My DS is 11 and in 6th grade. We were finally able to get him diagnosed as dyslexic in 5th grade, and able to get reading comprehension added to his IEP this year. In 5th grade, we were able to get an IEP for him in writing - he struggled with capitalization, punctuation, organization...

On his latest WJ-IV Achievement tests, his highest score was the 72nd percentile on word attack, sentence fluency is 47th percentile, and passage comprehension was 23rd percentile. Both the school and his OG tutor say that he doesn't really need assistance with phonemes and phonics because those are above the 50th percentile (between 54th-62nd percentile), and the school doesn't want to work on his fluency because it is close to the 50th percentile. It seems to me that these are too low for someone whose FSIQ is in the 98-99th percentile.

Since K, he has refused to read aloud and does not like reading - unless he can read graphic novels. The teachers let him read graphic novels some, but not much. He cannot tell you what he has read right afterward. Yet, he passed the Ohio "3rd-grade reading guarantee, " and on the annual testing (Ohio Achievement, PARCC, AIR) he scored in the advanced to accelerated range. On the MAP tests, he only scores in the 50th percentile.

He is an enigma, and everyone -- school, psychologists, me -- seem to think so.

A couple of things to note -- we recently had him tested again because there are some school issues that still just don't make sense. His vocabulary score on the WISC was a 17 in 1st grade and has now dropped to a 12-13. The psychologist says that his vocabulary has likely dropped because he doesn't have exposure to more difficult text. He doesn't have exposure to more difficult text because he is dyslexic. So his ability/IQ has dropped because he is dyslexic. Therefore, there is less of a discrepancy between his ability and his achievement, so the school doesn't see a problem. YIKES!

The second thing to note - his strongest ability has always been math and his perceptual reasoning. However, this year, his math scores are his lowest. He seems to have a lot of problems when it comes to remembering math that is taught in a sequential manner, like algebra (he is currently in an accelerated 7/8 math class.) Through a lot of research, it seems this is due to his dyslexia. I have done a lot of research, and it appears that dyslexics have many characteristics in common with visual-spatial learners (if you are not familiar with Linda Kreger Silverman's work, you should look her up.) But the school wants to say that this is a learning style problem that they do not want to address rather than due to his dyslexia and they do not want to help him. He is frustrated because his grades are dropping - his last test he got a 13.5 out of 30. I won't get started on how I feel about his teacher after this.

I would suggest that you check out the work being done by Fernette and Brock Eide, and also google "Stealth Dyslexia."

http://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/
http://summitcenter.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Stealth-Dyslexia-Flying-Under-the-Radar-.pdf

It took us over 5 years to figure out what was happening and get a diagnosis. I searched for someone to diagnose him and interviewed the diagnostician before we went for testing to make sure that he understood about gifted children. Basically, I wanted to make sure that he was evaluating DS against his own abilities, instead of evaluating him based on percentiles of the general population.

We did take him to an optometrist who does address visual issues, and she said that there might be a slight problem and that more testing was needed. We've heard that the visual testing is really a mixed bag - if you do the research, some say that it is not valid, and others say that it has been the answer. So we are going to have him tested after school is out and likely go through the therapy if he is diagnosed with issues (which I'm assuming he will be - validly or not.)

Honestly, I'm still not sure we've totally got things right, but dyslexia seems to be the best fit so far. We're still looking...

I wish you all the best as it has been a very long road for us, and I don't see any end in sight yet.