Category Archives: News

accommodations help students access learning, but they don’t change how students learn.

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Accommodations bypass cognitive weaknesses — they don’t strengthen them.

That’s the focus of this month’s Learning Brain Monthly session:
🎓 Students Need More Than Accommodations
🗓 November 11, 2025, 12 p.m. Central Time
💻 Live + replay included

In this 60-minute, research-grounded session, you’ll learn:

  • The real differences between accommodations, modifications, and compensatory strategies — and what each does (and doesn’t) change.
  • Why students with IEPs and 504s often make incremental progress, not the gains they need to catch up.
  • The cognitive skills that drive learning — attention, working memory, processing speed, inhibitory control, memory — and how to identify them.
  • How cognitive training can change learning capacity itself.
  • Questions that should be asked at IEP/504 meetings to focus on growth, not just access.
     

Whether you’re a classroom teacher, instructional coach, special educator, administrator or parent, this session will help you reframe how support services can truly close the gap.

👉 Register for the Learning Brain Monthly and Students Need More Than Accommodations

Uncertain future of IDEA law

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Students with disabilities are in the crosshairs of the attacks on public education. In light of the uncertain future of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — the federal law that serves and protects students with disabilities — parents, educators and policymakers must step up to safeguard protections for our most vulnerable students. 

The law reaches 7.6 million children nationwide. Nearly 15% of all students age 3 to 21 received services through IDEA. It serves as a lifeline for an increasing number of students and their families.

IDEA originated in parental voice and a push for governmental accountability. Unlike most legislation, which is advanced by professional associations and lobbyists, it was driven by an organized, nonpartisan movement of parents of children with disabilities. 

Read the full article HERE

High school results in math are devastating low

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High school students, especially 12th graders, are reading and learning math and science at historic lows, according to a new report from the National Assessment of Education Progress.

The new report, known as the Nation’s Report Card, was released Monday by the National Center for Education Statistics and the Department of Education. It is the first nation’s report card to be released since the coronavirus pandemic.

You can read the full report HERE

Germany waking up to dyscalculia

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Those who suffer from dyscalculia have difficulties with numbers and quantities. On average, two pupils per class are affected. The SPD wants to improve equal opportunities.

Pupils with dyscalculia need better support, according to the SPD and the Greens. Following a hearing in the state parliament, SPD education expert Gerald Eisenblätter called for dyscalculia to be recognized as a partial performance weakness and for those affected not to be disadvantaged. While this has already been done in the case of dyslexia, pupils with such an impairment have so far been denied this status. Early diagnosis, a right to compensation for disadvantages and individual support measures are needed.

Read the whole article HERE

Lose, Lose, Lose

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Children with learning difficulties or disabilities and their parents face a “lose, lose, lose” situation, Sir Keir Starmer has said, as he pledged to press ahead with reforming special needs support in schools.

Downing Street backed Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, after she was criticised by Labour MPs and campaigners for refusing to guarantee that children with special needs would continue to have the same legal rights to bespoke support in school.

Ministers said that retaining the existing system would end up “failing children and failing parents” and insisted that reform should not result in the overall level of support for special needs being cut.

Read the whole article HERE