Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional The latest IEP issue

Insurance approved the clinic's request to take DS to out of network speech person, so I have an appt. set up for Thurs. already. I hope this SLP knows what she is doing. It's hard to choose someone off the internet, but she wrote a book on apraxia so I'm hoping she is good.

I can't get the idea out of my head that they want to either drop his IEP or change the disability category to something like autism spectrum. It's possible they don't think he can continue to qualify for PI (which is ridiculous, if his class work is illegible). I am going to ask about going back to the university neuropsych. Problem is our insurance won't pay for neuropsych exams.

blackcat, I feel your pain. My DS8 has stuttering and speech fluency issues and I've been fighting for 2.5 years to get an appropriate IEP and am currently looking into hiring an advocate to help me.

How has your child's school and teachers handled reading? Do they recognize your child's reading level?

My DS8's school insists on using oral reading fluency assessments (our school uses aimsweb) even though I've given them copies articles from speech associations and even the section of the aimsweb scoring guide that says ...

"Like any other test, R–CBM may be inappropriate for some students. For students with certain speech impairments (e.g., moderate to severe stuttering disorder), ..., R–CBM may not be a valid measure of reading."

I've read articles on the subject that has also mentioned apraxia is a problem with these types of assessments.

Common sense would tell you that any child with a speech disorder will be underscored on an oral reading assessment. Yet, in 2.5 years I've been unable to get the school to recognize this.

He speaks slowly but for some reason he does well on the CBM fluency assessments. I guess he is not slow enough to bring his score down much. He used to blow right through periods but I'm not sure that he's doing that anymore.

Strangely, back in K and 1st grade, I discovered that when he reads aloud, his prosody is much more normal. He could read back in preschool and I think the SLP way back then was having him read to practice his prosody. Something visual about seeing the words on the page that helps? I have no idea, but it's bizarre. He could almost read more fluently than he could speak, around age 4-5. (he was reading at a late third grade level in kindergarten, but was very quiet overall at that age and had delayed speech and language. He used to speak in a very cartoonish voice with a really high pitch, but when he read it became normal!).