Many children who seem to be learning-disabled may actually have a correctable vision problem. The problem is that a regular eye test can't catch it, but there are some clues if you know what to look for.

Amanda Cobucci loves to read. In fact, the New Jersey fourth-grader reads at a ninth-grade level. Not bad for a child who could barely read at all just two years ago.

"She would look at the picture and figure out where the story was headed, start to try and read a sentence and then finish it up where she thought the picture indicated the story was headed," said Gail Cobucci, Amanda's mother.

"I kept on mixing up all of my words and I just skipped the words and then the story really didn't have any sense," Amanda remembered.

To Amanda, letters weren't quite in sync with each other, which meant that her eyes weren't working together.

Standard vision tests didn't pick up the problem because they just check for focusing on one letter at a time. Reading and comprehension is much more complex.

"You have to know how well you take the information in, how well do your eyes work together as a team, how well can you sustain focusing over time and what sense does your brain make of the information coming in to produce vision," explained Dr. Leonard Press, an optometrist.

Tests showed Amanda's eyes were skipping all over the page. A pair of special goggles could detect where her eyes were looking. A dancing dot showed that she had erratic visual tracking. It turns out this is common in children with learning problems.

"In the learning disabilities population, we are talking about roughly 2.9 million children nationwide. Up to 60 percent, depending on the study, have some sort of vision problem that often goes undetected," Press said.

Experts have developed a series of exercises to help -- some on the computer, some with special lenses and some with old-fashioned paper and pencil. The exercises help train young eyes to work together.

"I felt it and I was able to read so much more better and I got a renewed feeling to read and I liked it better," Amanda said.

You should talk to an opthmologist if you observe these signs in your child:

He or she uses a finger to keep their place while reading.

He or she understands a story when it's read to them, but not when they read it.

He or she complains their eyes hurt, or they rub their eyes after they have tried to read for awhile.