PROGRAM PLANNING

Planning a program for some children with learning disabilities is particularly difficult because their needs are so great.  How do you remediate the deficits and accommodate the current ability levels without creating a day that is too fragmented? It is not an easy task. Certainly everyone wants the best program possible for the student; the question is how to do it. An educational consultant can help your school with this task because she is experienced with piecing together various goals into an integrated whole and minimizing the impact of services that require removal from the regular classroom. Working with your school's team, she can use her knowledge of educational research and practice to determine which ideas are likely to help the student and to build on others so that they are more beneficial. A good program is more than the sum of its parts. Its components need to fit together as smoothly as is reasonably possible. Moreover, because people share their experiences with each other, it is important that a child's program reflect the good intentions and integrity of a school district to meet the needs of all its students.

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