aculady makes a good point about the IEE option - we could have done the same in our district. The catch-22 with going that route for us - if that had been the route we'd chosen is two-fold:
1) without the info from the neuropsych eval I don't think we could have successfully advocated for an IEP eligibility process to begin with. Prior to the private testing we'd had team SIT meetings (teacher, school psych, parents meet together) and an extremely concerned teacher but we had a school psych, school sped rep, and school administration that pushed *hard* to prove the teacher's concerns were not worth worrying about and that our ds' was very "average" in the area the teacher was concerned with.
2) Because the teacher hadn't had a kid with his specific set of challenges + IQ prior to teaching our ds, and because behaviors overlap often among challenges, and because she'd seen similar behaviors in other students... the teacher was very convinced our ds had inattentive type ADHD (which he does not have), but we could not convince the school of that without having ds evaluated, but the school was pushing to not evaluate. A big catch-22 circle with misinformation all around.
3) We eventually did successfully advocate for a school eval (after we'd had the private eval and another year's worth of struggling at school)... and the process was very slow. The school district has 45 days (where we are) to act on a written request for an eval by a parent. Then at that point in time the team meets and determines if there is a need for the student to be tested for eligibility for IEP services. If the team decision is yes, then a 60-day time clock starts in which the testing must be completed. Our school psych managed to test prior to the 60 days expiring, but left his report writing to the last minute and then wasn't able to complete it on time and/or get to the meeting that was scheduled. We agreed to an extension, spring break happened in between, and ultimately this was our time line from teacher referral for IEP eligibility testing to the meeting where we wrote ds' IEP: teacher made the recommendation first day of 4th grade, the IEP eligibility meeting was held two days before school got out for the year with our ds heading into 5th grade. If we had been turned down for the IEP and requested an IEE, we would then have had to wait approximately 3-6 months to get in with an IEE evaluator due to the demand for services in our area. And then once that was completed, we'd have to schedule another danged meeting at school... just scheduling meetings where everyone could attend was a nightmare
Sorry for the long rant lol! Just wanted to point out, the school process can be slow. And one year out of the life of an early elementary student who needs help is a big chunk of time. So that's where private testing helped us the most - while things were progressing at a snail's pace at school, we at least as parents had a good idea what we needed to do to help and advocate for our ds.
polarbear
