I have had the same problems with writing with DS. We did some stuff at home last year (essentials in writing) and he is now back at the top end of where he should be but he dislikes it and still avoids starting. it is a bit topic dependant too.
What is essentials in writing? I think I'm going to have to teach her myself. Even the special ed staff don't necessarily know what to do. I'm pretty sure my other kid (in a different school than the one I described above) has dysgraphia but his problem is more handwriting and dd's problem is more the result of impaired executive functioning. She has no clue what to write or how to organize her thoughts to get them on the paper. She also now has anxiety about writing, making everything worse, because teachers have mismanaged her for so long. If she was sitting there staring into space rather than writing they would yell at her to focus and make better choices. Her math scores are similar to writing. For instance applied problems pulls her overall score up into the average range. She qualifies according to having a severe discrepancy, but I don't think that school districts are forced to give a student services unless they are failing.
polarbear, I moved DD to the school where DS is a couple weeks ago. The gifted program seemed hopeless, like DD would continue to spiral downhill and even if the teachers DO finally understand her issue, they are so disorganized they are never going to pull things together and consistently do accommodations/modifications. The new school actually increased DS's services for writing (practically tripled the pull-out time), but in terms of DD, they will not do anything unless the initial team from the old school makes her eligible. Since she was just evaluated and then we had an IEE they will not evaluate her, and they will not make their own eligibility determination (even though legally I think they are supposed to).
In terms of evaluating for "Other Health Impaired" for the ADHD, I had to basically tell them to do it. These people are clueless and I doubt that the psych has ever qualified a single kid for an IEP if they have ADHD. We have been dealing with this psych for years and at first she told me that DD doesn't even qualify for a 504 (after observing her working in a group of kids for 20 min and that's it). I think she could easily classify in that OHI category because her slow speed and focus issues are having an adverse effect on performance, but they give me the same exact line about how she needs to be failing. There is NOTHING in the State manual stating that to be the case.
