Originally Posted by metis
Was it the school psych who said he wasn't dysgraphic?

Most school psychologists aren't certified to practice medicine (diagnosing disease), instead they are certified by the Department of Education. If you have a diagnosis from a medical professional, they can't dispute that (although they might try!).

If your son has been diagnosed with a disability (dysgraphia), and the district is not respecting his right to accommodations, gently threaten to file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. This threatens all the school's federal funding, and school employees tend to take you a bit more seriously then. wink

I'd wait to pull out the big guns until you have tried everything else though.
Try not to burn any bridges.

Thanks Metis! The school psych did not say he wasn't dysgraphic - she said to me personally (sort of off-the-record I guess) that he may very well be. BUT she can't with his test scores say in her report he has a "disorder of written expression" (because, of course, the laws and such don't use words like dyslexic or dysgraphia ... I suppose that if we simply pretend actual real neurological conditions don't exist then they will go away.) She sees my concern the reversals are inordinate and simply not improving and the gap between his scores is extremely large even though the writing is falling as "average" - it is a low average and the below average is so low that often kids with DS's intelligence don't ever fall that low. She is the one who suggested the new OT place I am going to try specifically for the dysgraphia (new OT place is out-of-the-box stuff, not your traditional handwriting without tears stuff) so I feel like she gets it but technically can only do so much.

My son has, however, been diagnosed with a neuromuscular disability called "congenital hypotonia with hypermobility of the joints (particularly in his hands)" by neurologists and his OT evals dcoument the effects of that on his writing. Oddly, and I am not sure why this is the case, but hypontonia alone only entitled him to a 504... When he started breaking down emotionally last year because the hypontonia wasn't properly accommodated for under the 504 (and because he had a vision disorder also neuromuscular that was undetected at that time), he got an anxiety disorder diagnosis and that is what got us an IEP.