I'm especially interested in this topic lately because I believe that my DD is dyslexic (and probably me as well).
Have you considered having her assessed privately? Although dyslexia can be quite stealth, especially in 2e kids, we found that private assessments really helped us understand what was the issue with our 2e dd, who has a challenge that impacts reading. She's diagnosed as dyslexic, but it's not conventional dyslexia. The private assessments that she had also weren't terribly expensive - rather than a full neuropsych she had testing through a private reading specialist.
My district is working on changing the identification assessment tools and I am on an advisory committee that has the opportunity to put my two cents in. I'm not a professional in this field but an interested parent.[quote]
Have you thought about possibly interviewing local professionals? Having had my own dds both go through school assessments and private, I've seen quite a difference here between school screenings and private assessments. Note - school staff clearly don't have the time available to do full screenings on every child, but I also suspect that if you look closely you'll be able to find suggestions to help make it possible to id some of the kids who are currently slipping under the radar.
FWIW, these are a few of my thoughts on some of the different types of assessments my dds have had - just food for thought for you:
* My dyslexic dd's WISC profile isn't exactly interpretable as clearly "dyslexic" yet the impact of her reading challenge shows up all over the place on her WISC subtests. (This is the WISC-IV, WISC-V might be different.)
* There is a big roadblock that exists in the classroom in our district before students ever get to the reading specialist at schools here. The teacher first has to see the need and then has to make a recommendation. My oldest dd was suspected of having a reading challenge by her first grade teacher, but never referred for an eval - yet she was behind enough that she *was* given an ok/referral to attend summer school, which (here) is reserved for students who are struggling in reading in the lower percentile of classroom performance.
* Our district also has the intense reading programs required by dyslexics situated in just a few elementary schools (which makes sense due to # of students who need to be served by those programs)... but one of the side impacts of this is that the people who are really the district's reading specialists and experts at identifying children who have reading challenges never screen kids at other elementary schools - so kids at schools who don't house the special reading programs don't get the districts "expert eval". It would help (here) if the district had just 1-2 people who were trained to be the experts at screening and eval, and those teachers "traveled" between schools for assessments.
* My older dd didn't actually have a reading challenge - she had a severe vision issue that didn't show up on a conventional eye exam. There were two simple screens included in her developmental optometry eval that I think could be done easily and quickly across all students in early elementary that would show pretty easily a significant portion of children who are having trouble learning to read due to tracking/etc vision issues: one takes about 1 minute and, for my dd, revealed severe double vision; the other might take 2 minutes top, and can show that eyes aren't tracking with each other.
* I would think that it might be useful to have all parents fill out a very simple questionnaire just once when their kids start school asking if there is a family history of dyslexia/dysgraphia/dyscalculia. It's been shown that these three "Ds" can occur in families - and it's *very* true for my family. At this point in time, when a teacher notices a student is behind in reading ability at the beginning of first grade (in our local schools), the teacher might make note of it but more often than not will consider it to be "developmental" noting that reading is a skill that happens across a broad swath of ages/grade levels. No one here worries for a nano-second until the student hits 3rd grade and is obviously struggling. If a teacher knew a student had a family history of dyslexia, they might put more consideration into recommending the student for screening.
[quote]I feel that the GATE program has become more of a high achiever program and that the method of identification has contributed to that.
This is a second (and different) thing to tackle from the id'ing of dyslexia issue. It's really exciting that you get to be a part of a committee that can recommend change
I think that it's really common from what I've read and also experienced to see gifted programs in schools become streamlined into what is "easy" to id as gifted. It's never going to be practical to give a WISC to every student who might qualify (including kids who don't "look" or perform as gifted). For instance, when my school district screens using a fairly-widely-used learned ability test, only the verbal portion is given, so any kid who would have qualified based on either non-verbal or an average of verbal and non-verbal, but isn't strongest in verbal isn't going to be given any further screening (unless they have a parent who is on top of things and makes a case for further consideration and eval).
Back to your original question - I don't have an answer for you, but I have heard many times what aeh said above. I think that when you're advocating, it might be potentially more useful to focus on finding articles/research/etc that shows the chances of a 2e child having dyslexia go undiagnosed, or articles on how dyslexia presents in gifted children, rather than trying to put a lot of effort into proving that there is a higher percentage of dyslexic people in the gifted population. Whether or not it's one child or 50000 that are truly dyslexic, the school district needs to understand how it presents and how to screen so as to not miss it.
Good luck with your advocacy! Let us know how it goes
polarbear
