Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Feeling vindicated

No real question, just need to express my relief at results that make sense...

DD12 just had more testing done.

3 years ago she had the DAS-II without the processing speed subtest: result 132, nicely balanced, but she was sobbing in class every day.

This spring she had a wider set of tests. Most of them came out in the 95-120 range, quite variable, with these exceptions.

WISC-IV
VCI 142
PRI 141
WMI 123
PSI 94
GAI 151

and...

WJ III Cog Rapid Picture Naming 89
WJ III Ach Academic Fluency 86 (all fluency subtests were below 95)
TOWL 3 and WPT - all subtests at or below 1st percentile

So, I guess now I know I belong in this section of the forum.
The office that did the testing does educational interventions, not neuropsych, and while they described her as 2E they are not specialists in it. So... if we want to do anything further with this than get a 504 and a writing ed therapist, we need to find another office. Sigh.

Deep breath.

Do you have testing for phonological awareness, too?

How is your DD feeling?

Hi ljoy,

I'm glad you're vindicated! It is so important that things make sense-- your DD will be happier when she knows the exact reason for her challenges.

I do think the neuropsych is a good idea. We have found that it's easiest to make school fit properly when you know exactly what the difficulties are, and what the best practices are for correcting or working around them.

I think they didn't test phonological awareness, unless that's the same as Letter-Word Identification (120). Maybe I should find someplace that can do that?

She's incredibly mature now and can separate her trouble writing from her intelligence and value as a person. She wishes she could read faster, and of course she wishes she could write more than five sentences a night. Now that she's in middle school she's adapted to spending a lot of time on homework, several hours if there's writing. She complains so little.

Overall I think she's proud she managed the year back in the generic public school after her gifted private elementary. The private made huge accommodations just based on classroom observations, without anything formal, and this year she had no accommodations at all aside from occasional class work finished at home. Her grades are fine. She is ready to put in effort for remediation if there's reason to believe in it.

Letter-Word ID is not a measure of phonological processing, but of word calling. It's not even a good measure of decoding skills, as it's a list of real words that she may have memorized. If you want PP testing done, the gold standard is the CTOPP-2. There will be a decent (at face value; no clinical track record, so I can't speak to that) PP section on the new WJIV. The existing WJIII has a couple of PP subtests on it, but they are all in the extended set, not the standard. One caveat: very bright, verbal, adolescent dyslexics may do fine on the majority of the CTOPP or other PP measures, as they often have developed their own compensatory mechanisms. Even if there are phonological processing issues, they tend to be very subtle by this age, and with this cognitive ability level. You'll have to pay careful attention to the phoneme manipulation tasks (e.g., deletion, reversal), especially those using non-real words, where she is less likely to be using general verbal knowledge and cognition to compensate for weak PP.

The top line here is actually that the numbers you report would qualify her for an IEP, not just a 504, as the writing achievement is well below both normative and individual expectations. You are also reporting educational impact, despite her good grades, as she is having to use inordinate amounts of time and effort to complete grade-level work. She would qualify under pretty much any of the current criteria for SLD: aptitude-achievement, pattern of strengths and weaknesses, cross-battery, and RTI (if you use her reading/writing speed). The very low TOWL scores indicate that it's not just an issue of writing speed, as the majority of the TOWL has no time limits.

You must be very proud of her maturity, poise, and self-awareness. That is what will take her the furthest in life, and as a human being, without a doubt.

aeh, thanks for the detailed information. The two TOWL scores we have are for Contextual Conventions and Story Composition. If there is more to that test it may not have been administered, because the WJ Ach non-fluency writing scores were ok - in that 95-120 band.

We haven't met with the school yet. I think we were pursuing 504 rather than IEP because IEPs provide tutoring services for one period a day and she doesn't want to give up an elective. Since she has an existing medical 504 it will also be relatively fast to set up, and we want it in place before the summer math placement exam. We may try for IEP also if it seems worth it, but it would probably be November before it was set up. Is this a reasonable plan?

And yes, we are extremely proud of her.

This is really good info form aeh... I am commenting so I can find it again later!

The I in IEP stands for INDIVIDUAL. If she doesn't need or want to give up the elective, there is no reason to. Services can be pushed into a class, or delivered as summer tutoring, or whatever the team agrees is appropriate to that particular student.

2E kids in particular have IEPs that don't look like "standard" IEPs. But there should be NO standard IEP.

First, identify the needs as clearly as you can, then you and the school team and your DD should together figure out what steps will address those needs, THEN work it into a schedule that works for her.

ljoy, can you tell us a little bit more about her challenges in school, specifically her writing and/or reading challenges? The reason I ask is that my DS14 also performed extremely *extremely* poorly on the TOWL when he was evaluated by his school, as well as having a significant discrepancy between VIQ/PRI and PSI on the WISC, and lower scores on WJ-III frequency tests. The reason for the low scores on the WISC and WJ-III were primarily due to handwriting *speed* but the lower TOWL scores reflected (for my ds) a significant difficulty with expressive language when using written expression. If that's what's going on with your dd, I'd recommend an evaluation by a Speech Language Pathologist (which you could request from the school as part of an IEP eligibility review). I'd also request the IEP - as DeeDee mentioned, IEPs are "individual" education plans, and that one period study hall you've mentioned is used, in our school district, for the students who need help with organization (keeping track of assignments, making sure they have are on target with their homework etc). The goals and action plan to work toward goals on each student's IEP is put together by the IEP team, which includes parents. If anything, I would think it's at least worth going through the eligibility process for your dd and then rejecting the IEP if you think it's just not a good idea.

In the meantime, I'd also recommend more private testing - for the speech eval. My ds' speech eval did not have #s low enough to qualify for speech services through the school district, but did show a significant discrepancy in subtests, very similar to the WISC in range. He was given a diagnosis of dysgraphia + expressive language disorder by his SLP, and he's worked with the same private SLP now for several years, and for him - it was *the* single most important educational "help" that he's had.

Struggling with written expression can be extremely tough not only because of the increasing demands on students as they move up in school, but because of the toll it can take on self-confidence, particularly for intellectually gifted students who can't show the world the full extent of their knowledge. So my last suggestion is - don't just focus on the 504 and AT and testing scores, be sure that you look closely and try to determine what the hang-ups in the writing process (or reading) are for your dd.

Best wishes,

polarbear

So the portion of the TOWL that was administered does have a time limit (15 minutes), but should still generate a reasonable score if at least 30-50 words were written (one good paragraph).

I would agree that modifying her existing 504 is the quickest way to get accommodations in place. You may wish to start the IEP eligibility process sooner rather than later, though, in parallel with monitoring the effectiveness of the new accommodations, as, although you can ask for reduced writing work load as a 504 accommodation, it will have more legs if it's in an IEP.

And yes, if she doesn't want to lose her elective, the IEP team can decide on another way to provide her with the services she needs. In fact, ideally, she should be receiving inclusion services in writing, so that she can work on her writing using actual ELA/SS assignments, rather than additional work, so the general ed teacher receives the benefit of consult and modeling of accommodations from the special ed teacher, and so there is continuity between strategies and accommodations taught by the special ed teacher and those provided by the general ed teacher.