seablue,
I really know absolutely nothing about the impact of ADHD on reading, but have a few random thoughts for you -
First, if her eyes are "skipping around" when she reads, I'd suggest a developmental optometrist evaluation if you haven't already had one. This sounds so much like a tracking issue - and if she is having difficulty with focus or tracking then that could be the reason her processing speed subtest scores are so low on the WISC, and why she seems to skip over questions when doing math etc. This is not the type of issue that a regular optometrist would check for (it's related to how the eyes work together, not to the actual vision in each eye independent of the other).
"I'd like to take my research to the district because they keep telling us to "have her read 20 minutes a day" and she'll catch up. Sorry, that hasn't been working for years. "
Which type of "catching up" are you asking about? Catching up as in progressing with reading ability, or catching up on knowledge she's losing out or falling behind on because she can't keep up with reading? (Both are extremely important!)
What do the Lindamood Bell tutors think your dd needs going forward? More LB? How much longer? How intense and how long has your dd already been in LB? She obviously made progress, but did she progress as quickly as originally expected? Have you tried whatever reading program the school district is offering, and if not, what are the reasons you'd expect it not to be helpful? If your dd has been through it before and she didn't make progress, what did happen? Those are things that I would want to try to have a good handle on understanding in making a decision about "what's next".
Re advocating at school, I would not put the focus so much on what the disability is and how it impacts your dd, I'd try to focus on demonstrating that there is an impact. I'm not saying that understanding why she's having difficulty isn't important - it is really important! But the school wants to see how she's impacted academically more than they want to be reading research evidence of how ADHD specifically impacts ability to read etc.
I am sure you've spent so much time with her that you see obvious issues with her reading - but to advocate it would be helpful to somehow try to quantify what you are seeing. I'm also curious what types of specific reading assessments she's had through LB (or through other providers). I have a 2e dd who struggles tremendously with reading, but many of her reading assessment categories test out as squarely average and don't appear to be anything to worry about. There's one specific issue that impacts her, and you basically have to run the "right" set of subtests/tests to have that extremely low # pop up.
In the meantime, while you try to sort through how to deal with school, I'd recommend having your dd listen to audiobooks - at her intellectual/cognitive level, not only at the level she's reading at currently. That way you can help prevent her from falling behind in vocabulary acquisition and you can keep her brain stimulated
Also, fwiw, if you ultimately find out it's a vision issue and you're able to remediate/correct it, I suspect your dd will catch up quickly with reading skills - that's what happened with our dd who has a vision challenge - she went from being about 2 grade levels behind to being way ahead of grade level in no time at all without any specific reading instruction or intervention - just getting her eyesight issues corrected was the key.
Best wishes,
polarbear
