Thanks for the article. I had given something similar to the special ed dircetor, who actually attended the meeting, and he said that nothing will be done because she is not failing. So even though she qualifies as having a SLD according to the discrepancy model, she doesn't have a composite score below 80 or whatever they consider below average. She actually qualified as having a math calculation disability as well but with achievement scores (untimed tests) at 99th percentile, giving her any services for math would be considered ridiculous. They only looked at one classroom sample of writing and it was 2 sentences long (probably the best sample they could find), and they determined that was sufficient. She was supposed to write a letter, and they said since her sentences were "long" her writing is fine. Basically they were looking for ways to disqualify her. With the independent eval. she was given the TOWL-4 and for the "story" she wrote had so few words it couldn't even be scored. I think she wrote 3 sentences in 15 min. I'm not sure if the district has seen the report yet. They'll probably say there has to be a number and it has be below 80.
chay--sorry to hear about your own difficulties. So far we haven't encountered that, the teachers just blew off the concerns and inflated her grades rather than helping her. They disregarded the 504. The language arts teacher in the gifted program said "a lot of gifted kids write bad and they always improve." I said "If other kids write as bad as her they should all be evaluated" and she rolled her eyes at me.
