Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional District too inept to do eval

What about dysgraphia though? or dyslexia? Because those aren't really medical disorders, they are more learning disabilities. Our medical insurance would say that anything that has to do with "learning" is the school's job to evaluate.

Start by saying she is not to be kept in at recess for incomplete work - preferably for ever but at least until she has had an evaluation and got accomodations sorted.

I had blue cross/blue shield and they paid for the dyslexia full testing because it is neurological. I am not sure about dysgraphia. I put that in my paperwork that I was concerned about that too, but I don't think we really were tested for that. Although, if I knew then what I know now, I would have asked for that testing as well. I had to pay my regular deductable, but most of it was covered.

School can't legally diagnose anything. They can only identify educational needs, which is vastly different.

If you suspect something like an LD, most kinds of health insurance will cover a private eval. In our county you can also get financial help from the county to cover the eval.

Ok, well we switched insurance and now have Blue Cross. But they won't cover any testing regarding ADHD which is the same as the old plan. I don't know specifically about LD's. Schools should at least be able to tell if child has a "disorder of written expression" even if they don't label it as a disability. If the school doesn't know anything about dysgraphia, I'm not sure they would be competent enough to choose tests that would pick up the issue.

"Should" is one thing. "Can" is another.

Our experience with school psychs is that they have Master's degrees, and they are about as qualified as a psychometrician. That is, they are not equipped to do differential diagnosis as a neuropsychologist would be. They also often do not have access to or expertise about the specific assessments that would best help you pinpoint issues.

If you really want to know what's going on, I'd use a private neuropsych. If you really want school to act on what's going on, I'd use a private neuropsych in parallel with the school's eval process, and provide the school copies of the private data for anything that you really want done correctly.

This page on the Wrightslaw website has a bunch of links about response to intervention that you might find interesting. It almost sounds like the school, by having the teacher get together with you informally, may be looking to do a response to intervention process. http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/rti.index.htm

I agree with puffin to make a point to mention the recess issue.

Ok, thanks everyone. I'm going to talk to teacher later, we'll see what she says about the situation.

I talked to the teacher and it turns out that DD hasn't been filling out her "planner" for the last 2 months. She is supposed to be copying a sentence each day about what the math homework is, and each week write a list of spelling words. I thought the teacher had just stopped having them do this. Teacher mentioned that she is having the kids write down the spelling words and I said "her planner has been blank." Teacher was shocked and said that DD always looked like she was writing. So basically DD has "given up" (on that at least). I looked back at her planner and there are a couple weeks where she wrote a couple words, but that's pretty much it. On spelling tests, she misses a bunch of words and the ones she does write down are all out of order. This can't be normal even for a kid with ADHD! Teacher is going to try to have someone give her the words she missed but I don't know how this is going to work.

I talked to a private psych about all this and he asked the WISC scores and was quite taken aback, esp with her non-verbal score being 99.9th+ percentile. He said that he can do a comprehensive eval but doesn't think insurance would cover it because usually school systems are expected to do this. I explained that our school system is completely inept and they don't even know what dysgraphia is. He said that he is going to look into some things with insurance and call me back. I am debating calling the State and seeing if I can get the school district to pay for a private eval if our insurance won't cover it.

Have you tried talking with your insurance company? I don't think they are likely to pay for a strictly educational evaluation, but they may pay if your daughter is legitimately having associated issues (like anxiety and depression) or if there is any chance of a learning disability. It doesn't sound like there are those sorts of issues, but I mention it just in case it makes a difference. My daughter's first evaluation was paid for by insurance because she was having difficulty (she was so miserable at school that she was becoming very anxious and we were able to get a report supporting her grade acceleration, which made an immediate improvement). They didn't pay for her second evaluation because she was doing fine at that point and it was just for more information (and I thought it was fair they didn't pay at that point).