How Administrators Understand Learning Difficulties

Abstract

Abstract School administrators in six school districts were interviewed. Each district had been identified previously as having increasing rates of retention in grade or transitional-grade placements and increasing incidence of the identification of students as having disabilities. School administrators offered a variety of explanations for students' learning difficulties and offered a number of suggested remedies. virtually all of the explanations and remedies placed the school outside the central sphere of influence. In other words, in these interviews administrators offered few ideas for altering the current general education programs as a potential strategy for addressing the problems of at-risk children.