LD now MIMD

I certainly think there is a problems here, but I’m not sure yet what I think it is. What was the IQ (verbal and performance) three years ago?

Janis

which impacts her IQ…my daugther has a lower verbal IQ than her performance IQ due to a hearing impairment…her verbal IQ was at 70 in kindergarten and now it is up to normal in 8th grade…Also if this child is from a culturally diverse background an IQ test wouldn’t be appropriate either…some people with average IQ’s are horrible spellers by the way… There are many different types of intellegence..that an IQ score doesn’t even show :-)

How is she doing otherwise?

Janis poses a good question. If her IQ was within average range a few years ago, she surely hasn’t gotten less intelligent over time. Instead, the problem may be that she has not received effective remediation for her particular needs. This isn’t a dig — some kids are hard to figure out and even the most well-intended efforts might not be the right ones. Look into the Matthews Effect, which is the term applied to the lowering of IQ scores that is the result of not providing the right kinds of interventions.

Andrea

If this child’s IQ and adaptive functioning have declined from average to MR in three years that is cause for parental concern and could prob. use an indep. eval. If the school is just reinterpreting the IQ scores that always have been in the MR range, then that deserves having whomever tested the child sit down with the parent and explain things. The diagnosis of MR is not just IQ score, it’s also defined by low adaptive functioning assessed by a standarized instrument.

You read my mind, Andrea. :-)

Janis

I wrote down her current IQ score and left it at school leaving on a Friday. Anyway. Four years ago , before age 8, she scored in a low average range, probably just above MIMD. All I could find was “low average range”.

More currently the WISC was done one year ago and a KBIT quick and dirty to confirm the data. Again, I don’t have the numbers in front of me. When this IQ was read last year I thought no wonder. All my other kids except one has progressed very nicely.

This child has a hard time remembering things compared to my other 17 SLD students. She can’t find a page. She doesn’t know what day it is. She still doesn’t know what time school gets out. She doesn’t know what comes after 69. She has major social problems. She passes gas in class all the time.

Mom refuses this child to have counseling. The mother herself has thrown rocks at neighbors. The police know this neighborhood very well. This child did have almost all her math facts memorized last year and over the summer forgot everything and it is now Feb. and we still don’t have them back up to speed. She has a very tough time while in general education. She just left one general ed classroom after accusing a teacher of abusing her because there was a fire drill and she wouldn’t leave and the teacher apparently grabbed her to get her to go when she wouldn’t leave quickly.

This child has been sexually molested by her 19 year old sister’s boyfriend/father of her sisters 2 children.

When I do small group instruction with manipulative, all my other 7 math students are with me, she is the only one who can’t function in the group. I need to spoon feed her with everything. She can not work independly except on cursive, which she can write, but that she can not read. I felt that she is very aware of the different classes and last year I felt comfortable leaving her in my room for her self esteem but now I’m questioining it. Her mom insists she should repeat 6th grade. MIMD wants no one to go to junior high until they are 13. However, she did ask if she was going to be with the “tards” next year when I told her she might be self contained. She is aware there is a difference so I wanted to wait until junior high before moving her BUT….she is a big behavior problem in general ed. She is under control for the most part in class but on the playground there are big issues. She is very time consuming but with contracts and talks it is ok. I just hate to see her accusing teachers of stuff. THere;s more but you don’t need the whole story.

All my students are 1.5-2 years below grade level in reading. I have 3 that are not. She has been at this school for a long time. THe primary SLD teacher is excellent. I feel she is MIMD but very high functioning. I do feel she will need more of a life skills path in the future. I do a lot of review and this child forgets it even with tons of review, telling time, money, her schedule, etc…

This child is completely unable to sequence. I have lived through this exact deficit with my son. He couldn’t do math at all. He also memorized his times tables but lost them because without sequencing he was just parroting them. He now skip counts forward and backward as an important precursor to his times tables. He has gotten pretty good. I plan to get him to memorize his times tables again once he can skip count all the numbers really well.

There is so much that could be done for this child. It is unbelievably sad that there isn’t anyone around to help remediate her obvious deficits in memory and sequencing.

Hi Crayfish,

As an adult with a non verbal learning disability where it is quite typical to have a large VIQ/PIQ Split with the VIQ side being larger, I would suggest that you look at these sites on NLD to see if your student might fit the profile. I am in no position of course to say yay or nay but in my opinion, your student has enough of the symptoms that it merits taking a look:

http://www.nldline.com
http://www.nlda.org
http://www.nldontheweb.org

To follow up on Janis’s post, I think it is also important to know how your student scored on the IQ subtests as the total scores do not tell you everything. By the way, many professionals, if you have a split like your student don’t even feel it is valid to give a full scale IQ score as they will go with the higher score. If you have done that already, please accept my apologies but because so many kids with LD have been misdiagnosed as having other disorders, I just wanted to throw that out there.

I know it isn’t easy being a teacher as my best friend teaches regular 1st grade and tells me horror stories. But I implore you not to allow the MR classification until all other possibilities such as what I and other posters have suggested has been investigated. A child’s life is depending is depending on that.

PT

PS - I am not against the MR label if that is how a child should be classified. But it sounds like there are still way too many questions regarding the student you mentioned for that to be happening.

The decrease in IQ from low average (the 80’s) to mild MR (60’s) over three years is troubling. What could explain this deterioration in cognitive functioning? If this has really happened, then I’d have a neurologist take a look at this kid. Certainly, this child’s functioning deserves a closer look. Look at the verbal, performance, and subtest scores. MR individuals typically display a fairly level profile of abilities that are below expectations for age. I would also give the kid a nonverbal test (like the TONI) to doublecheck the possible impact of a language or motor disability. Finally, no child can be diagnosed or classified as MR without a similiar deficit in areas of adaptive functioning- social and leisure skills, daily living skills, and functional communication skills. This is a law! In fact, the law was created due to the tendency to classify kids from poor backgrounds as MR- these kids scored poorly on IQ tests due to deprivation and perhaps other culteral or stress related issues. But they were often not MR as shown by their street smarts. Sounds like this kid has that background. I’d have the evaluator explain the child’s deficits to the mother.

Verbal IQ of 60
Performance 72
Full Scale 64 on the WISC

Kaufman Vocab. 59
Matri 68 Kbit 59

THere was an adaptive behavior done that showed this student to be in the MIMD range according to numbers done by parent, teachers etc…

So do you really think she might not be that low? She has very poor memory. She needs lots of direction. In the MIMD program there are teacher aids and better ratio, in LD there are no assistants either to give her more attention?

Now you’ve all got me really thinking.
crayfish

You now need to post the scores from three years ago so we can compare. It would help to see the individual WISC subtest scores, too. Have you ever heard of the Matthew effect? That was what I was getting at earlier. Here is a link to explain that if I didn’t give it to you last night.

http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/test.matthew.effect.htm

Janis

I am still looking it up as it is not easy to find. All I remember was it was the KABC IQ test which the school pych. said she doesn’t like but it was used and before the age 8 so not “stable”. I think she has been MIMD all along. I looked up the nld board. I don’t think she is that either. She is not very verbal or sharp in any academic area or social area. She is white and the sibling is also in SPed. Her dad was in a “retarded” class according to this child..

Crayfish,

They had to have an evaluation to place this child as LD to begin with. She had to have an IQ score to measure against the achievement to qualify as LD. Why is it not readily accessible in her special ed. folder? I have all my students folders easily accessible to me and all test results are in there. You have to have the initial placement paperwork for the folder to be legal.

She may very well be MIMD (what we call educably mentally disabled). But I’m curious as to how her scores ever qualified her as LD if that is the case.

Janis