Last Updated on October 13, 2022 by Editorial Team
Who won’t love seeing their kid excelling in academics? But it is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially when kids have some learning disabilities like Dyscalculia. Fortunately, Individualized Education plans (IEP) provide a righteous pathway to ameliorate academic performance in learning disabilities. Being aware of this, parents often feel it laborious to find if their children qualify for an IEP. To aid these ambiguities, if any, IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) came up with certain regulations to evaluate and offer IEPs to students.
But do these regulations consider Dyscalculia? If yes, how can you make sure your kid is eligible for an IEP? We are going to respond to all these queries in detail in this article.
Who needs an Individualized Education Plan (IEP)?
An individualized Education Plan, as we all know, is a program designed to assist children with identified disabilities to cope with peers in their academy. A student can avail IEP if they show signs of fourteen disabilities listed in the IDEA. They need to be assessed and identified as special needs children to pursue the general school curriculum. It is crucial to ponder that just qualifying one of these disabilities is not enough; these shortcomings must also result in remarkable inference with a kid’s ability to learn traditional academics. Parents often misinterpret minor hitches in kids as learning disabilities, which must be avoided.
IEPs are evidently designed to assist students who struggle in school and thus need specific areas to be focused on. Students may need these plans due to reasons like :
- Learning Disabilities
- ADHD
- Emotional disorders
- Cognitive Challenges
- Autism
- Hearing and Visual Impairment
- Speech and language impairment
- Developmental delay and Physical Disabilities, etc.
Specialized IEPs can be implemented by initially evaluating the school academics and the students to see what areas need to be focused on. Later, students with similar needs are grouped for a particular resource room while others retain the regular pedagogies. In some cases, parents step in to take special care of their children with custom IEPs.
Does dyscalculia qualify for an IEP?
We have talked about Dyscalculia in detail in our previous posts. It is the fear of Math and numbers. Feeling anxious seeing numbers, and being incapable of grasping mathematical concepts is the first sign and characteristic of having Dyscalculia.
Struggling in math is often evident for most of the students, but few feel it is taxing to process and comprehend to such an extent that they may face challenges in simple operations like counting numbers and mental mathematics. These signs may prove to be Dyscalculia. Therefore, this learning disability derails everyday aspects of life that involve mathematical calculations like telling time and counting money.
Before we can check if dyscalculia qualifies for IEP, we need to comprehend what signs depict this learning disability in a kid. Some crucial symptoms include:
- Difficulty in counting numbers — both forward and backward
- A poor sense of numbers and estimation
- Difficulty in comprehending place values
- Over the roof level of math anxiety
- Weak arithmetic skills and calculation abilities
According to Sec.300.81 pertaining to IDEA, Specific learning disabilities imply those disorders in one or multiple psychological processes that impacts comprehension and using language-spoken and Written which include conditions like perceptual disabilities, brain injury/dysfunction, dyslexia, or developmental aphasia. These don’t include learning problems due to visual, hearing, or motor disabilities.
These lines don’t provide any perfect idea about IDEA’s consideration of Dyscalculia for an IEP. However, the recently released guide sheet by OSERS (Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services) clarifies that students with learning disabilities like Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia, and Dyslexia have specialized educational needs. Accordingly, it also illustrated that the IDEA would consider learning disabilities like Dyslexia and Dyscalculia in evaluating students in developing IEPs.
Does your child need an IEP?
Now that we have comprehended the disabilities that IEP addresses, it is time to assess your child to inspect if they need an IEP. The evaluation can be performed by offering them specific challenges to test their abilities and see with what accuracy they perform in them. As far as systematic learning disabilities are considered, you can evaluate for the following dysfunctions, if any:
1. Stumbling in reading or writing
Students learn literary skills through the grades progressively. Whether reading or writing, the expedition starts with teaching phonological awareness and then sentences. Check if your kid is feeling taxing to follow the pedagogies. Compromising in areas like reading at a typical pace, comprehending and recalling, making inferences, and spelling would depict the chances of learning disabilities.
2. Problems in Solving Math
Counting numbers and sequencing doesn’t take a lot of effort if the kid has ample cognitive abilities. Thus, the inability to learn these notions at the right pace may need you to diagnose your kid for any disabilities.
3. Memory and Attention Problems
If your kid finds it difficult to understand and follow instructions or has trouble remembering what someone just told them, they may have memory and attention compromises. Other relevant signs include resistance to learning the concept of time and finishing homework.
4. Challenges in Organizing and motor skills
Observe if the student lacks coordination in walking, sports, and other motor skills like holding a pencil. They may also show excessive emotional reactions at school while indulging in academic activities such as homework and reading.
Anyone or a combination of the above challenges may let you infer if your kid needs an IEP. However, the learning disability needs to be professionally diagnosed to pick out an appropriate plan. Therefore, be prepared with the set of shortcomings that need to be diagnosed, and determine what appraises you need precisely to opt for a perfect plan. You can refer to a recent IEP issue from TEA, which clearly elucidates various learning disabilities and appropriate pathways for IEPs for each of them.
Summing up
Comprehending the above sections strongly advocates the chances of Dyscalculia to qualify for an IEP. Therefore, if your little learner is diagnosed with such compromises. An ideal and appropriate IEP may corroborate positive outcomes.
Dyscalculia is often perceived to be the same as math anxiety. Evidently, all such special children show strong reactions to math, but to a greater extent than common people who occasionally struggle. Thus, mark these differences to avoid misconceptions about such disabilities. But, once diagnosed, you can avail IEPs.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,