The Early Identification of Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Of 228 children who were given a screening test in kindergarten, 163 were followed to the end of grade 2. At that time they were given an achievement test, and school progress was reported by their teachers. Over 70% of the children had been classified correctly as to their achievement on the basis of the kindergarten screening test. The individual test items or subsets of them predicted better than the composite score. Of the 196 psychological, neurological, and academic measures taken on an intensively studied sample of 50 children. a small number was highly predictive of grace 2 achievement. When achievement by diagnosis was considered, only 11% of the children diagnosed in kindergarten as having minimal brain dysfunction were ready for grade 3, as contrasted to 86% of the normals.