I’m writing again in frustration. My child has received services from March of last year to this March. We had our IEP meeting a couple of weeks ago and they recommended only a 504 (accomadations). Last year she received 5x a week for writing and reading support. Her teacher is wonderful this year. She is a very visual teacher and has signs throughout the room and does alot of different teaching things in her classroom (songs to the times tables). Our re-evaluation was with Woodcock Johnson which scored her in the average range. Last year the psychologist found her to have executive function difficulties along with her reading and writing. There were big gaps in her processing skills.
Following our IEP meeting I requested an independent evaluation and the school has now sent us a letter from their lawyer for a public hearing to deny our request. Do I have any info to back me up? I think we do. They did not do specific testing to look at her phonetic skills, organization, memory or reading. I requested that they do more and they said that the Woodcock Johnson was enough. I found it to be very generic and not specific enough.
I am not concerned about this year but i am concerned about the summer and the next years as the workload goes up and more is expected of my child. I would be happy to decrease her services to 1-2x a week . They want to go to a 504 which is the regular ed teachers responsibility. Our class sizes are 27-30 and she will be lost. Look forward to your comments. Maggie
Re: qualifying for services, all better?
You have every right to request an independent evaluation, in fact it is a federal law that you are entitled to get that done.
Maggie,
I would never advise someone to go from 5 x per week services to exiting special ed. I think it is wise to decrease gradually. But your case is a great example of why I am hesitant to recommend testing by the school at re-eval time. They just might place out of the program like your child did. I’d prefer getting private testing and then you can choose whether to share it or not. But in this case, since it is already done, I’m not sure how successful you will be. It is very standard procedure to determine qualification for special ed. based on the discrepancy between IQ and achievement test scores. So if those scores are now up to average range and close to the IQ score, then she really would not qualify as LD. Does that mean that all her problems have disappeared? Probably not. But until the model for determining placement changes, I’m not sure you will be successful in reversing this unless you have the teacher on your side saying that her classroom performance is much lower than the standardized test results. There has to be some educational evidence that a child needs special education.
Janis