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I would get a copy of your district's 504 manual. It should be on the district website. Here is the verbiage from our district's manual re eligibility criteria. It's based on federal law so the same should apply to your daughter.

Students eligible for Section 504 accommodation plans must meet three criteria. The three criteria are (1) A mental or physical impairment, (2) which substantially limits, (3) one or more major life activities. It is important to understand that all three criteria must be present for a student to be eligible for a Section 504 accommodation plan. Equally important, this disability must be why the student cannot equally access or receive benefit from the school’s programs and services.

You should be able to argue that your DD's dyslexia substantially limits her ability to read therefore she cannot equally access the school's programs.

We went to our school after we did private testing and asked for a 504 in second grade. We had a similar response that didn't want to give her one and that she didn't need any more than what they were doing. I walked them through the qualifying criteria and then pointed out that I wanted them to document the accommodations that her teacher already had in place (no extra work for the teacher). We also pointed out that according to our report from the psychologist that DD should be given more time on CSAP/TCAP (I think that you are in CO too?). Our school did not argue with us about that one because they want the kids to score as high as possible.

I agree with you. I'm also confident if I were to push the issue I could even get her an IEP. I have heard our district likes to drag their feet, and I've especially heard that our particular school is not very welcoming to children who have LDs that require services. Problem is I want to still keep a good rapport (somewhat) with the school b/c it's small and I do see benefits to their educational philosophy - outside of LDs. I also feel that even if she were to get an IEP they wouldn't be able to help her much so I don't think it's worth even rocking the boat. The learning specialist has no idea how to help dd with her reversals/transposings and seems to think it's an issue with not understanding place value. They fail to see the bigger picture beyond the reversals and how dyslexia is affecting her in a multifaceted way.

@knute

Yes, we are in CO.

Question, how do you determine "substantially limits"? Part of their argument for not even providing an IEP is because dd#2 is progressing and not far enough behind so they feel she is accessing the curriculum in the classroom.

I don't trust their judgement at this point for a variety of reasons. First, dd's teacher last year came into the initial meeting concerned about dd's math abilities. However, after their testing and their determination that she didn't qualify for an IEP/504 I didn't hear any further about the teacher's concerns.

Secondly, prior to this same meeting in February her teacher had her assessed at a DRA level of 21. Then while the school did their own testing (in addition to the testing done by Children's who diagnosed her with dyslexia), the teacher retested her DRA at 28 (keeping in mind this was dd's second year in 2nd grade). I personally didn't see such a big jump in improvement from dd. I don't know how DRA assessments work but I question the testing. While dd can read, her comprehension is poor (especially when reading orally), she is not very accurate (skips words and lines), and the more words there are on the page the worse she does. If it is a long book/story she can seem to infer meaning fairly well. But when it's short sentences/directions in math she struggles. We usually have to read the directions and story problems on her math homework because when she reads them 'it doesn't make sense'.

Also, the school doesn't seem to want to acknowledge the results from Children's and are relying solely on their results.

I went to a district seminar on the differences between qualifying for an IEP versus a 504 and how that fits with the state's RTI document. I will see if I can find the handouts. Not sure if I kept them.

My understand is that the state has rules that you must fall below a certain percentile (12th?) in reading achievement to qualify for a dyslexia related IEP. There is no such requirement for a 504. We were seeing a lot of the same reading glitches that you are. We used the discrepancy between DD's IQ and achievement scores to argue that her reading/writing ability was impaired by her dyslexia and dysgraphia. On my DD's IQ test everything was 97th to 99.9th percentile but her achievement tests in language arts were low average with some individual subtests below the 10th percentile. I think that DD's obvious dysgraphia may have made our case easier.

Can you find out who is your district's 504 compliance officer? It might be worth giving that person a call and explaining your circumstances and your school's reluctance to offer accommodations. I know that the compliance officer in our district encourages people to call when they are getting stone-walled by the school. She acknowledges that not everyone at the building-level understands their legal obligations.