"The work is super-easy, so he's getting by" is a clear warning sign in my mind. You can deal with it now, or you can remediate fall-out in a year or two. IMO, you're better off getting the 504 plan in place NOW than waiting until he's in crisis and you're all frustrated and anxious to move things faster than they can reasonably go. (Schools move slowly on this sort of thing.)
ITA. Do you have a written eval from a neuropsychologist? Have you talked to the district-level people, or just the school?
There are things you can do to make a 504 happen even with a recalcitrant school.
ITA with the above. I took a quick look back through your August post to remember some of what's gone on at school this year. I'm curious - have you tried finding a parent advocate to help you navigate through the school system?
It seems pretty clear that the school doesn't want your ds to qualify for services, but it's also somewhat clear that they are using what's essentially a smoke-screen to show he's not qualified. It's easy to say he's meeting standards, but they might not actually be testing the areas he's challenged with. That happened when we were advocating for our ds. I had to be very diligent in relating the info contained in ds' neuropsych testing in a way that correlated to examples of actual work from ds that countered any point the school staff tried to bring up saying ds was "ok" or "meeting standards". Disorders of written expression and related challenges aren't necessarily easy to identify for people who aren't familiar with both the concept and the child. I had to know first of all what I wanted from the school (IEP vs 504, what accommodations etc) and then I had to basically put together a presentation showing that he had those needs. In addition to putting together the data and examples that illustrated ds' needs, I also had to somewhat anticipate the arguments the school would throw back at me and plan ahead to counter them with either work samples or data or research etc.
And I'll be honest about something - we did give up - not on helping ds but on the school he was at. We moved him to a private school which meant moving him out of a program that we felt very strongly we wanted him in (not for the LD stuff but for his academic strengths). We made the decision to give up the IEP and services we'd fought hard to win, because the fight didn't stop with receiving the IEP - once we had the IEP we had to fight to get the services delivered. Over and over and over again. Ultimately changing schools was the best decision we ever made - just in this one instance, for our one ds. The difference for ds was that the staff at his new school accepted what we told them about ds, believed the private reports, and were very eager to help ds in whatever way they could. It was up to us to provide the OT, SLP etc, but the school would *never* have felt ok with saying "our goal is that he meets state standards". The difference in the school's attitude and willingness to help not only made *my* life 1000 times easier, it gave ds his self-confidence back. In some ways, I feel like it saved his life - it made that much of a difference to be in a different environment.
Again, that's just our one situation. We did give up something big - we gave up advocating for and expecting services from ds' public school. But we *never* gave up seeking accommodations, remediation, working toward living with and succeeding with his disability. If we'd said "the fight is too tough now, ds is happy, let's wait a year in first grade", that simply would *not* have worked. It would have instead most likely made it 10 times more difficult to advocate the second time around, and 100 times more difficult for ds because he'd have to fall further before getting help.
While there may be days when the good things about school seem to be everywhere and you're able as a parent for a minute to feel like dysgraphia doesn't exist, I'm guessing the chances are good that for your ds, there is never a day he doesn't think about it. I could be wrong, but that's what it was like for my ds before he had accommodations, even on the days when there wasn't much writing at school. He always felt different and always wondered why he couldn't do something so simple that all the other kids could do. It really hit his self-esteem in a big way at 7 years old. OTOH, having parents who stood up for him and fought for his accommodations etc gave him hope, and by the time we were ready to give up on his school, he'd given up on it too. In 2nd grade he was happy there and didn't want to move, by the end of 5th grade he wanted no more of it. He saw how the school was denying anything was wrong, he knew something was wrong (and he had a name for it by then and an understanding of what it was), and he knew the school staff wasn't helping. Don't discount the message from the school that your child is receiving every day when a teacher is telling you, the parent, that there is nothing wrong - your child is hearing the teacher say the same thing (maybe not the same conversation, but he'll get the same message).
So my recommendation - you can't ever give up or set aside the advocating and seeking what's best for your ds for even a minute, but sometimes you need to step back and reframe what you're seeking, how you're going about it, and look to see if there are alternatives that might work better.
Best wishes,
polarbear
