Reggie Taylor, 13, behaved badly in school. He had trouble sitting still, and he was disruptive in class-not because he overtly caused any problems or was disrespectful to his teachers, but because he nearly continually rustled papers and squirmed in his seat. Teachers wanted to him to undergo psychological testing in order to get him into special education classes and his parents agreed so that any psychological problem could be ruled out. Reggie had a 90-minute bus trip to school, which separated from his neighborhood friends, and what he really wanted was to be in school with them, as he had been since elementary school.

The results of the testing yielded the conclusion that Reggie suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). "The school recommended special education classes, with a modified curriculum. The Tatums disagreed and transferred Reggie to a school in their community" (Hill, 1998; p. C01). Now, two years later, he's a thriving high school junior, on the honor roll as he had been in elementary school. His mother said, "His turnaround has been amazing. At first I thought they just misdiagnosed him. Then I thought it could be that he

Still, some determination of intelligence is necessary in order to establish a point at which he could otherwise be expected to be performing academically were he not affected by ADD. Those who would intervene necessarily must have some point from which to begin, and the most logical is in the determination of whether ADD is thought to "adversely affect educational performance to the extent that a significant discrepancy exists between a child's intellectual ability and that child's productivity with respect to listening, following directions, planning, organizing, or completing academic assignments that require reading, writing, spelling, or mathematics (Montague, McKinney and Hocutt, 1994; p. 212)." To their credit, however, the same researchers stress that determination also must be made on possible reasons for the child's inattention to work, whether they arise from family stresses, communications problems or just plain boredom with either the work or classroom presentation.

But regardless of whether ADD-affected children are hyperactive or not, it has been clearly demonstrated that their learning processes are not of the standard mechanisms thought to be at work among children who have no trace of ADD. "The groups have been found to differ cognitively in that ADD/WO children have slower cognitive tempos...and a higher comorbidity of learning disabilities. Cognitive differences between the groups have also been reported in neuropsychological studies" (Morgan, Hynd, Riccio and Hall, 1996; p. 325).

The tendency to go for the funding and to label as many children as possible detracts from teaching those children who truly are afflicted with ADD. Behavior problems can be stilled by diverse means-thankfully, many parents, doctors and educators are moving away from the notion that drugging children into submission is acceptable as a widespread practice and are more widely embracing more natural means of helping the ADD child control his own behavior (Searight, Nahlik and Campbell, 1995). Much of the "muddling through" has been on the part of professionals as the path of diagnosis and treatment of true ADD is so cluttered with those who carry the label but not the condition.

Far removed from classroom management

Some common words found in the essay are:
McKinney Hocutt, Nahlik Campbell, Reggie Taylor, Riccio Hall, Susan Puckett, C01 Reggie's, Marietta Georgia, ADD Behavior, BD' It's, ADD/WO ADD/H, hill 1998, 1998 c01, hill 1998 c01, learning disability, hynd riccio hall, special education, riccio hall, hall 1996, hynd riccio, riccio hall 1996, morgan hynd riccio, morgan hynd, mckinney hocutt, montague mckinney, montague mckinney hocutt,
Approximate Word count = 1507
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)