It would probably make more sense to have him evaluated by an OT, with a visual-motor measure, if you want to establish fine-motor deficits. Although of course, you certainly could ask to look at handwriting. The THWS-R really looks rather narrowly at handwriting of letters, words, and sentences. The PAL-II had a few more elements to it, especially with generation of written language, and fluency. If the school were anticipating a finding of no eligibility, I would expect it to be on the score that his writing when given AT (IOW, absent handwriting factors) is commensurate with his cognition, therefore what he needs is simply the accommodation of AT. In that case, measures purely of handwriting would have limited to no impact on the argument to declassify (since the response would be, why then, use AT). Measures beyond what have already been given would need to address deficits in actual written expression (whether in mechanics or language), not handwriting.

As to EF, ADHD, etc. evals: by all means ask for them if you, your child, or his teachers perceive concerns in those areas.

The questions for special education are always 1) is there an impairment (i.e., a documented disability in one of the qualifying disability areas); 2) does the impairment impact access to education; 3) is there a need for skills remediation in order to access education.

It would appear that your school-based evaluator is setting up documentation to support both 1) and 2). Generally, that signals that she wants to continue to offer 3) as well. So, to begin with, I think the special ed teacher, at any rate, is in favor of continuing the IEP. There's no minimum extent of evaluation necessary to maintain eligibility, so keeping testing to just the KTEA-Brief is not a priori evidence for either dismissal or an inadequate eval. On a reeval, one should evaluate in the areas of suspected disability, to the extent necessary to a) make a finding regarding eligibility, b) outline relevant accommodations, and c) identify meaningful goals (if eligible). When the same team has been working with the student for some time, b) & c) are often already reasonably well understood without additional formal assessment.

Last edited by aeh; 10/14/19 03:36 PM. Reason: changed my indices

...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...