Just wanted to vent for a minute on the "attitude" I sense from so many people regarding my 2e kids, DD in particular. Not from other parents (probably because i don't talk about her), but from school staff, medical personnel, etc. DD9 hardly ever writes more than 3-4 sentences which obviously isn't meeting the lang. arts standards for 4th grade. Since she writes well on a sentence level, she scores average, at least, on standardized tests for writing like the WJ. Basically, the giftedness covers up the disability, and even though she is completely unable to do things like write a report (even a short one), a journal entry, or a story, all people can see are composite scores like 110 on the Woodcock Johnson. They see the general ability index of 150, the state/district achievement scores for math and reading that are all in the 95th-99th percentile, etc. and that's all they can think about... and therefore I look crazy and am a whiny tiger mom who must need her child to be good at everything. Someone actually said that at a meeting (she doesn't need to be good at EVERYTHING). I don't care if she's good at everything but it would be nice if she was operating at grade level and there had been progress in writing in the last two years, which there has not been. For some reason, it didn't seem to bother the 3rd and 4th grade teachers that she hardly ever writes more than 4 sentences. I don't get it.
Because of EF issues, slow processing speed, and ADHD she is excessively slow at almost everything. She may score in the 99th percentile for the district math test on the computer, but she is sent back 3 times to do it, and the other kids do it in 45 min. When I asked the school to test her math fluency as part of a comp. evaluation, they actually refused (and sent me a prior written notice refusing). It's a 5 minute subtest! They finally agreed when I called the spec. ed director and wouldn't sign the evaluation plan. Of course, there was a huge gap between fluency and conceptual ability but the school made no mention of this in the report or meeting. All they care about is overall achievement and if she does/does not qualify for special education. Finally, when the school denied services and wouldn't even meet with us about the 504 plan, I took her to an actual neuropsych/educational psych to be tested and he saw the low fluency score on the school eval and said "I'm surprised they didn't do a full math cluster because this fluency score is so poor." FINALLY I found someone who isn't a complete nincompoop. But is it going to matter anyway? NO, because none of these fools in the schools understand 2e kids. They don't understand that 2e kids can have average scores and still have a disability that can cause them to actually fail or give up at some point if nothing is done. Already DD has shown a lot of anxiety and passive aggressiveness about both math and writing.
I guess I just needed to vent and see if anyone has had a similar experience. I did give the school an article about evaluating 2e kids before DD was evaluated and I don't think anyone bothered to look at it, or if they did, they disregarded it. The last person they want to give services to (or make accommodations for) is a kid who scores as high as she does on math and reading standardized tests. That's ALL they care about. She could be asleep all day at school and as long as she keeps getting those good scores for overall math and reading achievement, they are going to ignore the concerns.
