Oh gee... maybe I shouldn't request it? Not sure what to do now. I guess I should contact my lawyer? I wasn't going to contact her if I can some free guidance here.... But maybe she will know if this could actually turn out to cause more problems rather than less.
First, don't get scared off by my experience - I'm not in your school district! But if you can find an *advocate* who works with families going through IEP eligibility etc they might have some good insight into what you'll get through a local AT eval. We have a local parents' advocates group that is totally free of charge (funded through a federal grant) - we found them at wrightslaw on the yellow pages. If there is anything like that in your area, giving them a quick call might yield a lot of info on what you can expect at your specific school.
And I wouldn't *not* request the eval, even if you ultimately find it's not going to be useful or might cause issues. You can always *stop* it once it's in progress - that's what we did. It's a lot easier to put a stop to something like this than it is to get it started in the first place.
polarbear
Ahhh, okay. Good thoughts. But, hey, I hear you, though... Like I said, last year I requested an evaluation for dyslexia and dysgraphia and not only did the eval yield nothing fruitful really... It actually caused a lot of problems.
Okay, I put a call into the local advocate I used last year (before having to get an attorney), left her a message to see what her experience/knowledge is... I am playing around with spending some money talking to my attorney about it, too. See what she knows about AT in this district.
In the meantime, I am going to go ahead and request and see if I can't get it in the works. Like you said, if I decide to go the private route ... I can just say that I decided to hire a private AT evaluator and stop their eval. Or if I don't like their results I can hire a subsequent private eval.
