create a kind of educational synergy that will enable your child to learn! SO, let’s get started!

The Instructional Design process follows a formula called ADDIE, which stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate. This model is typically applied to corporate level training to insure the provided training meets the needs of both the corporation and the learning population. However, by applying a similar process to your individual child, you can insure the instruction you provide to your child will meet his individual needs.

I am working on developing content for the website and am writing a step-by-step guide for how to homeschool your child to overcome learning disabilities. Thus, this site is not fully restructured yet to provide you the coming step-by-step guide. However, updates are under way. If you want the information as it is initially written, you can subscribe to the Learning Abled Kids’ “How To” Newsletter by entering your name and email address in the form at the right –>

If you want to get started, the initial page for the Step-by-Step guide for Overcoming Learning Disabilities through Individualized Instructional Design is available along with Step 1: Learner Analysis.  Steps 2-6 are being written down and the website will be updated and restructured as I complete each page.  In the end, I will provide you with a step-by-step template for designing effective instruction specifically for your individual child.  Thank you in advance for your understanding as I make this guide the best I know to make it!

I also hope to have a book published by the end of 2013 (or sooner)!  I am busy writing down all I know and have learned through my last decade of homeschooling and consulting.  My goal is to arm every parent with solid knowledge of how to develop a viable instructional program for their child.

SO with warmest regards, embark on your explorations learning all you can now!   Join me on the Learning Abled Kids’ Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/LearningAbledKids) to receive updates whenever I post a new page or new content!  AND, sign up for my “How To” Newsletter if you want more detailed information while I work on my book.

I’m wishing you ALL the best and hope visiting this site is a blessing to you in helping your child overcome his learning struggles.

Warmly,

SandyKC, M.S. Instructional Design,
Owner, Learning Abled Kids, L.L.C., and Mom Successfully Homeschooling to Overcome Learning challenges!