It afflicts those who are read to as infants as well as those who grow up without a book in the house. The disorder strikes children of all backgrounds. Asked for a word that rhymes with ''cat,'' for example, they simply draw a blank. The simplest rules of language make no sense to them. In the most extreme cases, children seem to have abnormal activity in the parts of the brain that process phonemes - the basic sounds that correspond to the letters of the alphabet. Nearly half these youngsters fall behind in the early grades, never catch up and eventually drop out. But data from four decades of studies by the National Institutes of Health show that it is disastrous for the 4 in 10 children who have trouble learning to read. ![]() The whole language technique works well with some children. This view led to the ''whole language'' fad of the 1970's, in which children were allowed to wander through books, improvising individual approaches to reading. The task of teaching reading is undermined by the common but mistaken belief that children are somehow neurologically ''wired'' to read. But as Congress prepares to reauthorize the federal special education program, it should bear in mind that the Carters went to court only after the public schools failed at their most basic mission: teaching Shannon to read. Critics have a point when they note that small districts can be destabilized by the cost of one student's stay at an expensive residential school, and that urban districts with too few textbooks are sometimes forced to underwrite lavish private school tuition. The school boards see Carter cases as ''a voucher program for the rich,'' in which affluent parents reserve spaces in private schools and then badger the school systems into paying burdensome tuition costs. But the court ruled in Shannon's case that the school system lost its right to plan a disabled child's education if it failed to provide an ''appropriate public education'' as required by the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, known as the IDEA.Īsk about Shannon Carter in New York or Los Angeles, and you see school board lawyers snarling or hanging their heads in dismay. The law before this case limited parents of disabled children to schools approved by the state. The Carters then sued the school system for private-school tuition and were upheld in the landmark Supreme Court case known as Florence County School District Four v. In desperation her parents placed her in a private school for disabled children, where she jumped several grade levels within a few years and graduated actually reading on grade level. Alienated and depressed, Shannon became suicidal. The schools told Emory and Elaine Carter that their daughter was terminally lazy and would ''never see a day of college.'' In truth, Shannon was suffering from a common but undiagnosed learning disability that made it difficult for her to comprehend the little that she could read. During the 1980's she finished ninth grade failing virtually every subject, and was nearly illiterate. Shannon's public school teachers are no doubt surprised to see her running a business and working out a financial plan. The Clip 'N Snip has room for seven barber chairs, but Shannon is limiting the business to two for the moment and renting out space until the economy improves enough for the barbering business to expand. The people of Florence, S.C., know Shannon Carter as the owner of Shannon's Clip 'N Snip, a barber shop where the locals get haircuts and conversation.
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