Hi all I am a HS LD teacher. Today I had an IEPTeam in which a stu w/an IQ of abt 85 had SS in the 80’s, hence no discrepancy. Functionally the student has significant problems in Eng even w/assistance. When the stu initially qual in 5th gr his scores were the same. I wish I had the file so I could look at processing, but I can say the student has a storage and retrieval problem.
Before the IEP I queried the school psych abt the scores wondering what his thoughts were because he has had the habit of announcing the good news to parents that there child was no longer LD, in fact they never were leaving some of my co-workers stymied and the parents baffled at the meeting. Our discussion included a question of how the new criteria fit in to this as it is my understanding that there does not have to be a significant discrepancy. In the end I said I would call the director and we would continue this student in sped. My director did not know the answer to the question and so she put a call into the state. At the time of the meeting we still did not have an answer.
At the meeting he pulled a switcheroo. Told the mom what I stated above. The mom says ‘I knew if he worked harder……’ She didn’t understand what the scores said about his level of functioning. I explained to the mom several times what he was talking about and in the end I said that I thought we should reconvene the meeting after getting more information from the State DPI. Mom agreed with that, no one else said anything, but the psych said he was willing to finish the meeting and complete a minority report. I disagreed and said we would meet again when the mom came back for her son’s junior conference in a few weeks. He was not pleased. I called my director and left a msg, I have never worked with a school psych that did not want to work with the team as a team.
If he writes a report stating that he is not LD there is a good chance that he will not qualify for accommodations for the ACT if he chooses to take it, he will be denied support services at post-sec schools, and he will be denied DVR services.
My questions are
The elementary schools feeding into our high school frequently qualified students like the one above who probably did not meet the old criteria but because they needed help were admitted to sped. What is our obligation to these students now? If the new criteria are not ready to be used, do we dismiss these students at this late date? It was my understanding that students did not have to re-qualify to continue to receive services, that is why we do not have to administer processing deficit assessments. Is that true? Do we need to re-qualify them?
Have any of you had a similar experience either with a psych who did that to you in a meeting or having a low functioning student scoring where their expected achievement would be? What was your experience with the qualifying issue?
Thanks for your help.
Meri
:x
Re: conflict w/school psych at IEPTeam LD Tchr ?'s
We had significant numbers of kiddos who “tested out” because, basically, their ability scores got depressed by years of poor education. No more discrepancy! Generally, though, they wanted out - most kids and parents do. And since you can usually get through high school by sitting nicely and learning to find the words that look like those words somewhere in the text and copying that sentence (sometiems you might know what parts of them mean), you can often pass.
However, we often *did* find a way to keep a kiddo in sped if the parents recognized they needed the help.
Oh Those Discrepancy Requirements
I find there are far too many elem students not getting help because they do not show enough discrepancy between ability and achievement. I wonder if Response to Intervention will be any better for these students? We can only hope….
Anita www.learntoreadnow.com
Re: conflict w/school psych at IEPTeam LD Tchr ?'s
I fairly certain I was correct for re-eval criteria, so I went to our state DPI website and did some research. Sure enough I found it! In our state it says (and this is law) that the student does not need to re-qualify, there are some questions to address to determine if there is still a need for sped. In fact in the interpretation it said they hoped there would be less of discrepancy, it meant the sped interventions were helping!
On top of that he had said the kid never qualified. As I dug further into the records he indeed DID qualify! The state has a chart that you can plug IQ and scores into and it will show on a graph where the cut-off is btwn having and not having a discrepancy. Sure enough this kid was 4 pts below the cut score and testing showed a processing deficit.
I am glad I tabled the meeting and called for it to reconvene. I meet with the director and the psych Wed to go over my findings. When I think of the kids he has pulled this on in the past and have gone without sevices it makes me so angry. I am glad he wasn’t able to pull it on this student.
Re: conflict w/school psych at IEPTeam LD Tchr ?'s
I hope you’re documenting all of this, ever so gently (because the facts speak for themselves). A letter saying that “I look foward t o our meeting. I hope we can correct some misconceptions from the last one. It is my understanding from ___ that he does not need to “re-qualify.” (Think I would save the fact taht he would qualify anyway for *after* he qualifies, in case they find a way around that because htey’re forewarned).
due to the new WISC-4 and also because the RSP teachers aren’t doing enough digging to keep them in. I work in secondary and we are having kids testing out even though they are struggling…I am an SLP so I am frequently asked to contribute to the team…and I can just about guarantee when I start digging into written language, i.e,. TOWL-3 Test of Written Language-III I I will find the discrepancy needed to keep the kid in Special Ed/RSP. They aren’t speech and language impaired they often have organizational issues and also don’t have the skills to express themselves in written language…
Just doing the WJ-III isn’t enough because kids are testing high in that too.