Hi. I am new to the board and I sure hope that someone out there can help me.
My 12 year old daughter was diagnosed with a specific learning disabilty 3 years ago. Since then, she has been recieving resource help and has consistantly made high honor roll for the past three years; although she still is a very reluctant reader. She is very athletic and on several sports teams at the school, yet she is also incredibly quiet and can be the “invisible child” to her peers.
The problem that I am having is this: her resource teacher gave her a test, ( she said that it would cost me about $500.00 dollars if I had done this on my own), and told me that she wholly believed that my child was a classic dsylexic. She even mentioned about the possibility of putting her in the “gifted class” at school.
At the 3 year evaluation meeting, however, the school psychologist claimed that my daughter was way below her peers academically. The resource teacher, ( who is tenured by the way, so she shouldn’t be afraid to speak up), said absolutely nothing!!!!!! I was literally floored and felt helpless. I kept waiting for her to disagree with the psycholgist, but she just sat and agreed with everything that he said. A total contradiction to when and what she says to me!!!!!! I mentioned to the psychologist if he saw any signs of her being a dsylexic, (at this point, I never mentioned the test that the resource teacher had given), and he resoundingly replied “no.” The resource teacher later told me that the school won’t classify a child as a dsylexic because their afraid that it would cost them money! How? How is teaching a dsylexic child different than teaching a learning disabled child? And what possible cost could it be to the school?!
I feel very angry at both the school adm.’s and esp. the resource teacher.
Are there state agencies that can come in and test her? I need to know what her diagnosis REALLY is. Is she dsylexic or learning disabled????? I’m not in denial that she has a learning difference, but if she did test that low with the psychologist, then HOW exactly is she doing so well in school?
She is only pulled out for reading with 5 other students with the resource teacher. She is supposed to have 500 minutes per week, in both reading and english. Well, that’s a joke and a half with the english…ALL her minutes go towards reading.
Is all of this normal???? I REALLY, REALLY don’t understand, and now I am questioning who was right in their diagnosis?! Are there state advocates that I can speak to?
Any help that anyone has to offer to me would be greatly appreaciated!!!
Thanks for reading all this, I know it was long.
Re: Can anybody help me?
Consider sidestepping the school completely and getting private remediation. Many parents find it is better to directly help their child than to expend energy and time trying to work their way through school politics.
Nancy
Re: Can anybody help me?
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, go read the LD in Depth discussion on this website that talks about children who are both gifted and have learning disabilities. What you will find is that many (probably the vast majority) of these children use their intellectual gifts to circumvent their LD and thus often appear “just average.” Sometimes they look better than average, but with some glaring weaknesses. Those are the kids who get some notice. Even so, most schools and most parents do not understand that it is possible for both conditions to exist in the same child. They seem to think that LD equals not bright, ergo a smart child cannot have a learning disability. I wouldn’t get hung up on labels. Schools don’t use the term dyslexia, because IDEA doesn’t. Schools call it a specific learning disability. It means the same thing. The big question is: what exactly does your daughter need to be all that she has the potential to be? To know that, you need a thorough evaluation. It sounds like you haven’t gotten that and won’t get it from the school. I strongly urge you to consider a private evaluation and private remediation. Believe me, I know what a difference that can make. I have two gt/ld children and both are doing extremely well because I got them tested privately early on and thus knew what they needed and was able to get it for them.
Re: Can anybody help me?
Are you in Texas? Texas has a dyslexia law whereby if a child is dx dyslexic then certain state laws must be met, all of which are very expensive (such as the child must be taught by a qualified teacher with a reading method known to help dyslexic children). You’d be horrified at the lengths schools go to to NOT dx a child with the word dyslexic. They want to help the kids oftentimes so they’ll say the child is emotional disturb or do an OHI (ADHD) thing to get them in special ed. Anything but dyslexic.
Re: Can anybody help me?
I wonder if that’s happening here in NM. I can’t imagine NM would have a law about dyslexia, but I talked to a parent the other day. Kid is reading at a 3rd grade level in 7th grade and the school insists he is not dyslexic. I guess a counselor recommended me (however that happened). The schools here use Wilson. I wonder if by saying he is not dyslexic then they don’t have to use Wilson? (time and potentially money involved if more kids get dxed as dyslexic).
—des
Re: Can anybody help me?
Dyslexia is a learning disability!!! The LEGALLY accepted classification with a student who has reading/writing disabilities or math disabilities under IDEA (the federal law that governs special education) is LEARNING DISABILITY.
If you read IDEA, dyslexia is subsumed under learning disability. Unless your state has a dyslexia law (someone said Texas, others have adopted the federal disability guidelines) the term the psychologist will use is learning disability.
This should not be an issue at all. The psychologist has to identify a processing deficit under the eligibility criteria. The term dyslexia tells us LESS than the classification of LD with specific information about the processing deficits that have been identified.
Whether your daughter is called dyslexic or learning disabled should have nothing whatsoever to do with her services under the federal law and in (probably) 49 states. Relax, it is NOT an issue. What is an issue is identification of the iddues involved in her LD and a good IEP.
Now, the resource teacher probably overstepped her bounds in suggesting a gifted class. In most places gifted is defined as I.Q. of 130 or better. That defines a gifted-LD, though some folks around here seem to think a respectable IQ score with an LD means gifted-LD, it does not. Unless your daughter scored 130 or beyond, she probably cannot be placed in a gifted class, though she might be bright. Some places will let kiddoes in gifted based on high academic scores, like 95th percentile or beyond on standardized tests, as well.
Re: Can anybody help me?
In assessing gt/ld, it is important to remember that some LDs affect how a person scores on certain IQ tests. For example, a child with a language-based LD may score lower on the verbal portion of the WISC, while a child with a physical handicap or who has problems with fine motor skills may score lower on the performance section of the WISC. If given a different IQ measure, such as the Stanford Binet or the cognitive portion of the Woodcock Johnson, these students may achieve higher IQ scores. Or, these kids may have a verbal IQ greater than 130 but a low performance IQ, leading to a full-scale IQ below 130. A child with ADHD may score lower on IQ tests without medication. There are many factors that influence IQ scores and they need to be taken into account when making determination about whether to provide gifted programming.
Re: Can anybody help me?
The Texas dyslexia law was something that was championed by a mom from a high-profile family. She got the law passesd. She says she knows schools are getting around the law’s requirement by not having a child dx with “dsylexia” but she was quoted in the newspaper as saying she ‘s afraid to bring it up again to the legislature to fix the loopholes for fear she’ll lose the whole law.
The Ft. Worth Star Telegram just did a 3 part article about this. A link was put up over at the schwablearning.org site, but I’m not sure if it’s still good. The articles may have been archived already.
You would be hard-pressed to find any public educator in Texas use the word Dsylexia in a sentence except for the one decent school district the newspaper article highlighted (Greenville, TX schools).
Re: Can anybody help me?
There are links to the articles (which still work as of today, 2/17) at
http://www.resourceroom.net/newsletters/2004jan.asp — just scroll on down to “news.”
I, too, get confused and frustrated when parents get upset about Not Calling It Dyslexia. It is so not the point (except, of course, in states such as Texas where it is). The point is whether or not the school is providing an appropriate education to the student with a learning disability. Dyslexia is not strep throat, with an uncontested effective treatment regimen. Regardless of the name, the IEP team needs to figure out the specific needs and address them, and boy, does that have problems of its own much more worthy of time, energy and effort.
The teacher could have checked and realized that your school’s “gifted” definition was stricter than she thought, and had second thoughts about recommending that she be evaluated for it — though the complete change of outlook sounds like somethign else went on.
Can you talk to taht teacher again? Ask her what the test was? SHe’ll probably be trying to hide… and you can’t make her say or do anything, but perhaps you could get her “off the record” and find out what’s going on. She may have been read the riot act — or there could be something else happening (um, she was lookig at the wrong person’s test?)
And I’d seriously consider an independent evaluation, because if your daughter is gifted you want to tap those gifts and develop them.