psych. testing vs. neuro psych. testing

If the school district is pushing for it you may have grounds to require them to pay for it. There are many posters on this board who have gone to court with their districts-hopefully one of them will see your post.

A neuro-psych is kind of, for want of a better way to explain, a cross between a school psychologist, a child psychologist, and a neurologist. I used one to dx by step-daughter’s NLD several years ago. I hit itlucky because she was a neurologist with a psych background and because of the neurologist title, insurance covered the visits (with a referal that took a little bending of the truth to get).

We did the neuropsych testing too, but got results we never expected and results that our private pyschologist and pediatrician do not agree with.

Neuropsychologists seem to be the new trendy thing and every complaint now days seems to fall on the autism spectrum.

Neuros test cognitive and neurological function, memory, mood and evaluate for autism and brain damage.

If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t; even as deperate as I was for an answer one year ago. This was more than I could handle mostly because I cannot get all of the professionals we have consulted to agree with the dx.

I can’t dismiss the dx and I can’t confirm it. It is just a mess.

I wouldn’t discourage you from doing it, but I would tell you to be prepared for yet another subjective opinion. It may answer your questions and address your concerns, but it may leave you feeling yucky like me, too.

Just sharing my experience. Best wishes to you.

Why are you paying for private testing? childfind is very clear it requires that public schools test children suspected of haveing disabilities. You need to contact the public school district where your child would attend school if you didnt send her to private school (you know the one you pay taxes to support) and they are required by law to pay for testing your child, they are also required by law to write an IEP to address your childs needs (they are not however required to impliment the iep unless you send her to the public school).

if you need further clairification of this law please refer to section 300.451
entitled “child find for private school children with disabilities”

it starts
“each LEA shall locate, identify and evaluate all private school children with disabilities, includeing religious school children residing in the jurisdiction of the LEA, in accordence with section 300.125 and 300.220…..” I cant type it all in here but I am sure you can search the rest of it out on the computer, for crying out loud save your money to provide the services she may need that wont be covered by the public school.

If your child is medicated for ADD, then I’d next question what kind of tutoring is it that is not working? It may not be more testing that is needed, it may be different therapies. The other thing you may want to consider is posting the test results you have here. You might get some opinions on whether the tutoring is appropriate for the deficits. How many times a week is the speech therapy?

Janis

If a school is pushing for any type of testing/evaluation, they are putting themselves in a position to pay for it.

I don’t have the speech eval and psych reports with me to post but will post them later. As I stated before this is a private school. I didn’t think the public school system would do a neuro psych. but do provide testing with school counselors in the district. As I said we’ve already gone for what I presume you call a regular psych. exam but not “the” neuro-psych which is much more expensive.

When I brought up all of the out of pocket expenses we now fork out with the tutoring and therapy and because she is not an only child and siblings also have needs, and for those reasons I hadn’t made the appointment; and, maybe we could arrange this through the our church’s affiliation of services they sometimes provide, the counselor absolutely became insulting. “You will need to get this testing for her to stay here so that we know how to help her and you will need to pay for it. Go ahead and make the appt. because we need this ASAP or at the latest before the next school year begins.” This was in front of the teachers. Out of hearing of the teachers, she was so bold as to say that she knows of a family that believes in this testing so much that they would pay for us, if we needed the money. Of course, I responded that was not necessary. This counselor has become so power hungry at our school. The conference was so scripted in how she and the teachers would agree with each other, or say certain things at certain times, it was almost comical if not for the seriousness of the meeting. They were also doing their best for me to break down in tears. If there is a way that we would learn all of daughter’s strengths and weaknesses that haven’t shown up in the regular psych., I would be more open but I don’t feel like this person (counselor) should use “strong arm tactics” to MAKE me do this.

My heart goes out to your child, if you are having those kind of problems with the administrators of this private school then I think it may be time to rethink the kind of educational environment your daughter is in. I pulled my daughter out of a school once becuase I knew she was shutting down and giving up. Putting her in a smaller setting with more individualized help and the proper medication and remediation made up for years of lost time…

If this is a private school, I’m not sure the public school has to pay for neuropsych testing. The public school may be legally responsible - and they probably have in-house staff that would conduct tests, soo……. for cost control they would suggest thet the public school test first. Then eventually if you dispute the public school’s findings, you could request the independant eval. (neuropsych) from them - but you are that many more months away from answers + no guarantee that they pay for all of the testing (pending disputed areas they may be responsible for only parts).

We did a private neuropsych. Back then my ins. paid. If it were today, they wouldn’t.

We loved the neuropsych report report - it steered us in the right direction. It was more comprehensive than anything we’ve seen from the school in the past three years. One example is it gave very specific explanations why dd having difficulty with reading as opposed to the school who said wait another year till she fails the smidgeon she needs to qualify for help. It outlined the components of reading methods which may (and did) help her. In retrospect, it was critical.

On the advice of her pediatrician, we took her to a neuropsych who worked out of a leading hospital. Don’t know if that means anything to you but our ped said “don’t go anywhere but this hospital”.

GL

I agree with pattim about the environment. *You* are paying *them* in a private school — so why are you continuing to pay, to have them play mind games with you? If this were my daughter, I’d be looking for another place for her. Not jumping at the first sound, but seriously looking for maore caring people.

I also think Janis has hit the nail on the head. *What kind* of tutoring isn’t working? A number of tutors are schoolteachers who do “more of the same” — if the kid is failing word memorization, give two more hours of word memorization. Perhaps you should look for a professional tutor who is not allied to any school, but who uses research-based methods.

In my experience with private schools, having parents that are too influential with the administration is a very bad sign. A good principal will be on the alert constantly to keep this from happening.

I see the counsellor talking about another parent being willing to pay for the testing because they believe in it (read: believe in a cultish way in the particular tester they went to) as a sign that this parent has an unhealthy influence over the counsellor.
Having said all of that, the school in the first instance probably should have steered you to neuropsych testing not to the psychological testing. Neuropsych testing covers a broad range of cognitive and academic skills and the results can convey a lot of useful information. A lot of what is covered also is covered in the school district testing, which could also do language testing. I don’t think this would be bad route to go, given where you are. Since it’s a private school you don’t have a lot of choices—they can always ask you to pull your dd out, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.

Beware that oftentimes the interpretation of results—whether from the school district or a private provider—can be very superficial and unhelpful, even counterproductive. Many parents have received more useful interpretations of the scores from people on this board than from the person they paid hundreds of dollars to perform the tests.

My husband and I have had discussions for the past couple of years on whether this school is the right place for our daughter. (Older son went through same school and did very well.) I think we are coming to the decision that it may not be. We are going to check into another private school and also our public school to finish out elementary. We may indeed get the neuro. because we want it, - not because someone is demanding that we get it in such an insulting way.

Daughter’s largest problem is in the math area. She seems to think faster than she can write out the problem and during the multi-step problems, she gets them wrong because of careless mistakes. Do you have any math tutoring techniques that seem to work for children struggling with math. She has most of the multiplication tables memorized, about half of addition and subtraction facts still need to be instilled in her memory. She seems to struggle with the signs, so I have her highlight whether it is addition +, subtraction -, multiplication x or, division. Just the concept of math is difficult for her.
Any suggestions? Thank you.

It’s too long to go into all the particular details here, but what I usually do is sit down beside the student with pen in my hand and twenty sheets of looseleaf paper, and talk them through the problem as I write down what he/she and I work out together. What are we supposed to do here? Why? What do you write down? What is missing? What else do you know? Can you see any other info? Does this remind you of something we saw before? What comes next? Are we finished yet? Then after I finish my hour, the student has to re-do the work to present it as homework.
This is long and slow and very intensive. But slowly and surely the student learns to ask these questions of him/herself, and needs me less and less and only for the harder problems.

Thank you for your response. I have been trying those same techniques and it does seem to work after several weeks. It just seems to take so loooong and I thought maybe I should do something different. Thank you again.

It does seem looonnnggg and sllloooowwww now. It can be incredibly tedious I sometimes have to remind myself I’m getting paid for this; or in your case, it’s my own kids and I do love them, sort of like when they’re babies and you have to get up at night.

BUT — I promise you — look back in six months, after you’ve put the effort in every day; look at the notebooks form six months previous campared to where you have arrived — and it will look like you have done an incredible amount in such a short time.