Learning Disabilities

Several types of help are available if your assessment identifies you as having a learning disability. The help you receive depends on the results of the assessment.

Once you have been assessed, and before you are placed in a program, the law requires that you—and every child who is identified as needing special education services—have an Individualized Educational Program, better known as an IEP. This IEP must spell out your learning strengths and weaknesses, the special services you need, your special goals and objectives, a time line for checking on your progress, and the people assigned to carry out your program. In addition, the IEP must say how you will be part of the general education program.

This IEP must be reviewed and revised or rewritten every year in an annual review. You and your parents are invited to the meeting at which the team writes the IEP.

Although your parents can ask for a certain kind of help for you, they cannot ask for the use of special materials by name. They can, for example, point out that you need help with phonics. However, they cannot require a brand of phonics program in your IEP. How phonics is taught to you is up to the trained staff in your school.