Miriam Freedman, author of Fixing Special Education questions “the need for expensive and extensive diagnoses” of “specific learning disability” (SLD) in an Education Week interview.

Instead of ever more detailed diagnostic reports, let’s focus our scarce public resources on improving teaching for all students, including students with disabilities, through ‘best practices,’ diagnostic teaching, targeted instruction, meaningful standards and accountability, and the response to intervention (RtI) model, especially in the early grades. Let’s focus on teaching all students how to read, write and do math first.

Half of special education students are supposed to have a SLD, usually a reading problem. When students are taught well, fewer end up with a learning disability diagnosis.