Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment GATE identification for school purposes

The school *can* deny a request for an IEP evaluation, but they have to have a reason to deny it. The procedure you need to follow if you want an IEP evaluation is to request it in writing, and if you're worried about push-back from your school, be sure to cc the district director of Special Education on your request (send the request to your school principal and school SPED rep/staff person - I wouldn't necessarily include the teacher on the written request). Email is ok and counts as "written". Ask the school to respond to your request within a certain time period - 10 business days is a typical amount of time to ask for a response. That puts the school district on notice, and they have a certain amount of time in which to call a meeting which should include you and any other people you want to invite who have input into why your ds needs the evaluation. That it called an IEP eligibility meeting (here), and you'll come away from that meeting with a decision by the school to either evaluate for an IEP (which sets off the eval/testing process which has a time limit either specified by Federal law or in some cases state law which is less time than Fed. law), or the team will decide that no, there is no need to evaluate - but the catch is, if it's found that there is no need for the evaluation, the team has to have a reason for the finding, and once they've given that official reason, you can appeal the finding. If the team decides that he should be evaluated, they will start that process and at the end of that the team (including you) will meet again to discuss the results of testing and determine whether or not he qualifies.

It's really helpful if you want to proceed down the road to requesting an IEP eval if you can get advice from a local parent advocate - there are parent advocate groups in many locations that offer advice about the process at no charge (they are funded by Federal grant $). We found our advocate's group by looking at the yellow pages on www.wrightslaw.org

Re the incredulous looks, 2e kids are not common, and the school staff you're dealing with might never have encountered one before. We have had all sorts of incredulous looks on our 2e journey, both from school staff who felt that our ds was fine because he wasn't performing way way way below grade level (although to be honest he was, it just wasn't easy to see), and also any time his test scores were opened up by the eval team or by therapists etc who worked with him. One of ds' early elementary teachers sincerely believed that a child couldn't qualify for a 504 and also the gifted program at the same time and that if you wanted a 504 your child couldn't possibly be gifted. There are all sorts of misinformed opinions out there - but part of it is simply due to not having experienced a student with this type of challenge before. So ignore the dumbfounded looks and comments and just keep moving forward.

polarbear