Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Feeling vindicated

No real question, just need to express my relief at results that make sense...

DD12 just had more testing done.

3 years ago she had the DAS-II without the processing speed subtest: result 132, nicely balanced, but she was sobbing in class every day.

This spring she had a wider set of tests. Most of them came out in the 95-120 range, quite variable, with these exceptions.

WISC-IV
VCI 142
PRI 141
WMI 123
PSI 94
GAI 151

and...

WJ III Cog Rapid Picture Naming 89
WJ III Ach Academic Fluency 86 (all fluency subtests were below 95)
TOWL 3 and WPT - all subtests at or below 1st percentile

So, I guess now I know I belong in this section of the forum.
The office that did the testing does educational interventions, not neuropsych, and while they described her as 2E they are not specialists in it. So... if we want to do anything further with this than get a 504 and a writing ed therapist, we need to find another office. Sigh.

Deep breath.

Do you have testing for phonological awareness, too?

How is your DD feeling?

Hi ljoy,

I'm glad you're vindicated! It is so important that things make sense-- your DD will be happier when she knows the exact reason for her challenges.

I do think the neuropsych is a good idea. We have found that it's easiest to make school fit properly when you know exactly what the difficulties are, and what the best practices are for correcting or working around them.

I think they didn't test phonological awareness, unless that's the same as Letter-Word Identification (120). Maybe I should find someplace that can do that?

She's incredibly mature now and can separate her trouble writing from her intelligence and value as a person. She wishes she could read faster, and of course she wishes she could write more than five sentences a night. Now that she's in middle school she's adapted to spending a lot of time on homework, several hours if there's writing. She complains so little.

Overall I think she's proud she managed the year back in the generic public school after her gifted private elementary. The private made huge accommodations just based on classroom observations, without anything formal, and this year she had no accommodations at all aside from occasional class work finished at home. Her grades are fine. She is ready to put in effort for remediation if there's reason to believe in it.

Letter-Word ID is not a measure of phonological processing, but of word calling. It's not even a good measure of decoding skills, as it's a list of real words that she may have memorized. If you want PP testing done, the gold standard is the CTOPP-2. There will be a decent (at face value; no clinical track record, so I can't speak to that) PP section on the new WJIV. The existing WJIII has a couple of PP subtests on it, but they are all in the extended set, not the standard. One caveat: very bright, verbal, adolescent dyslexics may do fine on the majority of the CTOPP or other PP measures, as they often have developed their own compensatory mechanisms. Even if there are phonological processing issues, they tend to be very subtle by this age, and with this cognitive ability level. You'll have to pay careful attention to the phoneme manipulation tasks (e.g., deletion, reversal), especially those using non-real words, where she is less likely to be using general verbal knowledge and cognition to compensate for weak PP.

The top line here is actually that the numbers you report would qualify her for an IEP, not just a 504, as the writing achievement is well below both normative and individual expectations. You are also reporting educational impact, despite her good grades, as she is having to use inordinate amounts of time and effort to complete grade-level work. She would qualify under pretty much any of the current criteria for SLD: aptitude-achievement, pattern of strengths and weaknesses, cross-battery, and RTI (if you use her reading/writing speed). The very low TOWL scores indicate that it's not just an issue of writing speed, as the majority of the TOWL has no time limits.

You must be very proud of her maturity, poise, and self-awareness. That is what will take her the furthest in life, and as a human being, without a doubt.

aeh, thanks for the detailed information. The two TOWL scores we have are for Contextual Conventions and Story Composition. If there is more to that test it may not have been administered, because the WJ Ach non-fluency writing scores were ok - in that 95-120 band.

We haven't met with the school yet. I think we were pursuing 504 rather than IEP because IEPs provide tutoring services for one period a day and she doesn't want to give up an elective. Since she has an existing medical 504 it will also be relatively fast to set up, and we want it in place before the summer math placement exam. We may try for IEP also if it seems worth it, but it would probably be November before it was set up. Is this a reasonable plan?

And yes, we are extremely proud of her.

This is really good info form aeh... I am commenting so I can find it again later!

The I in IEP stands for INDIVIDUAL. If she doesn't need or want to give up the elective, there is no reason to. Services can be pushed into a class, or delivered as summer tutoring, or whatever the team agrees is appropriate to that particular student.

2E kids in particular have IEPs that don't look like "standard" IEPs. But there should be NO standard IEP.

First, identify the needs as clearly as you can, then you and the school team and your DD should together figure out what steps will address those needs, THEN work it into a schedule that works for her.

ljoy, can you tell us a little bit more about her challenges in school, specifically her writing and/or reading challenges? The reason I ask is that my DS14 also performed extremely *extremely* poorly on the TOWL when he was evaluated by his school, as well as having a significant discrepancy between VIQ/PRI and PSI on the WISC, and lower scores on WJ-III frequency tests. The reason for the low scores on the WISC and WJ-III were primarily due to handwriting *speed* but the lower TOWL scores reflected (for my ds) a significant difficulty with expressive language when using written expression. If that's what's going on with your dd, I'd recommend an evaluation by a Speech Language Pathologist (which you could request from the school as part of an IEP eligibility review). I'd also request the IEP - as DeeDee mentioned, IEPs are "individual" education plans, and that one period study hall you've mentioned is used, in our school district, for the students who need help with organization (keeping track of assignments, making sure they have are on target with their homework etc). The goals and action plan to work toward goals on each student's IEP is put together by the IEP team, which includes parents. If anything, I would think it's at least worth going through the eligibility process for your dd and then rejecting the IEP if you think it's just not a good idea.

In the meantime, I'd also recommend more private testing - for the speech eval. My ds' speech eval did not have #s low enough to qualify for speech services through the school district, but did show a significant discrepancy in subtests, very similar to the WISC in range. He was given a diagnosis of dysgraphia + expressive language disorder by his SLP, and he's worked with the same private SLP now for several years, and for him - it was *the* single most important educational "help" that he's had.

Struggling with written expression can be extremely tough not only because of the increasing demands on students as they move up in school, but because of the toll it can take on self-confidence, particularly for intellectually gifted students who can't show the world the full extent of their knowledge. So my last suggestion is - don't just focus on the 504 and AT and testing scores, be sure that you look closely and try to determine what the hang-ups in the writing process (or reading) are for your dd.

Best wishes,

polarbear

So the portion of the TOWL that was administered does have a time limit (15 minutes), but should still generate a reasonable score if at least 30-50 words were written (one good paragraph).

I would agree that modifying her existing 504 is the quickest way to get accommodations in place. You may wish to start the IEP eligibility process sooner rather than later, though, in parallel with monitoring the effectiveness of the new accommodations, as, although you can ask for reduced writing work load as a 504 accommodation, it will have more legs if it's in an IEP.

And yes, if she doesn't want to lose her elective, the IEP team can decide on another way to provide her with the services she needs. In fact, ideally, she should be receiving inclusion services in writing, so that she can work on her writing using actual ELA/SS assignments, rather than additional work, so the general ed teacher receives the benefit of consult and modeling of accommodations from the special ed teacher, and so there is continuity between strategies and accommodations taught by the special ed teacher and those provided by the general ed teacher.

FWIW, when our ds was evaluated for IEP eligibility, his WJ-III Achievement scores in writing and fluency subtests were lower than the scores reported by ljoy, but they were still well above the "cut-off" bars that our school district publishes as qualifying requirements for IEP. We did successfully advocate for an IEP (SLD / written expression) for our ds, but it wasn't easy. The roadblocks for us were those very low bars that the district used as a guideline for qualifying (and tried to present to parents as absolute cut-offs), combined with our ds' high ability scores and also high state testing scores (in spite of being below 1% percentile on the TOWL, he was only one or two points away from scoring "advanced" on his state writing testing - the key as an advocate is to understand not only the nitty gritty details of your child's challenge but also the specific points such as how a test is administered, what is being asked on the test, how the response is given etc - in our ds' case, he struggled with generating ideas for written expression and those were the two points he missed on the state test - everything else was a grammar or spelling etc question which he got correct. On the TOWL he couldn't produce any work to be scored from because he didn't know how to put his thoughts on paper). (aeh, I am probably not explaining this as well as you can!)

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that sometimes schools will look at absolute scores and these scores, while significantly low for the student who was tested, might also be looked at by school staff as "a-ok". That's where as a parent, we really have to be a strong advocate in understanding test scores and being able to explain them to school staff.


This is a really important point, and one our advocate really stressed with us. Not only the amount of time that work was taking, but also if your dd is frustrated or experiencing anxiety over the amount of time and effort her work is taking.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps ljoy - one other thing I wanted to mention above and forgot to include - again, I don't know what your dd's specific challenge is, but as I mentioned my ds was extremely challenged with written expression - in his case the primary issue was getting his thoughts out of his head, as well as challenges with summarizing information and with organizing his thoughts once he had ideas to write about. Because he had severe challenges with these specific pieces of written expression, he also lost out on several years worth of written expression instruction and progress that his classmates were experiencing simply because he wasn't producing any written expression. So - when he was finally evaluated by an SLP in 5th grade he was really really really struggling with written expression and during middle school that resulted in him routinely spending (guesstimate here - by ds and myself) around 3 times longer than his classmates on homework every night due to his writing challenges. The really cool thing though is that after having worked with his SLP since 5th grade, and with a lot of help with scaffolding at home, he's now, at the end of 8th grade, made tremendous progress in written expression and that progress has not only helped decrease the amount of extra time he was putting into classroom work and homework, it's made a huge impact on his self confidence and self esteem.

polarbear, you are exactly right. The two subtests referenced form the Spontaneous Writing composite, and are derived from an open-ended writing exercise, which is extremely challenging for students whose written expression deficit primarily has to do with idea generation, organization, initiation, or elaboration. I hope at least one of these is in the IEP goals.

I understand that Contextual Conventions has a picture prompt. I'm not sure about the Story Composition section.

An IEP, tuned to my DD's needs -- phonological skills, writing, spelling, anxiety, and self-esteem -- brought her Spontaneous Writing Composite scores on the TOWL from a 92 to a 150 in a year and a half. Intervention works.

Actually, they both do--because they are scored from the same student product, using different rubrics.Yes, it does, when done appropriately and well!

(warning - I started with a short reply and it grew - feel free to ignore! plus anyone who's been around these forums for awhile has already heard it previously... but for aeh, I will go ahead and leave it all here - it felt good to write it out again lol!)


aeh, my ds had very weak IEP goals (with no outline on how to measure progress). By the time I'd come up to speed (working with an advocate and also getting advice from our local disability legal services) the fight for updating and maintaining his IEP was just not worth it. The sad thing was that after several years of never-ending advocating, and finally getting an IEP, we were still left with teachers who didn't believe ds needed help and preferred to think it was ds being lazy rather than an actual challenge (ds has had a diagnosis of dyspraxia and dysgraphia since 2nd grade, as well as years of classroom evidence that he couldn't produce written expression). By the time he'd reached the end of 5th grade my ds was aware enough to realize that I was spending a tremendous amount of time advocating for help for him, he knew he had an IEP that specifically stated he was supposed to be getting help, and he knew that he wasn't getting that help and that his teachers didn't seem to care if he ever learned how to write. He was also put in the position (by the teachers at school) of having to request the accommodations outlined in his IEP each time he wanted to use them, rather than being encouraged or at least allowed to use them all the time - which is what he needed and what was specified in the IEP. These realizations on his part intersected with an increasing frustration that the rest of school - the discussions about science and history etc were extremely boring to him because he was in a regular classroom with non-gifted peers. All of that coming together in a maturing kid led to ds simply telling us at the end of 5th grade "I'm not going back". We pulled him out and sent him to a private school (recommended by his neuropsych because they were technology-friendly) where he didn't have an IEP but he had teachers who were happy to let him use his laptop for classwork and who believed us as parents when we explained what ds' challenges were and who were personally happy to help meet ds where he was.

It was like night and day suddenly being able to drop my child off at school in the morning and not have to prepare myself mentally for the next round of emails requesting that ds be allowed to use his laptop, without having to explain over and over again what the impact of dysgraphia is, without having to follow up to make sure my ds was actually receiving services, without having to fight for proper placement in class based on his intellectual abilities (among other things, ds was held back in math in elementary school because he couldn't write fast enough on math facts quizzes and because he had difficulty writing out word problems - yet this is the same ds who at his new school was immediately multi-year subject accelerated in math and never blinked an eye or made a grade less than "A"). We gave up on school meeting ds' needs and pursued the private SLP (which I mentioned above, ds would never have qualified for through the school district in spite of so desperately needing it). I mentioned above that ds' low written subtest scores on the WJ-III weren't low enough to meet the school district policy for IEP eligibility. I didn't mention that in spite of his not having produced enough words on the TOWL to even have it *scored* - and scoring in the 5th percentile on another test that was given in place of the TOWL (after the school psych made my ds sit for the TOWL twice because he was convinced my ds was just being lazy or not trying or whatever instead of acknowledging that not producing words was exactly what was happening in class and that it was a real issue for ds )... we *still* had school staff trying to convince us that ds was "a-ok" and didn't need an IEP.

I so often wonder and worry about the kids out there who's needs go entirely unrecognized in our district and elsewhere, or who's parents don't have the knowledge or energy to relentlessly advocate, or who's parents don't have the resources to pull their children out of public school when it's not working. Honestly, my ds would have been in just a soooo not-so-good place at this point in his life without intensive help. He was already on the verge of being diagnosed with severe depression at the end of 2nd grade due to anxiety that was *all* classroom related due to his then-undiagnosed LD.

If you haven't noticed, I am a passionate person when it comes to things that matter to me - and as you also most likely know, parenting a 2e child is so time-intensive. (And ds is one of two 2e kids in this house, and sandwiched in between I have a child with physical challenges - so there is precious little time left over for much else other than parenting lol!) - but I do so wish/hope that I can somehow do something someway at some point in time to help make a difference for the kids in my school district who are perhaps not receiving the help they need and deserve.

Sorry for the long semi-rant! And aeh, thanks so much for your insightful and knowledgeable contributions here on the forums - we really appreciate your input!

polarbear

Thank you so much for sharing this. I wish every special ed administrator, evaluator, and teacher could hear accounts like this from families, periodically, to remind them that there are real, lasting impacts, not only academic, but emotional as well, when children's needs are not acknowledged or addressed.

We have been very blessed with our children's school experience (partly because we didn't leave it in the hands of the public schools--a direct outgrowth of my employment in the same), but I know not to take that for granted.

I have posted this article on here before but it's germane to this thread. Here is another story of child-find gone wrong, very wrong:

http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/how-apraxia-got-my-son-suspended-from-school/

I have personally talked with these people. I am facebook friends with the mom in this story. It is a true story. They are in a school district close to me that is a very wealthy district and suppose to be an excellent district.

In my experience, with my school district, they do not seem to like to find 'learning disabilities' - they don't like things like dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc. They REALLY do not like writing disabilities at all and seem to go to to great lengths not to identify them or deal with them. They do not understand the behaviors that can result from LDs and they have little to no understanding of dyspraxia. Even though it is blatantly clear my son has dysgraphia and I specifically requested he be looked at for dyslexia and dysgraphia last year, the school gave him an IQ test and a bunch of adhd evals and tests. They seem to "Child-Find" with ADHD and Autism but not anything else. They seem to want to push any kind of problem into one of those two boxes. I think my school is good with those issues - people in the autism community are generally happy with our school. But having a kid with a writing disability, my experience has been really really bad. And the school would never identify it or test for it.

Wow, Irena, that's a harrowing experience.

This story is harrowing. As a parent of a child who has had school anxiety, in 6th grade I can completely believe this. I was called to school once because my son started behaving inappropriately in class and the principal and an aide has my son CORNERED. And the rest of the class was excused to recess early because my son was supposed to be dangerous. And they hoped that when I got to school, I could get him to talk. It's easy to see how easy it would be for a school to misinterpret this kind of behavior.

My hugs and sympathy go out this family. The freakiest part of me, is it's looks quite possible this happened at the elementary school I attended for a few years to as a kid.

I can totally see that story happening at DD's school, because the gossip is out of control. It can happen so easily if a teacher gossips about an odd behavior, the other person says "sounds like the kid is sexually abused" without even knowing the child or seeing the behavior, the first person says "hmmmm, that's probably it, what else could it be" because they don't understand disabilities, and pretty soon it spins out of control. Plus people in the elementary level just don't seem particularly bright, they are just average (in general, I'm not saying that there aren't bright, reasonable elem. teachers out there). Reg. ed teachers don't have training on disabilities but they have training on mandated reporting. All of those things combine and pretty soon a simple behavior (rocking due to anxiety) becomes sexual abuse and no one listens to a single thing the parents have to say.

Anyway, I'm keeping my eye on this thread because I'm wondering if some of it applies to DD. She has slow processing speed on the WISC and her OT yesterday said she was trying to figure out this processing speed issue because it's not obvious to her, and she played games with DD. DD was amazing with some sort of 3D puzzle and did it really fast. Then she played an alphabet game with her where she started at Z and went backwards. DD was supposed to name animals that start with each letter. DD only named something like 14 in 4 minutes which is abysmal. Her reading fluency is really high but she's not fast or fluent in other areas, so I'm trying to figure out what it all means.

I noticed of the tests was given was "WPT" What test is that? What does the acronym stand for?

The biggest writing issue is a complete inability to write anything requiring original thought in class or in finite time. She can copy sentences or write quick notes, possibly slower than average but it happens. She has gotten exactly 80% on every social studies and literature test all year. The last one was sent home because she was not in class that day and I found out they include a long section of multiple choice followed by two writing prompts; I strongly suspect she always gets 100% on the multiple choice and no-words-written on the paragraphs. At home she can create the paragraphs but it takes many hours. I need to sit with her and ask things like "It mentions this character. What do you know about this character? I haven't read the book - why would she do that?" Every time she says something, I tell her to write it down (which she can do well enough). Eventually we get enough to call it a day.

Sometimes I get the impression that it hasn't occurred to her that she needs to say these things out loud/on paper. I think she gets stuck in some sort of loop where she is filtering her expression to only say things that are not obvious, and they all seem obvious to her, so she says nothing at all. A lot of what we have done at home this year to bring her output up is to have her turn in work full of the dumb answers, the absolute lowest possible acceptable answer, because at least she can produce that. Her quality has dropped to about what she was able to produce in 3rd grade, but she can do it now instead of turning in nothing at all.

Reading and writing are both a bit slow and labored. She really prefers me to read fiction to her over reading it herself, though she will read on her own all day long if I don't have time. Her pace feels slow to me, but I know I read fast so I try not to judge her by that. She avoids writing whenever she can get away with it and looks for the fewest-words solution when jotting notes, but she will write them eventually. Handwriting, punctuation, and grammar are fine. Spelling is improving, but she can still spell the same word three different ways in the same paragraph and not notice.

Other things we see at home that might or might not be related are: zero sense of time unless she has set a timer, can't formulate a response to a question when anyone in the room is talking, took a long time to learn to follow a sequence of directions (take off your shoes, put the book in your room, and wash your hands so you can have a snack), has a very hard time making a timely response to a stimulus like speaking on cue in a play or catching a thrown beach ball.

The tester believes her main difficulty is in retrieval speed: it takes her a very long time to call up things that she definitely knows. I'm... not convinced. This is a part of it, for sure, but it doesn't explain all the issues. I think we should do further testing with a 2E specialist; though the existing office has been lovely to work with and is willing to do more, I don't think they have the expertise we need. So right now my wish list for further testing includes phonological processing and SLP specifically applied to an HG kid.

Writing Process Test. Apparently another example of look at a picture, create a written piece. Maybe the TOWL is a story, and WPT is an essay? In either case, she got -0- words without help. Experimentally, the tester then gave her a graphic organizer, prompted her to create the various parts that needed to be written, and even took dictation for her on the TOWL. This brought her writing product into the average range: TOWL Story Composition 50th %ile, WPT Development 60th, WPT Fluency 95th. Of course this is not a normal administration but it does show that she has ideas but is incapable of writing them under the normal conditions.

504 meeting today. The path is begun. I can't actually tell if it went well or not - opinions welcomed.

DH and I brought the educational tester (T) to 'explain the results' and be forceful for us where needed. I opened by saying we saw problems, but didn't really know exactly what they were or how to solve them, and so we had her tested, and T can communicate the results more clearly than we can. She explained the findings in the testing. The school psychologist seemed pretty familiar and happy with what had been done but pointed out that it would be a mistake to count the trouble spots as below average; fluency and processing speed are lower than her sky-high reasoning score but not really a problem in themselves. T pointed out that as soon as any academic task required applying processing speed, the score dropped precipitously. They finally accepted that this was true (but I'm not sure if they just wanted to move on).

Accommodations:

extra time for testing, in a separate room, no problem.

reduction of assignments such as doing only odd math problems or two paragraphs instead of three, got pushback: this is something that has to be negotiated with individual teachers and makes no sense to do here and now for next year, and besides it isn't always possible. Eventually wrangled an agreement to have a standard assignment reduction in place unless the teacher specifies that it doesn't apply to that assignment. They wanted DD to be responsible for asking the teacher what the reduction would be for every assignment individually.

elimination of paragraph-style writing assignments in math class got extreme pushback. We asked for bullet points on any assignment outside of English class that required more than a one-sentence response. They wanted to not modify writing requirements at all until at least 8-10 weeks into the next school year, when we could 'see how it goes and the teachers get to know DD'. We eventually got what we wanted for now, and an agreement to meet again at 4 weeks into the term to tweak the plan.

Clear communication of due dates and ahead-of-time topic warnings for in-class writing assignments: they have a set of teachers in mind that uses the online assignment system particularly well and will try to put her with that group. There aren't any in-class writing tasks where she wouldn't know in advance what the topic was in 7th grade. (Sounds dubious to me.)

They offered an adaptive technology ...review? referral? which they will take care of themselves. It was nice to have something offered without having to ask.

We had it pointed out to us that a kid who can get As and Bs doesn't need accommodations, no matter how much effort it takes to get them. I used my test example above - gets 80% because she knows all the multiple choice but can't write a single word for the free response section - and was accused of wanting them to give her A++ on everything. 80% is fine, right? What are we complaining about?

It is very odd to me that an educational institution is more moved by her having had to give up afterschool drama to put in the extreme effort she does than they were by the total time of the effort (2-4 hours a day, on one project, every day including weekends) or by the fact that she consistently writes zero words in-class.

In hindsight, this looks pretty grim. Do you all agree?

My philosophy is that any step in the right direction is a good meeting. You did make progress today, got accommodations, and got them thinking.

Start collecting evidence now. The social studies tests are great examples. It's not about getting 100%, but about being able to show what she knows. In future meetings, you'll have more evidence and you'll have a more fluent ability to discuss her difficulties. One point to start making is that a kid with school engagement, high grades, and high IQ is on target for honors and AP classes in high school. These are writing intensive classes. The school needs to find a way to start lowering the barrier for her to produce written work now such that she can grow towards that goal.

Have you met with a SLP for an evaluation? Some of what you say hits a language red flag for me. The fluency of developing ideas is something SLPs can address.

geofizz and mon, thank you. Perspective is good.

Today's meeting was certainly better than the one from three years ago when they suggested the main problem was in DD's ability to manage the frustration of not being able to express the ideas she was able to think, which was going to be accommodated by giving her frequent breaks. Probably by carrying dictionaries to the psych's office. Apparently the psych has a stack of dictionaries she distributes to teachers for this purpose and often has a stack of six on her desk by the end of the day. The concept of helping her learn to express these ideas was something they "had neither the resources nor the responsibility to do."

Another vote for an SLP - I need to find out how to get one privately, I don't think going through the school will be worth the hassle for us. It's very good to know that the person looking at DD is working for us and no one else. When we find one, we should probably have DD7 evaluated too. She's in speech at school but it isn't helping much, and she forms her sentences very oddly. Lots of them, but odd. Expressing ideas is, shall we say, not a problem... I doubt they have many challenges in common. I have two children and they are DIFFERENT.

The counselor looked so pitying when she explained that with CC everything is about writing. I realized later the look may have meant "I know you think your kid is good at math, but they just changed the definition of good at math to include paragraph writing and she isn't anymore. I'm sorry."

It sounds to me like there are both initiation and sequencing issues, which are more in the category of executive functioning/planning/organization problems. If she's having difficulty prioritizing thoughts to put in writing, that's an EF issue, too. When you are scaffolding her writing at home, you are being her frontal lobe. I would agree that having an SLP look at her would be good, and maybe a neuropsych, too, for the EF questions.

Multiple spellings is highly unusual in children this age and of this ability, and is a significant clinical finding. Might want to tease out whether that is an EF issue (poor self-monitoring, so that she might actually know the same spelling for a word (correct or incorrect), but doesn't have good "quality control" for what she actually puts down on paper), or poor phonological processing, and hence lack of solid orthographic mapping of sound to phoneme.

I think I have mentioned elsewhere that older and cognitively high functioning kids with underlying phonological processing deficits often do well on the simpler phonological processing tests, and need careful attention to phoneme manipulation (e.g., deletion, reversal) tasks, especially those using nonsense words.

I always had problems with spelling. It just wasn't my thing. No other writing problems other than awkward left handed handwriting.

It was a specific strategy for my to have multiple spellings of the same word as a young kid...the hope that maybe one of the spellings would be correct.

Also I used to change my word choice to a word I could spell.

ok, aeh, that is beginning to make sense. Somehow I always thought EF and ADHD were the same thing but this sounds like the problems she has:
But in addition to the ratings scales I've now filled out three times, she had these tests to check EF this spring. These look like ok scores to me, are they the right tests?

Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System
Trail Making Test
Visual Scanning 13
Number Sequencing 10
Letter Sequencing 13
Number-Letter Switching 13
Motor Speed 11
Color-Word Interference Test
Color Naming 11
Word Reading 11
Inhibition 11
Inhibition/Switching 09

Conners' Continuous Performance Test (no score - is this a test that creates a score?)
"High number of commission errors and atypical detectability but typical response style and did well at shifting response speed...not indicative of attention problems"

As for multiple spellings, until this year she never seemed to know what the real spelling was. Now she seems to know but not have enough attention to notice when she misspells the word (because she's busy writing), and she can't proofread for spelling. I can tell because her handwriting and her spelling go downhill at the same rate when the idea complexity goes up. I'm convinced the phonological processing needs a good hard look in the context of her overall ability, just need to find the right person to do it.

I would consider ADHD to be a subset of EF dysfunction. There are individuals with EF dysfunction who do not meet criteria for ADHD. For instance, having impulsivity but not attentional dysregulation.
Yes. This is a good test for EF. Her scores are none of them truly weak, but think about how they compare to her cognition. Plus, the Conners' CPT (yes, it does generate scores, but they are not in the same format as the ones most people are used to seeing, and they require more clinical interpretation) mainly tells us only that inattention is not a major issue. It doesn't rule out other issues, and even suggests that there might be something going on with regard to inhibition--which lines up with the inhibition/switching score and inhibition score on the DKEFS, which are among her lowest scores.

And this spelling profile is consistent with some vulnerability in self-editing, which is also related to inhibition, on top of weak phonological processing.

Awesome. Thank you so much, aeh.

Update:
School started last week. Math placement exam was the week before - she bombed it. I can't prove that it's because she didn't have accommodations.
The counselor's computer broke, so she lost her draft and has to recreate the 504 from her handwritten notes. I'm not sure she has any. We certainly don't have a document yet. We have a new meeting date for exactly 30 days after that placement test, two weeks from now.
The counselor did not inform the new teachers that DD has any difficulties whatsoever.
The school psych has been replaced, so the old one won't have any input. I'm not sure the new one has been invited to the meeting.
We've learned that although last year's teacher recommended DD for the writing help class, the counselor chose not to offer it to her.
DD has come home stonefaced/crying twice (in five class days) over the writing load in her math class. Every time they do group work, she has to write NINE complete sentences analyzing the work. At her pace, this would take nine hours.
One morning she didn't make it to first period because the front office sent her in to see the new psych instead because "I'm not going to send a kid to class if she's crying."
She is so paralyzed she can't even think about what might help.

It's not looking good. I wish we had a good private option here.

The most we have going for us is that a second opinion says we don't need further testing and our current recommendations are the right ones. Second best, we found a writing therapist DD likes and will work for, but she's booked until at least the end of college essay season. We are also pretty happy with her teachers/classes this year - if she can actually access the curriculum, we believe she will learn something new. That IF is the problem.

{bump}

and big hugs to you and your DD.

I just looked back at your post from May. You said then that this upcoming meeting was to "tweak" the plan. From what you've written here it doesn't sound like any part of the plan you wrote about then is actually being applied. This therefore would not qualify in my book as a "tweaking" meeting.

My understanding is they had *5* days to get your plan in writing after the last meeting. A broken computer, replaced school psych, counselor not informing teachers or placing her in the correct class, not providing the reduced writing accommodation - these are all big problems but not something your DD should have to be baring the brunt of. This kind of thing makes me irate!

I tend to be among the more aggressive folks here so take my input with a grain of salt. I would go into the next meeting armed for bear. No more pleasantries as I ask nicely for favors. That didn't work. I would request that the district provide a thorough evaluation. Someone here can correct me if I am wrong but I believe they have to do their own evaluations first and then you can reject their finding and request an outside evaluation at their expense. I think you definitely need a good SLP evaluation and a neuropsych eval. It sounds like she has some serious difficulties that are going to get worse unless the school understands them and properly accommodates her.

Again because I have learned to be more aggressive I would stop the outside supports. Over and over I have seen parents spend innumerable hours and many thousands of dollars on outside supports so their kids can appear to function on grade level, masking their issues and allowing districts to say just what yours told you - she doesn't qualify for supports. It can be hard but I would take the position of she is NOT going to spend all those hours on homework, she is NOT going to write those sentences in math class but will do the bullet points you mentioned in May, etc. Let her know you have her back and she is not going to be in any trouble. Once the school team sees what she produces when she is operating on her own skill level they will have to provide accommodations. They have to see the problems as they exist in order to accommodate for them. Maybe at home with supports from you the 9 sentences in math might be possible - they are seeing for themselves how hard it is on her own.

Your second opinion may say that these are the right accommodations but it sounds like she's not actually receiving them. That needs to become the district's problem. Right now it's your DD's problem. That dynamic has to change.

Hang tough - you are doing great. In my experience you have to be willing to let a little Mama Bear show through to protect your cub. Right now she sounds rather overwhelmed. Poor kid...