Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional gifted/not below grade level/ no IEP?

My dd7 is just plain normal gifted (not HG/PG) with ADHD and dysgraphia.

We went to the school for a "PPT" today and they read the line for what is required for an IEP, which is that she would need to be below grade level. My dd7 is definitely not below grade level - but I also don't think she is hitting her potential either. It just feels like "grade level" is just a low bar to set for a gifted kid. I'm new to all of this, so I don't even know what I would think that the school would do or could do. Maybe they really can't do anything. I just felt so dismissed - I thought it would be more of a collaborative discussion along the lines of "how can we help this kid to produce her best work" and it was more like:

Administration: This is the bar: grade level. Is she below the bar?
Teacher: No.
Administration: Parents, do you dispute this?
Us: no.

Class dismissed.

I'm sure this has been addressed before - so if someone could direct me to some resources that would be fantastic.

We took my middle son in for 2E testing a couple of years ago, and they told us that he'd have to have achievement or other scores below a very low percentile (16th) in order to qualify for services.

It's hard to give you advice without knowing what state you're in, as laws vary from state to state. Here's general link: Special Ed. and the law

Lillie-Felton addresses this very issue. Directly.

Well, it's the opposite problem-- that is, that "placement" cannot specifically exclude GT in a child qualified for an IEP under IDEA-- but it's definitely a precedent-setting case that has bearing on a situation like this.

mom123 - Has your DD's assessment included any WIAT-type achievement testing that you could use?

We're in a similar place with DD7 (dyslexic, probable ADHD-I). She's got strong compensating mechanisms and finished grade 2 with all Bs. But on some WIAT tests where the task was so specific she couldn't mask her deficits with strengths, her scores were very low. I would suspect with dysgraphia you may see similar kinds of patterns?

Also, I think our current teacher is likely to say that DD has "hit her wall", and class performance is about to plummet. We're hoping to demonstrate that the "two-year deficit" is already there in some WIAT sub-tests, even if it is not YET showing up in the report cards. And do we have to wait until after she fails, if we have clear evidence that she is probably about to?

Keep us posted on how the discussions go - don't give up!

The route to supportive services for a 2e kid is very state/local ed. authority-dependent. Federal law certainly leaves plenty of space to qualify a gifted student working at grade level as special needs, but states have made different decisions about how they will qualify students. Go to the state DOE website and look up the eligibility guidelines for special education/IEPs/504s. Keep in mind that it may even differ by the school district. And, beyond that, your local administrators may be in ignorance of their own state and local criteria, as it is likely that they rarely encounter this situation.

Some possible routes to eligibility: aptitude-achievement discrepancy formula (easiest to use for 2e children), pattern of strengths and weaknesses (PSW) formula, RTI inadequate progress (failure to make a year's growth in a year's time, regardless of starting point--requires progress monitoring data). These are key words that you should keep an eye out for in the SPED regs of your state.

We are in Connecticut. It seems like, from the meeting - the bar is - is she at grade level? The answer for this question can only come from her teacher, I was told - because it only matters how she is doing in the classroom - not how she did on our own external testing, not how she is at home. So even though, for example, she tested as dysgraphic by our tester - the teacher sees her as "meeting or exceeding grade level expectations"

I guess it is hard to accept that "meets or exceeds grade level expectations" is going to be where the bar is set. I guess I would kind of expect a gifted kid to be performing well above grade level, unless there is a problem.

You might see this thread: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/201847/1.html

I like the 2E material that Wrightslaw has aggregated:
http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/2e.index.htm

Relevant quote from a Department of Education memo regarding 2e:
"... it would be inconsistent with the IDEA for a child, regardless of whether the child is gifted, to be found ineligible for special education and related services under the SLD category solely because the child scored above a particular cut score established by State policy."

Which sounds to me like working at grade level as a sole measure would be considered inconsistent with the Individuals with Disabilities Act.

I think the first thing to do when advocating is to have a firm idea of what you want to see for your child in the classroom - yes, we all want our children to be able to work at their abilities and to be able to show their knowledge - but what does that *specifically* mean for your child in this classroom?

An IEP is provided to students who need individualized instruction outside of the norm for their grade/academic level etc. Typically this is meant to bring a child up to a certain standing with respect to grade level. I don't know about your specific state/district, but in our school district the minimum performance bars that a child typically falls under to be *obviously* in need of an IEP are very very low. The standards for what *any* child is expected to achieve in a typical classroom are not all that high either - chances are there are quite a few children in any given classroom in my particular school district who are not challenged to their full ability, even if they aren't technically intellectually gifted.

So - what you need to do is figure out - what does my child need? With 2e kids, there will be a need for challenge in their area of strength, but that advocacy usually lies outside the IEP process (at least it does in my district - some districts include gifted services in IEPs). It's fairly typical for 2e kids to need either accommodations or remediation for their "challenging" e - and that is what it sounds like you are seeking at this point. So the first question is - does she need actual instruction in anything? Do you want her to have handwriting instruction or typing instruction, or does she need individualized instruction for written expression? What did her evaluator recommend for each of those?

With dysgraphic kids, the main focus is often accommodations rather than remediation. My dysgraphic ds had limited remediation (none of it offered through his school), and that was really, imo, enough. Having him spend school time working on handwriting that was not going to ever significantly improve was not a priority for us. He went through a school-year's worth of private handwriting OT which gave him legible handwriting, good posture while writing, even pencil pressure, and (temporarily) eliminated pain while handwriting. Those were all *great* things and if you can get OT services through your school that will work toward those goals, that's great. We couldn't, and ultimately I think it was better for our ds to do the OT privately because he wasn't missing out on other classroom instruction during the day due to OT pull-outs. The downside of course, was the cost. It was just one of those situations where, no matter which way we argued it, we were not going to be able to qualify him because of an odd qualifying requirement in our school district policy which was *not* related to actual fine motor skills (or lack thereof lol). We could have argued and argued, possibly never gotten anywhere, and missed our opportunity to get the services we *were* able to successfully advocate for.

What was extremely important for our ds in school were accommodations - scribing when he was diagnosed, and keyboarding as soon as he had minimal keyboarding skills. You might want the school to provide lessons in keyboarding -- we didn't ask for that (we had him practice at home), but some people here have had success at requesting this, both through IEPs and through 504s. Oral response on fluency tests was important in early elementary (for the ever-present timed math facts quizzes), extended time on testing, and allowing him to write in the answer booklet on standardized tests rather than having to fill in bubble sheets. Copying is also problematic for many dysgraphic students, but what types of copying actually happens in early elementary is really classroom dependent - for our ds the big issue was that the students al had planners (yes, even in 1st grade!) and were required to copy each night's assignment from the board into their planner. Once ds had a laptop he used an electronic planner, but prior to that he needed to have a teacher or aide copy the assignments for him.

These are just a few examples of typical accommodations for students with dysgraphia - each student and classroom situation needs to be considered independently when making decisions about accommodations- but the key is (and this is also key for IEPs) - the decision is supposed to be a *team* decision, not a school-tells-the-parent-what's-what decision. If you feel your child needs an IEP and the school has told you that they will not evaluate due to your child's classroom performance level, then you can appeal. Before you can appeal, be sure you've actually officially requested that your child be evaluated for IEP eligibility (you should do this in writing, and give the school a timeframe in which to respond to your request - ten business days was what was always recommended to us). The school then has 10 business days to let you know whether or not they will call a team meeting to discuss whether or not they feel they should proceed with an IEP eligibility review. They could tell you they will not meet, or they could hold that meeting (which they essentially already have - but perhaps not formally), and again tell you no. Once they've told you no in writing, you can appeal. Who you need to appeal to, and how you need to go about it, are going to depend upon your local school district policy. If you are at the point of appealing, it's a good time to perhaps seek out an advocate (actually I would go ahead and find an advocate now if you can to ask the same questions to that you are asking us here). There are some states that have parent advocate groups that will provide advice for *free* to parents navigating the 504/IEP process - we found our advocate's group listed in the yellow pages link at www.wrightslaw.org

If you feel that what is needed are accommodations rather than individualized instruction, then you need to request a 504 hearing. This will also be a team meeting, but is usually something that you can go into with a good set of private eval reports and come out of with a 504 without a lot of arguing etc. Grade level performance is not an issue for a 504 - the issue is, does your child have a disability that impacts a life function (in your ds' case, it would be handwriting), and if so, does he/she need accommodations above and beyond what is already offered in the classroom (for most dysgraphic students this would include keyboarding etc).

I hope some of that makes sense! Good luck as you continue to advocate!

polarbear

One other important way to reframe your discussions with the school - rather than thinking of how *high* your dd should be achieving, what you are seeking is "Fair and Appropriate Public Education" - you want your child to be able to show his/her full knowledge at school. If he/she can't use handwriting, they need to be able to use another method to show their knowledge.

polarbear

The school is following CT guidelines for IEP eligibility, with regard to grade/age level achievement being the primary consideration, without, most likely, realizing that there are allowances made in the special ed regulations for 2e learners. The document also clarifies that the aptitude-achievement discrepancy method is specifically not allowed. Other methods, however, such as PSW, are allowed. 2e masking/offsetting of the respective exceptionalities is also mentioned.

See page 60 of this CT document. There is a section which specifically addresses 2e students in LD identification and IEP eligibility:

http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/lib/sde/PDF/DEPS/Special/2010_Learning_Disability_Guidelines_Acc.pdf

Wow. Thanks so much. I never would have found that on my own.

Great advice so far. 3 more things.

It may be worth looking into what is grade level in more detail. Meaning what are the state mandated items taught in the grade level, and give thought to whether your child can actually participate and benefit from every item at a level similar to the average child of their age. And then you can ask the school how they teach these things.

So for example an expectation in English class (from perhaps an older grade) might be to write a paragraph in class, in about 10-15 minutes, with a topic sentence, some middle bits, and a summarizing sentence at the end. But a child who doesn't complete their work in the time allotted in class, as might a child with both adhd and dysgraphia, will not be able to access paragraph construction instruction/practice similar to the average student. That content could be interpreted as an item where they are not at grade level. Math may be similar, if she is anxious about it because daydreaming and frustration with writing the numbers prevents her from "gaining confidence at addition with numbers up to 20", then she is not achieving what a average 7 year old is in that grade.

Now once in a while every child has an off day, but if she fairly frequently doesn't complete work in class that is itself not meeting grade level expectations (since the work is designed for a low average 7 year old (I am assuming 7 is the average age in her class) to be able to complete it in class.) There are behavioral expectations of grade level, (often called learning to learn, or becoming a student, being an active learner, etc) and the teacher may have interpreted the question of whether she is at grade level to mean "academic achievement only".

So despite a teacher saying they can pass the grade, or even just pass each large subject pot, that doesn't necessarily translate to the child being "at grade level" in each aspect of the grade. And don't be roped into ignoring the non-academic-achievement aspects.

And then 2. Is the teacher doing anything at all in class already that helps her? Really any extra help they give at all, from helping her organize her backpack to reminding her to fill in the answers she left blank or letting her have just an extra minute or two to finish, those are accommodations. They are just informal ones, and the teacher next year may not be so "flexible". Giving accommodations is a good bit of evidence that there is a problem. And are there things the teacher has learned to not do? (For my DS that would be being sure not to mention how much time he has left, as that causes tears causing a work interruption.) You can ask the teacher what they've found to NOT work. And that is an accommodation too, that they are remembering to not use strategies they would for other children. The things the teacher tried that didn't work also show she tried an informal intervention which didn't help.


And then 3, groundwork and school relations.

Make sure to email a thankyou and in it you can outline in just one sentence the concern you had originally, if you had not had a concern put in writing before this is a good time to start. "It was nice to hear the teacher feels she's at grade level. I'm still concerned that she seems to be struggling. I'm very appreciative of everyone's time they took out of their busy day to meet". Or something like that. I've found longer than a few sentences and no one has read beyond the first few.

Most likely what you had as a meeting was an informal meeting that no one has recorded, and hopes never to follow up on. To be the friendliest, I wouldn't send in the "I request a iep or 504 evaluation" letter this week (though you may well end up doing so eventually). They then have a certain number of days, which may end up happening quickly, and you want to have all your ducks in a row first.

Set up after school meetings with the people who do evaluations (OT or school psychologist), and the teacher, etc in a very friendly way. "I just wanted to touch base with you, school OT, to chat, as my DD seems to be struggling with writing and I wanted to see if you might help me understand the school writing curriculum better, and see if we can help her in some way". "Thanks for meeting with me, district special ed coordinator, I was just hoping I could find out how the 504 process works in this district?"

At the very least then the counselor and the OT etc know who your DD is and know her parent is a nice and concerned parent. Hard for that to backfire. In 3 months when the evaluation request comes in they say to themselves, "Oh right i do remember something about them having a lot of perfectionism." (or whatever, and then they are looking for it). It may work out better than that if you can find any of them who will also help you actually understand how the district/school feels about 504s, ieps etc, informally. Tricky, but OTs etc are usually independent to some degree of the school and can sometimes be easier to chat with than a principal or rushed teacher. Also try to find any other parents that have children at the school with plans of any kind. Each school has a way they like to do things and it's very helpful to know ahead of time what that is.

Overall, try to approach this fall and maybe winter as information gathering, research, and beginning to understand the system and the process, try hard to form an alliance with the teacher. Start emailing the teacher now and then to let her know your DD struggles with X or took 40 minutes to do Y., or ask if DD can draw pictures instead of write out her spelling words for practice, type this homework assignement on the computer, etc. And then email an apology for all the emails. All of that starts a big paper trail that shows there's a problem.

And then maybe the spring will be a time when things start to happen. You are at the beginning of an unavoidably long process.