The Effects of an Intermediary Placement on Learning Disabled and Low-Achieving Adolescents

Staffed by a team of regular and special educators and funded by a combination of regular and special education monies, an intermediary setting, the “Learning Laboratory,” was established for learning disabled and low-achieving adolescents. Students' academic abilities were not strong enough for regular class placement, but not so weak as to require a special education resource setting. After a year of participation, analyses of pre- and post-academic measures indicated that sixth to eighth grade learning disabled students demonstrated significant reading gains when compared with control students; ninth to twelfth grade learning disabled students did not demonstrate academic gains. However, subsequent analyses of school attendance data showed a significantly higher absenteeism rate for low-achieving students across sixth to eighth and ninth to twelfth grades. Results indicate that while some learning disabled students may benefit from such a setting, non-special education students may respond negatively to being placed with exclusively learning disabled students in certain classes.