sj4iy - I sent you a PM.

New update!

1. My son has finally undergone testing by a private psychologist to see what is going on with his writing. She's writing up the report, so we don't know the results yet, but we're hopeful we'll get some useful information out of it.

2. Private tutoring is going well. He's been there for several months and he's enjoying it a lot. We are considering adding on an extra day per week during the summer because he enjoys it so much.

3. He wanted to learn about chess, so we signed him up for the online chess club at CTY. There were no in-person chess clubs I could find for our area. We have no wish to overload him, so that's all we are signing him up for.

4. He did not get the best grades towards the end of the year because I stopped making him do pointless homework. It was leading towards frustration all around, and I saw no need to push him on it. I told his teacher as much, as well.

Thanks for all of the advice. I'll come back when we know the results.

Thanks for the update... what wonderful news on many fronts... very positive and encouraging!
Your child is fortunate to have your support and advocacy.


Coincidentally, this dovetails with an idea or two in some grading reform material which has recently been brought to my attention.

In a nutshell, a defensible grading process clearly defines:
- The purpose of grading,
- Proficiency.

It then follows that grading the completion of "pointless" homework may be seen as punitive:
... - a form of discipling/punishing a student for not completing arbitrary and voluminous assignments,
... - a form of judging how a student spends time outside of school
... rather than functioning how grades "should" function:
... - a form of measuring/communicating a student's uptake and demonstrated understanding of the material.


Links -
1) https://www.amazon.com/Point-Less-English-Teachers-Meaningful-Grading/dp/0325109516 (2020)
2) https://www.amazon.com/Grading-Equity-Matters-Transform-Classrooms/dp/1506391575 (2018)
3) https://www.amazon.com/Get-Set-Successful-Reporting-classrooms/dp/1949539458/ (2020)

We got the results of the testing.

She diagnosed him with Dysgraphia and Processing Speed Disorder (because his ability to follow spoken instructions is a problem in school). She will also recommend he be placed in the gifted program and ask the school to limit school work and homework that involves rote memorization or repetitive work.

He tested at a 7 1/2th grade level for math.
He tested at the 9th grade level for reading comprehension.

She said that she will help us try to get him a GIEP.

His scores dipped a little bit on the WISC V (she said he was being a little careless on some of the tests). But it's still high enough we can make a case for enrichment. He got 18s on both block design and figure weights.

As soon as I get the report, I will take it to the school so we can get a meeting together. Hopefully this gets us meaningful changes to his 504.

So nice to hear this! Sounds like you have a supportive evaluator who has a good understanding of him.

I've given a copy of the report to the school district. I also asked to have a conversation with the head of Special Education services so that I could tell her what problems we've been having.

-She admitted that the school district hasn't been enforcing or following 504 plans.

-I told her that he needs some kind of enrichment beyond what little they are given him right now. She wasn't even aware that I was looking for a giftedness assessment.

-I also told her that I want him to have an IEP for his writing at the very least. That it's no good saying "he can type, use speech to text or orally answer" in his 504 if they never teach him how to type or offer him a speech to text program.

-I told her that I want more specific accommodations. "More time on tests" means nothing without a specific amount of extra time given.

-I was honest and said that I have been looking at other schools because I feel like he's being discriminated against at this point. Whether it's unintentional or through incompetence, his needs are not being met. I also mentioned the real evidence of direct discrimination against him by his 2nd grade teacher (who put him in a lower reading group for behavior, and not for need).

I'm not sure how well this will be received, but I'm not okay with him being continually ignored. I basically made it known that I'm going to escalate this as far as possible if it's not fixed. I got the papers to sign today to initiate the process, so we'll see how it goes.

Thanks everyone.

This sounds like excellent advocacy!
Hopefully their follow-through yields positive results.

Today we got the preliminary results of the latest assessment.

The school district has identified him as 'mentally gifted' and are giving him a GIEP and a more robust 504 to accommodate his new diagnoses. He won't receive an IEP but I'm absolutely okay with this as long as he's receiving accommodations and enrichment.

Thank you so much to everyone who has offered advice and help. We really appreciate it.

For the Gifted Individual Education Plan (GIEP) and 504, some of the information at these links and old posts may be helpful in providing ideas:

Hoagies' unofficial guide to GIEP - https://www.hoagiesgifted.org/unofficial_guide.htm

roundup on Individual Education Plans(IEP) and 504
- Wrightslaw: Writing Smart IEPs
- IEP recommendations
- possible ideas of what to include in a 504
- Knowing one's strengths and owning one's weaknesses (hat tip to Platypus101)

Nice to hear!

504s can include related services, so one conversation (if he's still struggling with the writing accommodations) might be to see if an assistive technology specialist can come in and give him a few training sessions, to get him up to speed on any tools he needs. Regular, periodic consult with a related service provider (like AT), can be formally written into the 504 plan. This would depend, of course, on how much support he actually needs to access his AT.

And on specific extended time, I typically pair that with reduced workload (items sufficient only to demonstrate mastery of standards/skills)--which, btw, is also an appropriate accommodation for GIEP curriculum compacting purposes.