DISCREPANCY FORMULAS AND CLASSIFICATION AND IDENTIFICATION ISSUES THAT AFFECT DIAGNOSES OF LEARNING-DISABILITIES

The identification of learning‐disabled students has been plagued by the use of definitions that are conceptually and operationally incongruent and by classification systems that are inconsistent with identification procedures. The variety of methods and formulas used results in differing rates of identification and diverse findings for the same samples of students. The advantages and disadvantages of the most common discrepancy formulas and the multiple regression discrepancy method are compared. Both the educational significance and the statistical significance of test scores should be taken into consideration during the identification process, and consonance between LD definitions and identification criteria must be achieved in order to reduce the variance that occurs with LD classification. Copyright © 1991 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company