I am still going to private route b/c, as you said, it isn't an exact science and I've seen two experts look at the same data and come away with totally different diagnoses or none at all. I don't trust that the school is going to find anything. I'd rather go the route of someone I've selected myself.
Cricket, if I'm not mistaken, I don't think mich was telling you to NOT go the private route. But if you want the school to actually do something to help your DD, they *have* to (by law) do their own eval.
Now, their eval can be made to include information from your outside eval (if you hand over your privately acquired information and/or bring your experts to their meeting). But without their doing an eval, no services or accommodations are likely to be forthcoming. Especially not in a case like your DD's where she is not obviously failing.
Often it's advantageous to do both a private eval and the school eval concurrently. Since the school has 60 school days to get theirs done, it takes quite a while, by which time you'd likely have your outside results ready to deploy. If you wait until you have outside results to approach the school, you've likely lost any chance of getting help from the school during this school year, just because of the time it takes.
Best,
DeeDee
