I'm replying in a bit of a hurry this morning, so I apologize if some of this doesn't make sense. My children don't have dyslexia, but ds12 who has severe dysgraphia, developmental coordination disorder, an expressive language disorder, and fits the Eide's profile of a stealth dyslexic. We have successfully advocated for an IEP in public school for him to provide him with services in written expression and organization skills (which are his areas of challenge) - in spite of his extremely high IQ and not being behind grade level, and in spite of some extremely stubborn lobbying on the part of his school to try to convince us there were no issues and he was "just fine" (we heard a lot of that "he's just fine" and "he's right there in the middle!" lol!).

Here are my suggestions:

1) Look for a parent's advocate group in your area - in some areas, it's possible to get the advice of an advocate at no charge. We found our local advocate's group through the yellow pages link at www.wrightslaw.org. Our local advocate was extremely helpful in providing us with insight into how our school district operates and the attitudes and perceptions about SPED services etc at our particular school - and they were able to give us strategies and help coach us with how to approach each situation as it arose in advocating as we sought an IEP.

2) Most school districts prefer to do their own testing - don't worry about it, it's part of the process. The school psych is probably right - the full WISC will give more detail of your dd's cognitive abilities - and that's not a bad thing, it's something that may be very helpful to you whether or not your dd ever qualifies for school district services. It's great that the SLP wants to evaluate her as well - overall, it sounds like you've got a responsive school - it took us quite a fight just to get our ds to the point of eligibility testing.

3) The school has offered testing - if you want to proceed, and they have only made a verbal offer (ie, they haven't had an eligibility team meeting and given you a document to sign saying you agree to the testing plan), turn in a written request for the IEP eligibility evaluation and specifically request the WISC and SLP testing.

4) I don't think it's necessarily true that they can't retest achievement if they were using the WJ-III. I've been told there are two versions of the WJ-III - I'm not a psych so I'm only passing along what I was told by our neuropsych - but fwiw I had asked about this at one point because I wanted to see if we could get a comparison of our ds' fluency test results when he was using handwriting vs oral response, and was told we could do this by having him take both versions.

5) Don't be intimidated by the school staff telling you your dd "has to have" (whatever) in order to qualify for IEP services. I'm guessing from her test scores that there's no question she can qualify for IEP services under specific learning difference in reading.

6) Your dd has a significant discrepancy in processing speed vs her other cognitive abilities. Our ds also has a relatively slow processing speed compared to his VCI and PRI on the WISC. And for our ds it does translate into many school-related type tasks taking longer than they take typical kids. When he was in early elementary he compared his challenges with what he saw other students accomplishing in class and had some really tough struggles with self-esteem - and still does. It has gotten better, however, as he's gotten older and matured, and as we've had time to give him extra instruction in the areas he's challenged as well as *very importantly* given him accommodations in the areas that he needs accommodations. From our experience though, it's going to be different than raising an NT kid and it's going to be challenging, but please know - it's going to take work but it's still going to be ok and it's still going to be amazing and it's still going to be fun.

7) Did the Children's Hospital include any specific tests related to processing speed and decision speed? The subtests on cognitive tests that measure processing speed can be impacted by fine motor challenges or visual challenges, and it might help to have an idea re which is the issue for your dd. Two of my kids have had dips in processing speed on ability testing - for my ds, it's all fine motor and OT did help a tiny bit but his fine motor will never be functional "enough" so we know that he needs accommodations in school. My older dd has a *huge* dip in her processing speed in her WISC in 2nd grade (it came in below 1%)... but it was all due to a vision challenge which we were able to remediate.

7) Math in early elementary was really problematic for my ds. I don't know if your dd has the same thing going on, or if she has more of a dyscalculia challenge - but fwiw, with our ds, he grasps concepts in math very quickly (he's really a math-science kid), but memorizing math facts and being able to regurgitate them on paper did not come easily (the getting them on paper part never happened quickly due to his dysgraphia). He wasn't allowed to accelerate at the pace his brain could keep up with learning concepts and he was extremely frustrated both with boredom and at the same time with not being able to keep up with anyone on the timed math tests that were required to move ahead. We dealt with that by after-schooling him in math online (Aleks), advocating over and over again for accommodations (he eventually was given in writing an accommodation of oral response on fluency tests - which was never actually given in real life, and allowed to use his computer to type his math homework). When he switched schools for middle school, we advocated for the appropriate placement based on his ability by showing the schools the documentation from his online work and his WISC ability scores and they put him where he needed to be, no questions asked, they allowed him to use software tools to write all of his math work on his computer, and he's done *really really* well in math this year.

Sorry I rambled on so long - I tend to do that! Hopefully some of what I wrote will make sense!

polarbear