Help us force the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to review its discriminatory, eugenics-esque guidelines that exclude economically and environmentally disadvantaged children from qualifying for reading remediation and other educational supports.

The APA’s diagnosis guidelines subscribe to an unscientific and prejudiced belief that dates back to the early 19th century. The APA upholds a eugenics argument that economically disadvantaged children are somehow unable to learn.

According to the APA, an economic disadvantage is a “condition” that should exclude a child from receiving goods such as education. Early remediation is only possible when children are tested for LD and diagnosed. If they do not have a diagnosis, they cannot receive their entitled remediation services - and because of this, many economically disadvantaged children never learn to read.
 
Public school psychologists often comply with APA’s guidelines and deny educational evaluations to economically disadvantaged children. Educational evaluations and remediation are critical and lack of support fuels the school-to-prison pipeline. 85% of children diagnosed with LD have dyslexia.
 
Furthermore, APA’s guidelines undermine the IDEA Child Find mandate, which requires all school districts to identify, locate and evaluate all children with disabilities.
 
Here are the offensive criteria in APA’s guidelines:
 
To be diagnosed with a specific learning disorder, a person must meet four criteria.
4.     Learning difficulties are not due to other conditions, such as intellectual disability, vision or hearing problems, a neurological condition (e.g., pediatric stroke), adverse conditions such as economic or environmental disadvantage, lack of instruction, or difficulties speaking/understanding the language.

Please sign the petition and force the APA to review its damaging and unscientific guidelines! 
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