Is the slow learner in the classroom learning disabled

he two purposes of this paper are to addressthe question of who are the learning disabled (or disordered) children and to suggest approaches for delineating subgroups of slow-learning children. This requires drawing on the experience of teachers and school administrators. The pertinent aspects of three of our studies of reading achievement are reviewed. There are two conflicting trends regarding the term learning disabilities. Over the past decade slow-learning and failing elementary schoolchildren of nor-mal intelligence have been increasingly classified as learning disabled. At the same time considerable unease, concern, and, in some cases, opposition have developed to this classification, based on the following documented claims: ( I) that current diag-nostic instruments frequently fail to differentiate be-tween those children who fail, or will fail, and those who succeed; (2) that the term learning disabilities is a catch-all label for children having a variety of different learning problems and is therefore diagnos-tically vague; (3) that we have failed to develop specific and pertinent preventive and remedial meth-ods for learning disabled children; (4) that social, situational (school), and task factors that contribute to school failure have not been given sufficient atten-tion; and (5) that there may be serious negative educational, social, and emotional consequences to designating a child as learning disabled, which out-weigh the gains accruing from such labeling (Brya