Sanford Shapiro looks at Landmark School
Tuesday, October 11th, 2005
Sanford Shapiro looks at Landmark School
© 2005 Sanford Shapiro
Landmark School, located in Beverly, Massachusetts, about 25 miles north of Boston, is a coed boarding and day school for children with language-based learning disabilities from grades 2-12. Founded in 1971, Landmark now has two campuses. The high school campus, centered on a historical estate in the Prides Crossing section of Beverly, has approximately 300 students. This campus overlooks the Atlantic Ocean coastline, looking out towards Gloucester and Marblehead. It was overcast the day I was there but nonetheless it was an inspiring scene to look out upon. The elementary and middle program, located on a separate campus, is in nearby Manchester-By-The Sea, and has 140 students this year. The Elementary program was founded in 1994 as evidence mounted that early intervention is often the key to successful remediation. The Elementary and Middle classes are kept to six students.
In the high school division, there are the Standard Academic Program and the Preparatory Program. The differences between the two are significant. The Standard Program is considered college preparatory but is much more process and remediation oriented. There is more needed focus on basic literacy skills development. The Landmark tradition of every kid having a daily 1-1 language training tutorial session is alive and well. Average class size, other than the tutorials, seemed to average about seven kids. Content curriculum is based on Massachusetts’s standards however, the reading level of textbooks as well as the pace and output demands are modified to fit student needs. In addition students may receive classes and curriculum from the Expressive Language Program if needed. Supervised by speech and language pathologists, this may include Social Language Pragmatics instruction. Though Landmark is not for students with Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, students who struggle with social skills due to the language components may benefit from getting this type of direct instruction.
The Prep Program as it’s called, is designed for a more independent learner. Continuing with a Massachusetts’s curriculum thread, entry into this program is predicated on being within one year of grade level proficiencies in basic literacy skills. Landmark personnel are careful to measure these benchmarks using the Gray Oral and Woodcock Johnson Reading Mastery tests. The people I spoke with emphasized that movement or progression, from the Standard to the Prep program, was by no means a regular event.
Kids appeared relaxed and talkative during my visit. There was the feeling that this was a special school intent on remediation but also one that tries real hard to provide kids with a normalized school setting and experience. Landmark students I spoke with were appreciative of the wide array of offerings in performing and more practical arts, such as engine repair.
Landmark’s Outreach program extends its history of teacher training in such areas as study skills to the training of its own teachers, a plus and often overlooked.
Related at this site: Landmark School, Landmark School Outreach Program
I actually attended the Landmark school, and I have to say it CHANGED MY LIFE! they helped me overcome so many of the educational obstacles I’ve faced, and thier boarding program was an awesome experiance. I really would reccomend this school to ANYONE interested.
That’s great to hear Elyse. When did you attend?
The Woodcock Johnson test is not a good test to determine where a high school student’s reading ability are if they have a language based disability – dyslexia.
Drew, what test instrument do you recommend?
The Gray Oral – 4 – good because you compare how much you comprehend to the speed you read at. It measures rate, accuracy, fluency and comprehension. The GORT 3 is also good even though it is the older version because it tests comprehension without the paragraph showing – indirect recall. This really gives you an idea is the student was able to form a gestalt of what is read. The problem I had with the Woodcock Johnson Reading Mastery tests may have been the school psych. My child’s Word Attack scores were high but fluency was low. I was told this indicated that there were no decoding problems. This could not be further from the truth. I know that the WJ is normed however the tester has to understand several things. Students can slow down and decode non sense words accurately, they may correct themselves after thinking wrong words (if said out loud they count as wrong), I looked at the letter groupings in the words used and they were not as difficult as what one might see in words. In contrast the Wilson Reading pretest, the WADE, found many sounds my child could not decode. A reader can do really well on Word Attack and still be very unsure. The fluency measure really needs to be considered a red flag when it is out of wack. For my child it meant that she had to slow down incredibly in order to decode the word. While my child did well on Word Attack, you would not know it when you hear her read. The other reasons are because reading connected text versus lists of non sense words, requires that the skills are stronger.
On the passage comprehension of the WJ, all a person has to do is read a passage and decide which word fits in the blank. This cloze type of testing does not compare to the type of processing we have to do in order to fully comprehend connected text. My child did really well on one test where she had to do a similar task in which she chose one of four words (multiple choice) – this test indicated her reading comprehension skills were at the 12th grade level. However, when she had to read a 4th grade level paragraph and infer or tell me what supported the concluding sentence, she could not tell not tell me.
So the WADE by Wilson Reading would be a good test, the GORT, and the Nelson Denny. I left the ND out but it really is good to check to see if one is overly relying on contextual cues to decode words. It is a good one for older students with dyslexia usually because with younger students one may often see more obvious decoding errors.
Wow, Drew you’ve pointed out some really important issues. As you said, looking comparitively at rate, accuracy and comprehension for reading is very helpful in seeing where breakdowns occur, as well as highlighting strengths.
Another really useful part of the GORT 4 is that the examiner gets the chance to listen to and record the pattern or type of errors made. That’s huge because for assessment purposes, qualitative analysis is just as important as quantitative. Really skillful observation of how a student performs and under what conditions can be as helpful as the recording of percentile ranks, grade levels, etc.
I’ve done a fair amount of educational assessment over the past couple of years and one of the things I’ve seen/verified, is that being able to give multiple types of assessments to figure out a learning profile is the best practice. Taking a look at reading from various angles, for example, ( visual/verbal processing, language retrieval to name just two) goes a long way in verifying what’s going on, let alone figuring out what to do about it.
Simply giving selected parts of a Woodcock Johnson battery for example, may be part of the way that schools can quantify progress (hopefully).
I am wondering how to determine whether Forman or Landmark would be a better fit for my 16 year old daughter with dyslexia. We have visited both. She is currently struggling academically at a boarding school with LD support, but some of the classroom teachers are not trained in how to work best with kids with mod-severe LD. They have made accommodations and modifications this year, but are unwilling to continue them next year. We are concerned that Landmark might not be challenging enough. She is a bright girl who presents very maturely (outside of home! of course!) but she still struggles mightily with the mechanics of reading accuracy and fluency despite her comprehension scores being in the low-avg to average range. She loves sports and photography, music and dance. Are there other school that others would suggest we consider?
I have used an ed consultant in the past, but felt the services were not worth the money.
Right now, I’d really appreciate hearing about the fundamental difference between Landmark and Forman and especially the quality of the students at each school
Thank you!
Suzanne
I have come upon your link quite by accident. Hopefully a nice coincidence. My child is a freshman at Landmark HS this year. this was my childs first year here from a dreadful time in public schools.
We have had significant improvement in fluency and finally*comprehension*. If you have concerns about the program being vigorous enough, i would encourage you to meet more with the staff. we have found them to be specific when asked. We did not choose Forman as we are in a proximity to LHS, so we cannot comment to your rquest for comparison Your child sounds very much like other children we know at LHS. At the risk of sounding cliche, the changes this year have been remarkable. The greatest significance is in the childs enthusiasm. A year ago our family was grappling with a child FURIOUS, ANGRY and confused about LHS and the decision we made to enroll our child there. THis year my child wants to 1) board 2) drive and spend as much time as possible there. Great sports programs, Great coaching by ld experienced staff, excellent photography progam as well. If you would like to talk more please email us.
Would love to hear from someone who has interviewed at both Forman and Landmark, as we are considering the for my daughter,Sept 2009
After a very stressful year with the public schools, I’m tired of the run around. I think my son would benefit greatly going to landmark. Has anyone any advice on what I’m going to have to go through to have the public school fund his eduation? He’s going into 7th grade in the fall and I feel he’s going to fall more behind. He has no motivation and doesn’t care anymore about school. HELP!
Joyce: It’s called town funding and you’ll want to secure a lawyer to help you make the case that your son can’t get an appropriate education in your town and they should fund Landmark or another appropriate school.
This process can take some time and cost some money and in many cases the town is more willing to offer new or more appropriate services than to pay for one of these expensive schools.
Others may be able to add more to this but that’s the basic process.
He’s maxed out on his services and still not making progress. Is there a lawyer that specializes in this or just my own personal lawyer? Do these private schools have scholarship programs?
Joyce: there are lawyers who specialize in this and it would be best to find one in your area.
Private schools offer various forms of financial aid but that’s a different issue from town funding. If you get town funding the town will pay the full cost, no financial aid necessary.
This is the problem you have to grapple with: pull him out and find a way to send him to one of these schools, or, start a battle with the public school to pay for this which might last for a while.
Again, others will have more direct experience with this than me but if I were you I’d document everything going on. Every IEP meeting, every standard he’s not meeting, every PPT. The lawyer will want this information as it’s the evidence that the school is failing him.