I'm also just a little horrified if the wait time aquinas reported for psychoeducational assessment is in the public schools. Federal law in the USA puts an upper limit of 60 school days on the process, from request to completion (shorter in some states). Even clinic/hospital-based evaluations typically run closer to the 6-9 month range in my region.
You are rightly horrified and would be justified being quite horrified. And yes, that includes public schools. Here's a news article covering a child who shamefully was delayed 2.5 YEARS for disability based testing for dyslexia. And what is the incremental cost of universal training in an OG reading system for elementary teachers? *crickets*
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hami...t-for-learning-disability-test-1.2918462Here's another; a blog post from the former chief psychologist of a large school board, which reports 62 students delayed 3 or more years for psychoeducational evaluation. Here's the kicker: this gentleman has decided to remove himself from the public system to better service private clients, despite complaining about a shortage of school psychologists!! Perhaps he moved to private practice because he can process his case load faster out of the board, and is trying to alleviate demand pressure for lower-income families.
http://www.vbpsychology.com/waiting-lists-for-psychoeducational-assessments-in-ontario/On speculation, I even placed DS on the waitlist for a private psychologist (school psychologist who moonlights by providing fee-for-service assessments...I'll leave the sticky ethics of that for another day). The initial wait time for a screening appointment was 9 months, which ballooned, as this psych was one of the handful whose results were accepted by the school board for giftedness. It's madness.
I could go into a long screed as to why this is the case from a supply management perspective. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to stare at the roadkill. Suffice it to say, this is what happens under unionized education. But speaking purely to psychoeducational evaluation and placement in school - avoiding this is another key value driver of private schools.
Back in kindergarten, when we first attempted to have DS placed appropriately in a public school, the process for identification and evaluation of giftedness, plus the wait time to run through the tiered system of experience-harm-before-admission to congregated gifted would have been at least three years. That was assuming everything went "to schedule" and DS suffered enough clinically detectable damage that he would merit gifted placement, what was left of him. I was unwilling to do that and would have sold my organs to ensure DS wasn't subjected to psychological damage. That was a large part of the reason why we homeschooled initially. And dare I say it, at that time, we were "just" looking at giftedness, no dual exceptionality.
If you'd really like to scrape your jaw off the floor, the IEP placement forms for our provincial education system include multiple spaces for referring indications (e.g. deafness + giftedness). Several school boards only accept intake in their forms - purely a paper pushing issue - for ONE, and require strenuous advocacy on the part of the referring principal for the full list to be included. I remember the advocacy group I was involved in saw a case of a deaf + PG boy whose PG was unacknowledged, despite tooth-and-nail fighting because he was only documented as being deaf.
Another family had four children with exceptionalities, a few with 2e, and their children were placed in THREE different schools at the extreme south, east, and west ends of the city. The parents complained to the district superintendent of special education, because their jobs were at risk due to the commute time. Resistance.
Sadly, the consulting pediatrician I spoke with was flagging even medical evaluations - like ASD early intervention, which happen under the public health system - as landing outside the standard timeframe for early evaluation. Can you imagine?! I will caveat that that isn't an average for ASD, but it's also not an insignificant minority. Now, any time the education and medical systems "speak", the delays are magnified due to administration.
Federal law in the USA puts an upper limit of 60 school days on the process, from request to completion (shorter in some states). Even clinic/hospital-based evaluations typically run closer to the 6-9 month range in my region.
Sadly not so here. The time limits in my province are up to 30 days from date of request to initiate a meeting with the school to discuss the presence of exceptionality to receiving a meeting date. A meeting date!
Suffice it to say, another part of the implicit enrolment contract with private schools is to expedite the IEP process and effective interventions for exceptional learners. The school which my DS attends is, not coincidentally, substantially over-represented for 2e students.
