Blech.
We met with the school psychologist yesterday. It was discouraging. This was an informal initial conversation, so nothing is set in stone - but while she was very nice, my underlying feel of her take-home message was that really, there's no problem here - DD will be fine. She was clear that DD would not qualify for an IEP, but said 504 might be possible.
She also seemed to think it unlikely that DD could qualify either for reading intervention, or the gifted program - reading is close to grade level, and even though IQ and math are both 99 percentile, reading is only 78 or so (because comprehension is high and mechanics is low) and they are strict with their "at least 95th percentile in all three" rule for gifted. Again, still open for discussing, but not an encouraging conversation.
Her feeling for the most likely and appropriate avenue is differentiation in the 3rd grade classroom. But in a room of 26-28 kids, I'm not convinced that would be very effective.
Now....there is actually a school in our city that specifically is for kids with learning disabilities. My friend's sister is the admissions director, and I've talked to her. She looked at the reports, and said all sorts of beautiful things - that they have all these resources in place for reading/writing disorders; that DD could get that help, and also get accelerated to 4th or 5th grade in math - still with accommodations for the reading and processing. The school's goal is to have kids for just a couple of years, teach skills and strategies around the disorder, then transition them back into public schools. Doesn't that sound incredibly awesome?
But the price tag - $20,000 per year. Really.
I feel so torn. On the one hand, I think maybe we CAN work with (wrangle with/ struggle with) the public school and make things work out ok for her. Maybe they WILL come around with help - but we won't know until school starts, really.
On the other hand, I think of my DH. He is one of the most creative, smartest people I know. But he has spent his entire life feeling like the "dumb kid," not able to get high grades in school, struggling with getting thoughts onto paper, struggling to pull meaning from the written word. I can see how hard that has been for him - and honestly believe he probably has a profile like DD. Maybe it's worth it, to prevent that from happening again?
Or maybe that's overkill, and we can make something work without the big price tag.
I wish I could look into the future. :-)
geofizz, her WISC processing scores were lower than the others, though not too bad:
verbal comprehension - 138
perceptual reasoning - 129
working memory - 126
processing speed - 115
Thanks!
