Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How much help is the DORA in advocacy? Any?

We've got an upcoming TAT meeting to decide what to do with DS5 next year (he's in K). This year they've only given him "enrichment" in the form of third-grade Sunshine Math worksheets to take home, and some reading comprehension stuff from edhelper.com. He's learned more at home this year than at school, obviously. I am hoping for a change.

This meeting will be in April, date to be fixed. We are having some testing done prior to that. In the meantime we just did a DORA (online reading) assessment to see where he was at by rough grade equivalents, and it is way off from what the in-house school reading specialist claimed as to his abilities earlier this school year (her findings were highly suspect to us, but she works with disabled kids almost exclusively).

Now that we've spent the twenty bucks and got the results, I'm wondering if we really bought anything useful. It roughly confirms our own ideas about his reading levels, but it wasn't administered by a specialist and might be pooh-poohed if we bring it up. Plus, we will hopefully have actual hard-core tesitng results by then anyway. Is there any real use for this DORA assessment by parents in the real world, except to get their own rough gauge of what they're seeing?

I can't say anything at all about the specific assessment tool that you have in hand.


But I can say that our school relied upon the parent-proctored out-of-level CAT5 scores that we provided them with, and were willing to radically accelerate our DD two grades on (mostly) that basis. We certainly didn't expect that, and anticipated that we might have to accept a single grade acceleration and probably have to fight tooth and nail for that.

So I would definitely ask if they are interested in the data. They may surprise you.

Thank you very much. I will bring it up at some point, especially to give extra emphasis to the professional testing results. I guess another question on my mind is whether we should do anything prior to the TAT meeting to advocate.

DS5's current teacher (who turned out to be a naysayer on a grade skip for this year, which I think was motivated largely by the fact that our son's one of the youngest in his grade) seems to be positioning for a recommendation against a skip for next year-- she sent home a note complaining about the fact that he had trouble with his zipper one day, which she said triggered a meltdown, and has said recently that she thinks he is "right where he needs to be" for his level of emotional development. This is a bunch of BS, and prompts a host of questions, such as whether the school would hold back a graduating first grader over a zipper meltdown. But this shows a tiny bit of what we're up against, in our district that has never skipped a child earlier than third grade and states in the district policy that they are against skipping.

I know that our schools used the DORA test early in elementary but I do have to say that one of dd's teachers told me that she had seen some highly suspect #s coming out of it (some way too high and some way too low). I don't know if she's the only one with that opinion, but just in case... Dd12's vocab scores on the WISC came out significantly higher than on the DORA as did all of her other reading scores on the WJ-III.

If the DORA #s roughly comport with your other professional #s by that time, though, they may be worth adding to the pile of info.

Thank you very much for the input. I am afraid that by themselves, these DORA figures are too high to be taken seriously by the school. And I guess that if the numbers also don't agree with the expert testing, we shouldn't use them (but if they are in the ballpark we will). We will just wait and see what the professional testing reveals at this point, despite being tempted.

Poor guy. He already said he didn't want to do "baby work" in kindergarten. http://giftedissues.davidsongifted...._meeting_and_a_helpful_pa.html#Post97287
Here, look at what Nautical just posted and called a helpful advocacy article. I'm reading it now and it looks right on, describes the difference between acceleration and enrichment and outlines acceleration options.

Thanks a lot. I don't think any of that will honestly sway the local school-- it's not that they are unaware of acceleration options, it's that they simply are entrenched in their way of doing things. I already brought up a lot of stuff that's cited in that article.

After some review of the NH administrative rules of the department of education, I may have a plan of attack. There are rules which can make a compelling argument that they're required to teach new material to any child, and we can also apply for a hardship determination at the state level that might put some helpful focus on the situation and get them to change their position, and could let us also take him to a school in another district.

I hope that will help you get what your DS needs. Your district sounds similar to my dd's. They are helping by providing enrichment, but it still isn't enough for her. I appreciate that they are trying, but just don't get that they can't be open to other options and are so closed minded. It is sad when there are options that could work, but they are just not open to looking into them.

Yeah, it outlines a lot if the stuff we already read here. It just looked good to hand someone the cliffs notes on acceleration who might not really be interested enough to already read this stuff.

That's awesome that you found a law that says point blank you have to teach kids new stuff each year.