Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Taking Away Accommodations

I truly believe that my DS will be much more independent in time with computers/laptop/ect (this is what happened with my DH in around the 4th grade). Once he can type well I think people/staff will feel better that he is independent and not being coddled or short-changed or whatever. The school psych put this in her report, God bless her, that he will most likely transition to using accommodations such as a computer.

As an aside, I got a folder sent home of DS's assessments (tests) - math and reading(in prep for progress reports being issued this friday). He did really well - "Strongly in place" (highest grade you can get) and "highly proficient" in all of his tests/assessments. Even his Diebels were high, and reading assessments were high, etc.) He did phenomenally in math. He either only got one wrong (sometimes because he went the wrong way in an equation LOL it's like he was Japanese, or whatever culture it is that goes from right to left, in a former life LOL) or got all of the questions right. Most of the tests were scribed. The ones he wrote himself all of his numbers were reversed. All of them. But he still got the operations correct.

Instead of "enable" or "short change" I got "she is capable of more than you are giving her credit for." Ugghh. A few possible wording items to consider:

- Rather than an amount of writing that would trigger para support we got "DD will do 10% of the written output and para will do 90%." We have never counted the number of words in a given day but it helped with our argument that requiring her to ask for help was inappropriate.

- DD's psychologist suggested telling her "this is how YOU learn best" in order to address the not wanting to appear different after being expected to request help. I like how first they require these kids to ask for the help they are supposed to receive and then try to claim that since they are doing more and more on their own the need for support must not really be there after all. Gee why don't I wait to pay my tax bill until the school district runs out of money and asks for it. Gee - you went so many months not needing my money I guess that means you can function independently and don't need the support I am required to provide. Huh? What? I am supposed to just pay my taxes without you showing that you need the support and specifically requesting that I provide it? Really? I didn't know it was supposed to work that way...

- The failure to provide the required scribe led to DD being penalized for her disability. Amazingly she was earning 100% on every weekly spelling test while they were being scribed. When the teacher started having her write it herself she started missing several words each week. I complained that she was being required to work through 2 levels of learning disability (dyslexia AND dysgraphia) to do this. Once the teacher marked her wrong for spelling "ran" as "a-r-n" I was able to effectively argue that she was being penalized for her disability. No one could disagree that when sounding the word out there was NO WAY that DD would say "rr" "rr" "rr" = "A". It HAD to be her dyslexia causing her to write the word as a reversal. It was up to them to try to prove that this wasn't the case. Amazing! Once I made this argument directly to the superintendent all hand written spelling tests came to an end. Also amazing - having them scribed again has meant a return to 100% on the weekly tests. Go figure...

- If your IEP requires the accommodation it is required. Period. In our case we had to involve both the superintendent and the state Dept of Ed to be taken seriously. We have also made clear that we are ready, willing and able to pursue a civil rights complaint. The classroom teacher continues to violate the IEP but other members of the team are now VERY quick to correct the problem when we bring it to them.

"When the school staff insisted that dysgraphia (if it did exist) wasn't impacting ds in the classroom, I showed the split between his WJ-III Achievement Scores - if you plot the subtest scores on the y-axis vs type of subtest on the x-axis, my ds' subtests split into three groups - one high-scoring group which matches his IQ level, one group that is around 30 percentile points lower, and another group that is significantly lower than that. The difference between the groups is in the type of response. The high scores are subtests that have oral responses. The middle scores are subtests that have written responses but are untimed. The low scores are subtests that have written responses and are also timed. That one graph was something the school couldn't argue. (Note: they still tried to not give accommodations, but the graph usually shut down the argument that handwriting didn't impact ds)."

I haven't figure out the quote boxes, yet, but this is from polarbear's page 1 response.

Polarbear could you point me to where I can find the WJ-III information for which subtests fall into which catagories? The chart is a brilliant idea and since I have all of DS7's subtests I'd like to borrow the idea for future school meetings!

Mary'sthere, I love how you schooled the school - I hope it helps.

Yes! Please! This would be good info for me too.

Marytheres, I applaud you for maintaining a professional, facts-based tone when the school was clearly personalizing the issue and failing in its core responsibilities. That the principal and team have the gall to presume to administer medical advice as administrators is astonishing. They are so clearly overreaching their expertise and taking a CYA approach to obfuscate their negligence.

I still can't get over their condescending to lecture you about tone, as if you're in a personal relationship and owe them the courtesy of sugar coated language after being blatantly called a liar. That's just hypocritical bull. I like to think I would have been as collected as you, though it's mighty unlikely.

I'm not the parent of a 2E child, but it seems plain to me that a medically necessary accommodation should neither be a source of contention nor parental guilt, as the school seems to believe.

Kudos to you. I'm excited to hear about your son's ongoing success. Maybe I should send the principal some salt to make eating his hat more palatable.