August 10th, 2009 by El Ed Mom

One of the ongoing battles in raising a child with Down Syndrome is the fight to continue to present academic content to an older child. It has long been the custom of school districts to largely abandon inputting new information to children with DS as they reach the middle school and high school years in favor of providing “life skills.

Districts across the United States move students with DS from traditional educational pursuits to life skills as if this were a reasonable course of action. In studies done as far back as 1995-1996, researchers such as Carr, Bochner, Pieterse as well as Fowler, Doherty and Boynton found that there was a wide range of reading abilities among young adults with DS. Dunn and Dunn in 1981 found that reading abilities in a group of individuals with DS ranging in ages from 17 to 25 varied greatly.

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