Characteristics of LD Students in Iowa: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract
This article logs descriptive demographic and psychometric data on 1,839 randomly selected LD students from across Iowa. The data are compared to those from other major descriptive surveys with special emphasis on their relevance for the LD identification issue (Sheppard & Smith, 1981; Ysseldyke, Algozzine, Shinn, & McGue, 1982). In contrast to the results of other studies, nearly 75% of the students in Iowa LD programs met a moderate level of academic discrepancy. Another important finding was the variability among the standard scores for the achievement tests commonly used in LD identification.