Hello,
I am new here and am here because I am concerned that my daughter may have a learning disability. Sorry that this is a long post. She has difficultly reading, mainly with phonetics and understanding the rules of blended sounds. She is a 3rd grader and reads at an early 2nd grade level. Spelling is difficult for her too. Her comprehension is good when it is at her reading level and if something is read to her. She’d developed some pretty good coping mechanisims up until the 2nd quarter of third grade when her reading and spelling grades dropped… confidence and self esteem fell along with it. She attends a parochial school and they do not have dedicated resources to help. I decided to take her to a tutor. She suggested I have her tested for dyslexia -she flips some letters, but not many. The public school denied that request because they don’t test for that. Her teacher has modified her spelling list and administers some tests orally, which as helped wih her grade, but doesn’t address the root problem. I taked to her doctor and he told me how to get the public school to test her. I wrote the letter with my concerns and mentioned the IDEA act. We had our meeting today and were informed they would not evaluate her because her teacher had not documented enough interventions with her and she had not been to the tutor yet. They advised her she needed to follow a certain teachers instructional manual and document. They recommended continuing wih a tutor and summer school. I don’t want to send her to summer school because I think she needs one on one and she does not need extra assistance in other subjects. She’s very strong in math. I think it would be really hard for her psychologically to have to go through it too after this year’s frustrations. We can revisit testing next year. She has made some progress with the tutor, which is wonderful, but both she and I agree about concerns wih an LD. What are my options since they have denied the eval? They told me they measure the difference between IQ and ability. I’m worried that if we wait, the tutoring will close the gap enough to disqualify her, she’ll still have the LD and no protections or extra help at school. Thanks for taking time to read all of this. Any advice is appreciated.
Hi Shelley and welcome to the forum,
When a parent requests an evaluation, legally it is actually a directive which the school has to carry out.
Also the law states that teachers don’t have the skills to identify whether an evaluation is required.
So that legally they cant deny a request.
Though it is better to not use the term Dyslexia, as many states don’t recognize that term.
Rather you want a general assessment, as your daughter is clearly having reading and spelling difficulties.
Which is more often diagnosed as a SLD, Specific Learning Disorder, with reading and/or writing.
Also once they have the assessment done, you can then request an IEE Independent Educational Evaluation. Where you can choose the evaluator.
This is often required, as the school’s psychologists evaluations, are often written to suit the school, than the student.
Identifying the ‘root problem/s’ is most important, as their are range of different causes of reading/ spelling disorders. If it isn’t clearly identified? Then schools will often go through a long process of trying an approach for 6 months, and if that doesn’t work? Try another one, which can go on for years, to maybe find the right one? So that a lot of time is wasted.
Where forcing a student to try different approaches that don’t help. Also damages a students self-esteem, as they come to believe that nothing will help. SO they might give up?
But their is a really helpful website called Wrightslaw, which provides a lot of information about the laws for Special Ed and what your right are. Which can help put you in control.
Here’s a link to a page on it:
[url]http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/test.force.school.htm[/url]