What+is+a+Learning+Disability?

What is a Learning Disability?

Learning Disabilities (LD) are issues that affect the brain’s ability to receive process, analyze, or store information. This can make it difficult to learn and comprehend as quickly as other students without learning disabilities. Some forms of LD can interfere with a child’s ability to concentrate and focus. While other forms of LD cancreate difficulty with language skills or math problems.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal special education law, defines learning disabilities as follows:

“Specific Learning Disability” means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term **includes** such conditions as...

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 * perceptual handicaps
 * brain injury
 * minimal brain dysfunction
 * dyslexia
 * developmental aphasia

The term ** does not ** **include** children who have learning problems which are primarily the result of...

· visual · hearing · motor handicaps · mental retardation · emotional disturbance · environment · cultural reasons · economic disadvantage"


 * Children who meet the following criteria are included in the definition of learning disabilities: **

1. children who have average to above average intellectual abilities, yet

2. are failing, struggling with, or experiencing significant difficulties in learning one subject or a number of subjects despite exposure to a “normal” teaching environment, and

3. whose learning problems are not secondary to one or more of the exclusions listed in the federal law above (visual, hearing, motor handicaps, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage.)