My 8 yr old son is struggling in 3rd grade. He’s having nightmares and hates going to school. His psychologist sent us to a child psychiatrist. The psychiatrist wants us have a neuro-psych evaluation. Cost is $2,800 for a full day of testing. (I spent $1200 about 4 yrs ago on testing that determined he has ADD.) I think my insurance will pay for part of this but not all. I think the psychiatrist is trying to find a “physical” reason for my son’s ADD. He mentioned something about a 504. Also mentioned something about more services and funding that would be available if they find anything in this evaluation.
Re: What is a 504?
I was just wondering why you have not started by requesting an full psychoeducational evaluation through the school? Even if he attends private school, the district he is from is still responsible for testing him?
$2,800 dollars seems like an awful lot of money. I am not against independent evals, I just wonder if you should start at the school level?
K.
Re: What is a 504?
I agree that starting with the school’s eval is a good thing; however, our district could not give many of the assessments that our third grade son needed to have, such as the TOVA, to rule out ADD/ADHD.
Our son’s complete evaluation by a pediatric neuropsychologist, who then attended the MFE team eval meeting with us, was the best $1500 we ever spent (our insurance ended up covering $848 of it). Many of the school psychologist’s initial impressions of our particular child were inaccurate, mostly because she only had a few instruments available to with which to assess him. He did not have ADD, but is afflicted with both an expressive and receptive language disabilities. All the IQ tests the school gave were verbal in nature, an arena where a child such as our son does not perform well, so they thought he just had a low IQ.
We knew he didn’t have a low IQ, but couldn’t disprove their results until he was given the C-TONI (Test of Non-Verbal Intelligence) and other assessments by the neuropsych.
Anyway, seems to be a common issue…but I certainly would request an Multi-factored Evaluation first from the school district. You can find the exact language (by all means, put it in writing) you should include by going to www.specialeducationohio.com and clicking on “How to Refer Your Child” under Article 1: School Law for Parents. You don’t have to live in Ohio for this to be applicable. This pertains to the Federal I.D.E.A. law. There is even a sample of the “Form for Referral”. Good luck!
I could explain it, but not as well as a well-known (in Central Ohio) education rights attorney. Check out this site: http://www.specialeducationohio.com/article3.html
It goes through the background of Article 504, what its powers are, and who is eligible in fairly straightforward writing.
If you go the homepage on the site, you will also see a section you can click on entitled, “How To Refer Your Child”, which is very straightforward and something every parent read before they try to wade through it themselves.
Good luck!