Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Getting an IEP for dyslexia for a "good reader"?

Hi! I'm looking for specific strategies for approaching our public school to get services for dyslexia for my DS. Here's some relevant background & some questions rattling around in my head.

DS is a grade-skipped child whose teachers will see his major reading skills as being "above average" already.
* DS is 7y 10mo entering 3rd grade
* DS is EG/PG and skipped kindergarten. Grade skipping is unheard of in our school.
* DS was the BEST reader in his 2nd grade class, possibly his grade. Both in-school reading and recent private testing put his reading comprehension level at around 5th grade.

DS already has an IEP, but it's weak.
* He has had an IEP for speech articulation issues since preschool -- his issues are minor, he gets speech 1x week for 20-30 minutes.
* His IEP also glancingly mentions his ADHD, but doesn't currently cover much in the way of accommodation

I am familiar with the IEP process, but know very little about dyxlexia and dysgraphia, which are his new diagnoses.
* My daughter has Autism and ADHD, so have BTDT
* But both kids' IEPs were initiated in other school districts
* Because our school has a special program for Autism, I have not actually dealt with the special ed teacher or reading specialists.

Where to start? The first day of school is September 7.
* Should I inform the school now, to get the ball rolling? I'm sure their official clock for doing anything doesn't start until the first day of school. But everyone's going to be swamped that early in the year and I don't want to waste any time. I don't know who the sped teacher is this year, but I could email the principal. If she's not available now, I expect she will be very soon.
* How important is classroom teacher knowledge, if the school does provide dyslexia supports? There are 3 teachers in 3rd grade, all of them good choices for different reasons. One is a guy (which would be great for DS), one is a former special ed teacher, and then there's #3, who DS absolutely loves and adores.

What to ask for?
* His reading comprehension is pretty good
* His handwriting is atrocious, despite 8 months of private OT so far
* His areas of relative weakness on the WIAT-III were everything do with fluency, spelling, sentence building, essay composition; and on the CTOPP-2, phoneme isolation and nonword repetition -- his "phonological memory index" was in the 37th% and rapid naming index in the 45th %tile. On the BEERY, Motor Coordination is more than a year behind age level (the other indexes are above age level, and I assume it's normed for age?). On WISC-V, his PSI is only 114, but VSI and FRI are >99%

MOST IMPORTANTLY: How do you argue that your grade-skipped, academically-achieving child needs to have specialized reading training added to his IEP?
Successfully, without making anyone regret they let your child skip a grade in the first place?

I'm not in the US, so I'll leave the legalities to others with appropriate expertise, and talk more generalities from our experience. It's a very rare school that will provide remediation to a kid at (let alone above) grade level. In fairness, few have the understanding of LDs, let alone 2E, let alone PG/2E, to recognize that the need is real. And they have so many kids whose need is so visibly more urgent... That said, your school sounds unusually thoughtful, so here's my best shot.

Bottom line: It's all about automaticity. If you don't have automaticity in the low-level functions, you don't have enough brain power free to properly tackle the higher-level ones once they come along.

When they are young, 2E kids have strengths that allow them to create workarounds to do tasks in their area of LD despite missing the basic skill required. Memorizing sight words instead of reading. Drawing words as pictures rather than writing them. When tasks such as reading and writing are new and hard for all kids, the 2E struggle fits right in. All the kids are using all their working memory, all their brain power, when they read or write. They are all thinking, "The "p".... is that the one with the circle on the front, or the back? And does the stick go up, or down? And how do I work my hand so that my circle actually looks round, and my stick is straight, and this letter doesn't end up on top of the next one? And oh yeah, then I have to use my two fingers to block out a space before I start the next word..."

But over time, these basic tasks get automated in the other kids - but not so much in the 2E child. The other kids stop having to do all that laborious thinking about how exactly to do these things, and so free up memory and brain power to think about what they are reading, to think about what they are writing. If you look at some of the Yale work, the dyslexia MRIs are fascinating. They show a large number of small regions scattered all over the brain, activated to try and cobble together the resources needed to read. In contrast, in a typical reader, it's one area activated, devoted to and efficient at the task, and all else is free for higher-level functions like comprehension, analysis, inference, etc. A crucial discovery was that when you provide proper dyslexia remediation, the bulk of the reading task actually shifts to that part of the brain which deals with it most efficiently, so you are literally freeing up all those other parts of the brain to do the tasks they ought to be doing instead.

In other words, with a child like yours, it's not about whether they can do the task, but at what cost are they doing it? How inefficient is it? How painful will it get down the road? What are all the higher-level tasks he is going to struggle with as the reading, writing and especially comprehension become far more complex and demanding, but he doesn't have the brain resources available to deal with them because too much energy is still devoted to the basics?

2E kids tend to hit a wall. At some point, the reading and writing work will require a level of complexity and abstraction they can't deal with, because too much working memory and brain power is devoted to basic processing tasks and mechanics. Depending on their mix of strengths and weaknesses, sometimes it happens in primary, sometimes not until university. For a long time - especially if the work tends to the concrete and the rote - they can fake it with their work-arounds. For a long time after, they tend to be struggling, finding it harder and harder to keep up, seeing it get easier for everyone else but them, and that's where the anxiety ramps up. No one can see how hard they are working, that they are barely treading water, trying to keep up. Unfortunately, the mental health issues tends to grow pretty large long before school achievement drops low enough to trigger concern. Way too often, it's not until the child feels in so far over their head they've started to drown. And rescuing and recovering the child at this stage is really, really hard.

And that's why you want to remediate the problem long before you see below-grade achievement. By the time it's this obvious, we often have a very, very broken child on our hands.

Oops - and a few (blush) more thoughts on some of your other questions:


I would imagine the more time you can give them to discuss and prepare, the better, especially if you hope to re-write an IEP and set up remediation, not just get some accommodations in the classroom. They may need some time to think about your arguments and come to appreciate your concerns. This probably won't be solved in one meeting....


For us, teacher knowledge has been crucial, even if (especially if?) remediation is coming from elsewhere (we've had to do all ours at home). For us, the individual teacher has been everything, and both kids have changed schools as well as programs in order to match with specific teachers who "got" them. We've found two major issues: First, we've had wonderful, kind, well-meaning teachers who very much want to do the right thing - but just don't have a clue. With no real understanding of the effects of a specific LD, they constantly set expectations the child can't possibly meet - but dang it, is that child trying! But that's not what the teacher sees - they see this bright kid, and are convinced that they are so capable, surely they could do this thing if they just. tried. harder. And in consequence, the teacher does daily damage to the child, who actually. just. can't. Inadvertent, yes - but the damage is real.

For instance, DD's grade 3 teacher (when DD was first diagnosed dyslexic/ ADHD) seemed to be able to grasp that she had writing issues in language arts classes - and yet continually docked points on math for not explaining the problem in full sentences. She just couldn't make the connection. Same with docking points for spelling. The teacher was always pushing DD to do more reading and writing - but DD didn't have the needed skills and her teacher didn't know what was missing and wasn't teaching those skills, so DD just couldn't do it. The teacher just kept assuming that more practice would solve the problem - but more of the same work, without remediation, is deadly. Similarly, she kept focusing on getting DD to work on sight words, even while we were trying to explain that sight words were the problem, not the solution: i.e. DD needed to shift from her work-around to actual decoding if she was ever going to automate. Every day was lots of stuff like that - little disconnects in teacher expectations that added up to DD's continual feeling of failure and a huge amount of anxiety. When DD moved in grade 4 to a school where the teacher had a lot of experience with kids with LD, the teacher was able to do things like directly, explicitly and systematically teach the needed comprehension, analysis and writing skills; work on spelling but ignore it in all other work; and encourage writing while not letting output limitations be a barrier to learning in all other topics, whether math or history. Setting expectations at the right level for each task, and understanding and addressing the key skills gaps, were both huge for DD.

The second big challenge we find is the sheer unbelievable unevenness of our kids. Teachers really can't cope with the strange mixture of strengths and weaknesses, and especially the way both are in play at the same time, in the same task. Classes and teachers are really built to deal with kids who are fairly consistent in their abilities. This problem has escalated dramatically in recent years for my two (now in grades 6 and 8). When you add in attention issues, argh. It is so hard for the child to stick with an unmotivating task - and then you add in the LDs, which are unbelievably demotivating. It takes a really engaging teacher with appropriately exciting and challenging material to keep a child like this working through the pain of the mechanics. Few teachers can grasp that a child who is struggling needs actually more complex material in order to do well.

This matters even more for my DS, who is a much greater outlier in all directions than his sister. For mathaholic DS, the easier the math, the more basic errors he makes. The harder the math, the less impact fluency, retrieval and especially attention and handwriting issues have. (Note: This is why you want your HG child to stay skipped/ in harder classes.) Teachers have fought it like crazy, but when it's been put to the test, all have admitted - reluctantly - that for all DS's problems, he does better work and gets better grades when the work is much harder, and taking him out of his gifted program would make things worse, not better. School staff who have not directly taught him find this a crazy idea.

So for us, it's been critical to have teachers who get LD and understand the need to support and have appropriate expectations around weak mechanics and output. It's also critical to have teachers who can deal with the extremes at both ends, simultaneously. (This is the really hard part, and we haven't yet achieved it for DD.) In your case, do you go for the teacher with spec ed experience? That depends. Does their experience include LDs? Because in our district, spec ed usually doesn't. Interestingly, the two most fabulous teachers DS has had were both men, and both dyslexic. Even though it's my DD who is actually dyslexic/ dysgraphic (DS has myriad other issues but not dyslexia), what these two teachers brought was a fundamental understanding that reading and writing aren't "natural" and automatic. They are hard, and writing needs to be explicitly and systematically taught. As a gross generalization, I have found surprisingly frequently that women go into teaching because reading and reading are super easy - and the men I have met go into teaching because reading and writing are hard. So my best recommendation - if you possibly can, find someone for whom these things came hard.

Final thought on teachers: DS had many lovely teachers in primary, who he liked and vice-versa, and who worked hard on his behalf. To all of them, however, he was a problem to be fixed, and a challenge to get him to function and do things the way everybody else did - the way THEY did. A frustrating and ultimately fruitless endeavour with this highly divergent thinker whose pattern of strengths and weaknesses is diametrically opposite to most teachers. The first of those two dyslexic male teachers (grade 5) was life-changing: he saw DS not as a problem to be fixed, but as a phenomenon to be enjoyed. His goal was how to harness those strengths and passions and enable DS to deal with his weaknesses, rather than squash his strengths and his unusual approaches and fit DS into the same box as all the others. I don't know how to identify such a teacher in advance, but I have seen that DS can really like a lot of teachers that still were not at all what he needed. Major efforts to address his weaknesses did not help him until they were driven by a focus on his strengths. And for DS, that took teachers who unlike the vast majority, could both enjoy his math strengths, and empathize with his writing and executive function weaknesses.

It's been my experience that getting an IEP (or even a 504) for gifted students is pretty difficult - which is its own issue. In order to qualify for an IEP in my district you'd have to show that the disability is affecting your child's ability to access the general education curriculum.

The grade skip really wouldn't be the issue in my district. The issue would be that he's already reading well above grade level and his comprehension appears to be commensurate, which means he is not having an issue accessing the general ed curriculum. It is highly unlikely you'd get an IEP here for dyslexia.

If that's the case, you're definitely going to want a teacher who knows what they're doing and knows how to address some of these issues. I'd hesitate to pick the special ed teacher, however. Many special education teachers have no idea how to handle gifted students. The supports put in place for this student would and should look significantly different than a struggling reader with the same issues, but I'm not sure that would be apparent to a sped teacher who doesn't grasp how differently gifted kids think and process information.

The one thing I think you could push is the dysgraphia. If his ability to write is hindering his progress in the gen ed curriculum, you'd have a good case. You'd want to talk about how crucial writing is to understanding, especially as your son gets older. You want to give him the tools and the supports now, early so that by the time they will truly impede his ability in middle and high school he will already have a toolbox from which to pull. You should also be able to get OT for this as well. As part of that process, also consider asking for a Chromebook or similar. I've found that when kids feel like they can't write or if it's just too laborious, they won't. Give them a Chromebook or some other way of typing their stories and they're ready to go.

Good luck.

If using the severe discrepancy table, even though the top cognitive number is 125, that may not interfere as much as you might expect with obtaining an eligible discrepancy. The CTOPP and VMI results you reported are all below 99, which is the cut score for intellectual ability of 125 (also, this number may be more applicable than you expect, as your state requires use of the FSIQ or NVI for establishing the discrepancy, and that PSI number will pull the FSIQ down by a bit). Also, teams are allowed to include professional judgement in the determination, so there may be some value potentially in bringing in the outside examiner to present and explain the results.

On another note, it is worth considering that there are multiple disability categories, and that SLD is not the only option for receiving services for reading fluency and written expression, but it is the one with the strictest criteria. You already have documentation for Other Health Impairment, in ADHD, for Developmental Delay (although that is only good until age 8), and for speech and language, although you describe that one as mild. It is also worth noting that the dysgraphic presentation you describe may actually be related to the ADHD symptoms, as it is not unusual for those diagnosed with one to present with the other, or for the two to be confounded.

platypus has already described quite nicely the core deficit of dysgraphia, as well as the long-term strain and potential deleterious consequences of leaving dyslexia/dysgraphia unmanaged or untreated, especially in high cognitive learners. So whether the school responds or not, you may wish to consider seeking remediation privately, even if it's through a home program. There are a number of Orton-Gillingham-inspired home programs, including All About Reading/Spelling (I'd probably go with spelling in an average reader), Logic of English, Barton, the first two of which are reasonable affordable, scripted, and readily implemented by a motivated adult. HELPS (http://www.helpsprogram.org/materials.php) is a low/no-cost intervention for improving reading fluency in two-to-three 15-20 minute sessions per week. It also can be implemented by any reasonably intelligent adult, such as a college student.

My preferred approach would likely be to do All About Spelling 3x20 minutes per week, and HELPS 2-3x10 per week, which only comes to around the equivalent of 5x20 minutes of intervention. The earlier levels of AAS would probably move fairly quickly, but shouldn't be skipped, as some key phonemic awareness skills are covered then. Another idea is to do AAS only, for a level or two (there are seven levels altogether), and then change it up with a round through HELPS, to work on automaticity of learned phonics skills. Then go back to AAS for a level. Re-do HELPS, if needed, at a higher grade level (up to 4th grade fluency). Complete AAS.

Aufilia,

You've received great advice above. I have two 2e kids - one with dysgraphia, one with a reading challenge which isn't technically classic dyslexia but has a similar impact in that she had difficulty learning to read, would appear to leap ahead in comprehension at different points in time due to her other abilities yet was still actually struggling with reading.


We were able to successfully advocate for an IEP for our ds, but it took quite a long road of advocacy and a lot of time on my part as well as outside testing and diagnosis. You have what you need in terms of testing and data, so the key is going to be approach. If you prepare by building your case with your data, showing how the dyslexia is impacting your ds' ability to access the general curriculum as demyankee points out, you've got a good shot at getting remediation and accommodations built into his IEP.

Getting the 2nd e's written into IEP goals is really only a small first step, however. The larger challenge for us was in getting the goals carried out, and having the goals be meaningful in a way that actually helped our ds. Simply convincing his IEP team to write an IEP didn't guarantee that teachers who didn't understand 2e would think he needed that IEP, didn't guarantee that teachers who did think he needed it had the time to carry out the work outlined, and didn't guarantee that the approach put together in the IEP was what was truly needed or that it would work to get ds the help he needed.

At some point I realized that the only way (for us) to get the help our 2e kids needed was to combine outside (private) remediation with accommodations and some remediation at school. While it would have been better in many ways to work through everything at school, it just wasn't going to happen (for us) in the way and to the extent that it needed to, and private therapists an tutors were much more willing to craft together programs that met the individual student where they were at. This was especially critical for our ds with dysgraphia as he also has challenges with expressive language which impacted him even after he had appropriate accommodations for dysgraphia. I think my dd's reading challenges *could* have been significantly remediated through school if her school had offered the program her tutor used (it's a widely-used program in the US).


I agree with what demyankee says about dysgraphia above, but would like to point out the same applies to dyslexia. With my own kids, I'd say that the dyslexia is even more concerning than dysgraphia in potential impact if not remediated early. Dysgraphia is, for many students, a challenge that is met with accommodations, and many of those accommodations become widely used by neurotypical students as our children reach high school in particular. Dysgraphia impacts getting thoughts *out* but dyslexia impacts getting information into a student's brain, and the impact of what they don't read due to reading challenges can be huge. My dd's reading challenge wasn't terribly obvious in early elementary because she was bright, because the type of classroom activities and testing didn't catch the real issue, and because she was very adept at making sure no one realized she was having a tough time reading. By the time she was in upper elementary she was beginning to miss problems on homework and tests that had nothing to do with her learned knowledge and everything to do with not reading the question correctly. By the time she was in middle school, the vocabulary development she'd missed from not reading was clearly impacting her in many areas of academics. The real gotcha here - she was receiving *good* remediation and making good reading progress with her tutor. The challenge: reading was still difficult for her (still is) and she doesn't like it. So from my perspective, the earlier remediation happens the better. DD started with her tutor in 3rd grade, and I honestly wish we'd started with a tutor when she first started reading, which was long before she entered elementary school. I had no idea at that point in time that an early reader might actually have a reading challenge.

Re dysgraphia, I'd recommend getting accommodations in place right away in the classroom for everything except for specific handwriting instruction. I'd also start with offering scribing and keyboarding for his homework right away, rather than wait until you've got things written up formally in an IEP. I'm also a fan of letting younger students develop their own system of typing (rather than teaching traditional touch typing). We did try a touch-typing program with our ds when he was first learning how to keyboard, but morphed into his own system. While it's not anywhere near as fast as a professional touch-typist, he types much faster than he writes, and types fast enough to keep up with his thoughts, which is really what matters most.

My advice is to prepare yourself and advocate like crazy to get what your ds needs at school, but also be sure to do your research so that you as his parent know what he needs in terms of remediation. Is the current testing you have with the dyslexia and dysgraphia diagnoses testing that was administered through the school district or privately? Did the evaluator include specific recommendations for remediation and accommodations? If not, I'm happy to share what we did in terms of both remediation and accommodations for our ds (I'm not sure my dd's remediation would be applicable to your ds, although we did use the spelling program aeh mentioned).

Best wishes,

polarbear