Maryland Special Education Bill Would Make it easier for parents to dispute IEPs If approved, the legislation would change the current system in Maryland, which states that the person bringing a complaint in special education disputes has the “burden of proof,” or responsibility of convincing a hearing officer whether the IEP developed for a particular [...]
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Neurologists Warn Against ADHD Drugs To Help Kids Study Makes me quite nervous that there are kids who fabricate symptoms of ADHD in order to get medications. For physicians to do a collaborative and differential diagnosis of ADHD apparently takes too much time for some. Using Adderal as a “neuro-enhancer” is another iteration of, or [...]
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Judge Rules a High School Student with Disabilities Will Not Get Expelled Fascinating story and case of a high school student who was charged with selling drugs (marijuana) to an undercover deputy. The judge in the case has ruled that the school must readmit the boy because his social thinking weaknesses (autism spectrum) and mental [...]
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From Good.is Mobile Think Tank for Cognitive Science Cool concept to bring cognitive science (science of the mind and brain) into a collaborative and mobile arena for schools and the public. The Think Tank will: Drive to elementary and high schools where mobile researchers will teach students about cognitive science by having them plan their [...]
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I want to weigh in on the on-going and often heated debate on effective treatments for dyslexia and related learning differences. There is a kind of intellectual territorialism within the field of experts who diagnose and treat, as well as parents and others with a vested interest. This territorialism that I refer to sometimes borders [...]
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Animals And Autism: Pets Help With ASD This article illustrates the notion that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show increases in socialization skills from interacting with animals, pets or otherwise. I guess this is considered news. This is not however new. As the article points out, Temple Grandin talks about her own kinship or [...]
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Education Reform Starts With Community Reform Great article on the pitfalls of linking student achievement scores to an array of social functions, without considering community values. In fact, connecting these social functions to achievement test data corrupts what the tests are measuring. In statistics this is called Campbell’s Law. In other words, what does a [...]
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ADHD Tragedy: Poor Diagnosis or Medication Mismanagement? Once again, poor treatment management is part of a suicide for a young person with great potential.
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In response to an earlier post and video by Dr. Russell Barkley called ADHD is Not a Gift, Katarina, a mother of a teenaged son with dyslexia, sent in a comment that I thought was so good I asked her permission to put it here (below) as a separate post . …If it is, what’s [...]
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I love this short video clip, ADHD is Not A Gift. It challenges our tendency to embellish a condition that presents real obstacles to parts of daily life, with a super-imposed attribute of somehow being a gift. “As if Michael Phelps somehow won seven gold medals at the Olympics because of his being ADHD.” Dr. [...]
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Another plug for early intervention with kids showing signs of Autism. In a study published last Friday in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, researchers found an increase in more typical social behaviors and changes in brain activity of young children, after two years of a behavioral therapy called the [...]
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Information is power they say, and so it follows that when information is mischaracterized, inaccurate and worse, misleading, power becomes manipulative and oftentimes self-serving. Headlines as attention grabbers in this age of short attention spans and skimmed reading only make matters worse. I’ve written before, as in the case of the uncoupling of IQ and [...]
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