Test results what do they mean?

It shouldn’t hurt him academically at all depending of course on what they want to do- and it is wonderful that the meds are working!

These results suggest that your son has good learning capacity overall- his short term memory skills are good at the visual and auditory level, and he has good reasoning skills. He has some trouble with auditory processing- that is the incomplete words test which measures what we call auditory closure. They give a words with sounds left out and you have to supply the word. This may tie in with whatever issues they were addressing in speech and language? You would know that better than I but I am guessing they are tied together. He also has some difficulty with visual part to whole stuff- his visual memory is fine so he recalls what he sees but he probably has some trouble reproducing it? How is his handwriting and spelling? What happens in math when he has to work through longer calculation problems? Does he get lost? I am guessing yes since his calculation score is quite low.His reading is in the low average range overall- he understands what he reads but his basic reading skills are weak. Same for math- calculation very weak but he understands how to do the work I would guess. He has to be able to add subtract and do some multiplication to score that well on Applied Problems. His written language skills are weak also- not surprising given his reading- but his writing samples score is a real surprise- it is quite low and given that you know he understands age appropriate sentence structure (passage comprehension) I would want to know why.

It looks as though you have a child who doesn’t function especially well with a pencil in his hand- all the places in the achievement testing where he had to write are quite low. Did an Occupational Therapist look at him also? I would ask for that because there are a lot of red flags here. I am surprised by two things in this eval- the first is that it is only the standard battery in the cognitive portion of the WJR- and I think it would be a good thing to have the information from the rest of the tests. Research has shown over the last ten years that the tests in the extended battery actually have a higher predictive value for academic achievement- they give a clearer idea of what is going on. With the very low scores he received in visual closure and auditory processing I would want more information- at least about those clusters. They didn’t give you a Broad math score because it would be meaningless- his Applied Problems score is too far away from his calculation score for it to make much sense. The second is that the achievement section is equally sketchy- there is no reason to give the entire test- it wouldtake far too long for the value of the information you get but it does make an enormous amount of sense to follow up on the weak areas like basic reading skills- and do the Word Attack test, and Proofing in the written language cluster. To me that is just good practice.

Anyway- they are right- he does meet the eligibility gates for specific learning disability- he has a processing deficit and discrepant achievement. I will be interested to hear how this goes- keep us posted!

Robin

Thank you for your imput it has helped a lot.His hanwriting is awful.He gets the OT evaluation when he gets back to school Jan 3 ,4, and 6.His spelling is really bad he misspells words differnt ways on the same paper.His teacher modified his words down to 5 and he still ahs yet to pass a test this year.The speech he substitues sounds a lot and has a hard time distingluhing between sounds but his hearing is said to be fine from hearing tests we have had done.He does have a hard time with long math problems if they are on paper but can do them in his head just fine.He taught himself how to do multipilcation in 1st grade because he wanted to do it was fun for him.he confuses his signs a lot too.He has a hard time coping problems correctly out of his book.He confues simlar looking words.He really has no skills at sounding words out.He knows how to correct sentences on paper but cant write one for himself correctly.He has a hard time getting anything down on paper. he does not use correct capitalazation,punctuation,etc.he does not write on lines and writes very large and does not leave spaces between words.

I would see about getting a CAPD evaluation, which is usually covered by medical insurance. Regular hearing tests don’t evaluate auditory processing disorders, but a CAPD eval does. Speech and language pathologists can screen for CAPD, but only an audiologist who specializes in this area can evaluate it. You can find out more about CAPD, to see if your son fits the profile, at http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/

You might also want to get a developmental vision evaluation. Regular eye exams do not evaluate developmental vision skills. Good websites with information are http://www.children-special-needs.org and http://www.covd.org.

Home programs that are often very helpful are Reading Reflex ($16 at most bookstores) and Audiblox (http://www.audiblox2000.com). You would not want to work on spelling until after he can read at about a 3rd grade level. When that happens, though, you might want to consider doing Sequential Spelling at home (http://www.avko.org) — takes only 10 minutes a day.

None of the above is usually covered by the school. Many of us have found a need to supplement with home programs.

Mary

So- when they sit down with you to plan his program he should be getting some remediation in these areas- probably including OT. My thought- were I serving this child would be to address his decoding skills in a really systematic way- that part has to begin to be in place before the the other things like sequencing sounds in spelling fall together. My preference would be to have someone trained in Orton Gillingham work with him in an individualized set-up- it is a multi sensory set of procedures and that person- because they are developing the tutoring around where your child is rather than what page he is on in a program- can coordinate with say the OT on handwriting and the speech person on what they are working on. OG addresses reading and spelling. I like Reading Reflex also but it is less intense and really focuses most effectively on reading alone- which is why there is the supplemental spelling piece MaryMN talked about- but OG feels right to me here. He will also need some instruction and support/accommodation in math- maybe different methods of calculation and certainly some things about how much stuff there can be on one worksheet. Good luck!

Robin

I agree with Robin. Those tests shout that he has the “big picture” and the *hard* parts of teh concepts, but will never be able to use them because he can’t do the basic skills. It would be nice if somehow we could just skip that part, since these kids are better at teh “harder” stuff (it’s not harder for them!) — but unfortunately, as the harder stuff gets harder it’s important to be able to do the mechanics in order to keep learning. (Basically, at some point, math *does* get too hard to do in your head.)
This kind of profile is one I’ve seen a lot, and the thing that helps most is intensive work on the reading with focus on learning to hear and process the sounds. If he can’t do that, and doesn’t have the visual memory to compensate, then it sort of doesn’t matter whether there are 5 or 25 words to spell. With sound processing this big of a problem, it might be worth looking at programs that specifically address thta, too. Earobics is a fairly simple auditory-training/ language skills software program that isn’t as big an investment as more involved, intensive and expensive programs like Fast ForWord. I would definitely *not* rely o the school to figure ouit his needs and meet them.

Hi Raelyn,

Sounds like you’ve gotten some really good advice from everybody here so far… I would just add that, as his mom, you’re going to be the most important person he has on his side. As a special ed. teacher as well as mom to an LD son, I’ve seen this situation from both sides, and I can tell you that no one else will have his best interests at heart except for you. You need to arm yourself with as much knowledge as possible, in order to know what to ask for and how best to get his needs met, now that you know a little more about what they are! If you need someplace to start, try my website, which has a wealth of information on learning disabiities, IEP’s, etc. You can find it at www.angelfire.com/on2/thepuzzle and feel free to email me if you have more questions after that!

Sharon

yes I am doing a lot of reading and I have been asking for 3 years what we could do to we do to help him and the school said he should grow out of it.Along with his teacher from last year and this years we finally got him tested.His teachers knew there was more but they know how the principal is he feels if you test to young there is not always enough of a gap and feels it is a waste of money thas is what he said last year to me.i cant wait till I see him next week and his look on his face at our meeting.My sons teachers went over his head and went straight to the director of Sp. Ed and the school psy. they tested him while the principal was out of town.The school psy works for the county school board not our school district as with the OT.