Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Repeated Achievement and Worse

polarbear explains everything very clearly (I did no more than a quiet chuckle...=)).

One of the issues that often comes up between school and private psychoed evals is that private psychs use the DSM (as they must, in order to properly bill insurance for testing), while school-based IEP teams are required to use the federal special education disability categories (unless you are fortunate enough to live in a noncategorical state, like Iowa), which do not -quite- match up to the DSM. In some cases, they are more generous, in others, less. Also, school-based teams are required to consider a number of environmental and historical exclusionary factors, which can further cloud the issue, as some types of disabilities are more conducive to some types of exclusionary factors entering the picture. (E.g., lack of access to good instruction is an exclusionary factor for LD, but some unID'ed LD kids act out so they can get themselves removed from the instructionally-frustrating setting, which means they miss out on instruction. So now it's not clear whether their lack of progress is because staff were unknowingly preventing access to instruction in the course of disciplinary measures, or if the lack of progress is primarily due to an underlying LD.) Anyway, the distinction between DSM disabled and federal special education law disabled is one of the reasons it's important to get ahold of, and read thoroughly, parents' rights with regard to special education, to obtain a really good eval from (if possible) a psych who is familiar with the school system you are working with, and (if necessary) to hire an ed advocate who is not only knowledgeable and skilled about the law, but about your particular school system.

On the Beery, there are various options for administration. There is the original core VMI, which is a fine motor near-point copying task, plus two supplementary subtests, which are supposed to separate the motor and visual contributions. If all three were given, you should have three scores from the Beery. If you only have one, then only the VMI portion was given. That is a unitary score.

Also, in most schools, average is 25-75%ile (middle 50%), or even 16-84%ile (one standard deviation plus/minus). Again, private psychs may use different standards of average. Obviously, these means quite a few kids labeled average are having to work rather hard at meeting curriculum standards (or, conversely, might appear somewhat bright in a conventional classroom).

Thank you for all the great advice. I'll try and provide some of the information in question and update you on where we are now. You all are incredibly helpful.

School District:
I called the district. We are an RTI district. However, district shared they will qualify in discrepancy model if they feel it is a unique case. She said 20 point discrepancy would be criteria. We have over 50 points between VCI WISC-IV and Broad Written. She explained that RTI means he would be observed/ tested for 12 weeks before recommendations would be made. She said she felt a team meeting would be a good next step and will contact the school. I do have W scores. They are all higher but within 1-15 points.

Diagnosis:
Ed psych is very credible. hoagies and Wright's Law webpage recommendation her. She has not worked with my district but most of the other surrounding districts. She said she'd write the diagnosis for me when I want it. I will ask for it. I've had a bit of a Hangul of anything being diagnosed as a LD and that is my fear of it haunting him in future...especially as I've doubted whether it is a LD for the last year. I'm ready now.

Writing: polarbear I will try all your great suggestions to identify root-cause better. For now the issue seems all of the above. Ha! Definitely grip issues though OT has improved. he is low muscle tone with motor planning issues and that is part of the issue. His fine motor is weak in some areas but others it is strong...and ?OT explained this better than I can but finger strength is very strong (Lego obsessed kid) so putty exercises and stuff he excels with...his posture when writing is poor. He uses the right side of his body only when writing. I will pay more attention to vision...he does look off to the side when talking to you at times ...in a processing and visual overload way.

Beery:
Beery VMI 100/50%
Visual Perception 93/32%
Motor coordination 102/55%

Reading: he was a late reader for a gifted child of his ability. In K...as a 6 year old...he had a strong preference to read by word recognition and context. Thus he would guess a tremendous amount based on first few letters of a word and picture/comprehension clues. His errors were skipping words, lines, missing simple,words like there, that, this...but getting very hard words like comprehension, velocity, etc because of his strong vocabulary. Because all phono tests showed above average results the though was a glitch happening between phonic awareness and decoding. The tutor used OG to specifically work on the phonic sounds he was missing and decoding strategies. He loved learning the phonic rules. He still struggles decoding names when reading and he will tell you people need to speed their kids names using the phonic rules...drives him batty. Of course I won't tell you his sisters name (it doesn't follow the rules...ha!)

What I want: tester gave me these recommendations..
1) continue reading out loud to ensure patterns detected for areas of gaps. But his reading is largely protected by his VCI and strong phonic awareness.
2) continue to teach him ways to compensate for reading struggles...like paying attention when things don't make sense. Highlighting key words in word problems, etc. this as protection for when reading demands become more technical.
3) provide audio books to ensure comprehension skills are practiced without taxing reading fluency. Also to ensure he is getting I out at ability level even though reading level may not match.
4) continue OT for next year. OT did handwriting without tears and finished so now working on motor planning/ gross motor skills.
5) Put keyboarding accommodations and timing accommodations in place due to processing and motor graphia issues.

And then stuff in enriching and she recommended we try EPGy for math to take pressure of writing and fluency and see how he does with concept and calculation enrichment.

Based on that it sounds as if a 504 is my better bet. As I'm wanting more accommodations and happy to keep tutoring private.

So it sounds like the RTI route would take about three months into the new school year, but that they could be talked into the discrepancy route. Where you have current testing, that seems like the obvious next step. It also sounds like an IEP would not be contentious, though that still leaves the question of accommodations and services open.

W score differences of 1-15 show that some areas have seen negligible growth over the year (those pesky low single digit scores). For your reference, a ten point increase in W score means that a person's performance on tasks previously completed with 50% success has improved to 75% success. That is reasonable growth over the course of a year.