I'll second the posters who suggested private testing - it is usually much more thorough than school district testing, you are able to (much more easily) ask questions and get answers once the testing is complete (and most likely you'll have a ton of questions if your child has a learning challenge), and you'll have a test adminstrator who doesn't have an agenda that might bias how much information you'll receive or how much testing is done (many of us have been in situations where our school districts do not want to . You also are more likely to get a forward-look at what your child will need throughout their education and life, vs a school eval which will look at what your child needs right now.
Many of us here with 2e kids have had the experience of finding out that getting a diagnosis is only the first step in a long journey, and many times that journey includes a lot of advocating for your child, and sometimes feeling like you're banging your head against a brick wall with the school. It's important not to get caught up thinking of this as a school problem, but to refocus to looking at as this is your child's *life*, which is much more than just school. School's a huge part of life in the early years, but a person isn't going to no longer be dyslexic when they graduate, or when they play piano, or when they are in Girl Scouts etc. You also don't want to send your child through life with only partial information or without help just because they didn't meet a low-enough bar to qualify for school services.
You might also find, like we did with our 2e ds, that you can fight the good fight, get services through school, and it's still not the answer or still not enough and you'll still need to get help outside of school.
I apologize if that sounded bleak - it's really not! The key is, there is so much you can do for your child, but to get anywhere you'll need to know everything you can about the challenges your dd has.
With respect to reading, it's easy to think a child is dyslexic with the type of symptoms you've noticed with early reading. Two of my three children struggled with early reading (one below grade level, one above grade level); both were evaluated for dyslexia and neither is dyslexic - but *both* had very real challenges that needed to be addressed. My older dd had an unrecognized vision challenge which we were able to remediate and she went on to become an above-grade level reader very quickly. My younger dd has a challenge with associative memory (she learns much better with auditory input), and reading is still a bit of a struggle for her. Testing was extremely important for both of them, even though neither one is dyslexic.
If you want testing through the school, the first step is to make a written request. The school then will be legally required to respond to your request within a certain time period (I don't know what that time period is in your state or school district, but there is a Federal time limit of 60 days; some states and school districts have earlier deadlines). You can find info about your state and district online, but it might take time to dig it out that way.
www.wrightslaw.org is a wonderful reference; take a look at their yellow pages link and see if there are any non-profit parent advocate groups near you - if they are, call them up and explain your situation and ask them what they recommend. Having the advice of a local advocate was invaluable to us in advocating for our ds.
The school doesn't *have* to test, but they have to respond to your request by either agreeing to test or by giving you a reason why they feel testing isn't necessary. In our school, that decision is made by the team that would also convene to write an IEP if your child is found eligible; the team includes teachers, sped department staff, school psych, school rep, and - very important - parents. You are a part of the decision process. The tricky part of this is knowing what to advocate for re testing, which can be difficult if you don't already have specific information about your child's challenges and if you don't understand your school district's qualifying measures or what to ask for in terms of testing.
One other small note - school districts don't diagnose dyslexia - they test for eligibility for services due to a learning challenge in either reading/writing/math etc. They won't refer to that challenge as dyslexia (at least they don't where we live).
Gotta run - hope some of that made sense!
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - I was posting at the same time as Zen, and just read Zen's reply. One potential "gotcha" with a reading challenge being identified through a school dyslexia screen are the "reading real words in isolation" and "problems decoding nonsense words" - both of my dds were able to do this adequately during testing, and as I mentioned, neither has dyslexia but *both* had significant challenges which were preventing them from being successful fluent readers. JMO, but I think it's important when pursuing both school testing and private testing to move forward focusing on the challenges you've observed rather than a preconceived notion of what the diagnosis is - because you don't want to limit the "look" (testing) to be too narrow to miss a very real challenge.
