What was the basis of ineligibility for an IEP?
Officially the reasons are:
Child does not meet the criteria for having a disability based on the data provided in the document. And the child does not demonstrate an educational need that requires specially designed instruction.
My take: They consider the written expression problems as a weakness rather than a disorder. He has good grades in school. The school does not use ABC grades. He gets mostly fours which means that he is demonstrating above grade level understanding.
We didn’t seek out assessment because his grades were bad. We sought out the assessment because his anxiety was really high related to writing and we were open to whatever they would find: ADHD, writing disability, executive functioning issues, etc. He hates writing and he is aware that his writing speed is slower than peers.
When’s you brought the assessments to the school, what did they do?
I had brought my Concerns about potential disability to the school last year. They put in place an unsuccessful intervention that was targeting task initiation. They wanted to do a behavior assessment. I told them I didn’t want the behavior assessment because I thought it was too narrow and wasn’t considering the possibility of a 2e diagnosis. I sought out a psychologist who specializes in gifted/2e for assessment. So when I brought the report to the school, it was an attachment to a formalized request for a 504 (as recommended by the psychologist). The school psychologist encouraged me to try for the IEP and I said Ok, as long as we also had a 504 option if the IEP didn’t come through.
Did they waive their own assessment and accept the info given?
They told me that they needed to do their own assessment. But, that they wouldn’t try to duplicate the testing (some of the tests can’t be repeated in certain time periods per the rules of the test)
Did they choose to do their own assessment?
Yes. I did have some input into what kind of testing they would do. They did writing assessments occupational therapy physical therapy. They didn’t do speech language pathology. I did ask about this, but they didn’t do it. Basically, common knowledge is that SLPs focus on speech. But they also focus on language disorder, which is what he is struggling with.
Thanks for the info on your son and how his 504 worked. I guess I don’t know enough of the intricacies of our state law. Maybe I need to reach back out to our state PTI office for their take. From a disability rights standpoint, I feel like people should be able to have their disability recognized accurately.
