Thanks so much for your reply geofizz! The thing that has me puzzled (a tiny bit, I think I'm less puzzled after re-reading the reading specialist's detailed report).. is... dd8 scores well on the CTOPP - not outstanding, but she's way above average on phonological awareness, and average (right around 50th percentile) on phonological memory and rapid naming awareness. She hasn't been through a neuropsych eval, but based on what our neuropsych told us when she saw ds, and based on what the educator that dd8 saw previously for a dyslexia screening, she would have to have deficits there to be considered dyslexic. Of course, they aren't counting discrepancies vs IQ as "deficits", just thinking in terms of the CTOPP scores by themselves.
SO - her CTOPP wasn't all that remarkable other than showing an actual strength in phonological awareness. Her GORT scores, otoh, are low - 25th percentile for fluency and comprehension, and her overall reading quotient from the GORT is at the 23rd percentile.
The really low score was on the WIST - sound/symbol knowledge was 5th percentile. That's a test where she's given a progressively harder list of letters and then letter combinations and has to tell what sound the letter(s) make (can be multiple sounds)... she got very few of these past the basic one-letter sounds, and didn't even get all of those. And she's in 3rd grade, and she started trying to learn to read on her own when she was around 4. She's had some very explicit instruction in this sound-symbol relationship at school in 2nd grade... argh. I'm not sure why it is so difficult for her. The other tests were "higher" enough than the sound-symbol that if I didn't know her, I'd be tempted to wonder if she simply didn't try on this test or checked out or something, but the reality is that she stumbles on letter-combos while she's reading to us over and over and over again unless it's a word she has already committed to memory and knows well. Her spelling is also really *really* a mess. She can ace a spelling test but has to study for it with some fairly extreme effort, and a day later she can't spell the same words.
It's encouraging to hear your dd benefitted from OG - I am not sure which program the reading specialist recommended for our dd - she told me when I met with her but she didn't include the name on her report. The reading specialist is also planning to administer another comprehension test before dd starts working with a tutor, so she may change out programs... not sure at this point.
polarbear