Preschool options for Hard-of-Hearing 3 year old?
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Anonymous
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Op, try to get an IEP for where you're living any way.
If your dc has a cochlear implant you can try the river school but it's pricey. |
Anonymous
The River School places a very high priority on including students with hearing loss. If your income qualifies you, your little one would likely be given financial aid, and it's quite possible that there would be aid available for both kids. To give you a sense of financial aid in this area, my son received a little more than 50% tuition at a private preschool when I was a single parent of 1 earning a teacher's salary. I know families earning over 100K who receive aid. DCPS tends to be more flexible about eligibility for IEPs than many school districts, in part because of the universal (not really 100% universal, but close) PK program in DC. It's likely that, even if she wouldn't qualify in MCPS or another place, your daughter would get services in DC. The DC legal definition of Hearing Impairment mentions 30 - 65 dB hearing loss without amplification as a typical range in which children qualify. DC is different from other jurisdictions in that even if she qualifies for a very low level of service such as 1 speech session a month, the child is guaranteed a spot in a preschool classroom. Having said that, there isn't a 100% guarantee that she'll qualify, and if she does there isn't a guarantee of a spot in the home school or a school you'll find acceptable, so you'll need a back up plan. In your shoes, if you can afford it, I'd probably look for an apartment by Hearst in NW. Why Hearst? Well, for the following reasons: 1) Hearst is a lovely school for your older child. 2) If you can make River work, it's you're not too far away. 2) It's got PK3, which none of the other schools close to River do. If your little one qualifies for an IEP, there's a good chance they'd get a spot in PK3 there, and either way you're almost guaranteed a spot for PK4. 3) You're on the red line, which will make your commute meet that 30 minute criteria (unless you're driving to River to drop off/pick up and then Union Station, that total commute would be longer) 4) If neither River nor Hearst works for this year there are other preschools in the area to choose from, many of which also offer financial aid if you qualify. |
Anonymous
| We have a pretty decent income and received good aid for River School. Families there range from fully paying to fully covered with aid. Otherwise, I would locate in Montgomery County in the closest location you can afford. There are several elementary schools with good experience with CI kids beyond the d/hoh programs. Your daughter would certainly qualify for a 504 plan and I bet you can fight for an IEP with a disability like hearing loss, at least those are my expectations. |
Anonymous
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OP Here.
Wow- this is all encouraging and incredibly helpful info! I had been wondering if DC might be a bit easier to get some special ed preschool services - I think I read elsewhere that DCPS will sometimes just pay part/all private tuition for hearing loss kids b/c they haven't historically done a good job meeting needs internally. I will call and ask for an IEP meeting. Here in Idaho at her "transition" meeting (from early intervention to public schools at age 3) they said it is sometimes easier to qualify for services after they turn 3 because the norms for language for 2 year olds are pretty relaxed.. Most encouraging is that I got an email back from an admissions person at The River School today and will speak with them tomorrow. The email suggested they may have openings for both girls. I'm trying not to be too hopeful, but it would just be an incredibly amazing fit for both my kids. And the financial aid sounds encouraging. I'd guess that our "need" determination is going to be the same whether I enroll one or both girls. Hopefully this will be our solution and I can tackle housing next! Thanks all for your info and suggestions and a special thanks to 15:07 for that fantastic recommendation on where to live. A move to DC area when you've never been there and are on tight budget is overwhelming to say the least, so concrete suggestions are just so helpful. Thanks!! |
Anonymous
To clarify, Franklin Sherman goes through 6th grade. In Fairfax County, Virginia, parents use an organization called Child Find for assessment. |
Anonymous
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OP again.
Just to clarify, her loss is moderate (45-65 db in both ears) so she does well with hearing aids (no CIs). It sounds like her loss is enough to possibly qualify her for services simply due to the disability. That would be such a relief. It's an issue I've brought up here in Idaho that is frustrating - while she is doing well overall she still has specific problems that I think the schools should address. She is 90th percentile (for hearing kids!) in receptive language, 60-something for expressive, but then has a few serious articulation issues. I think those articulation issues are critical to her communication and need to be addressed, despite the fact that the mean of her language scores suggests she is doing fine. Has anyone addressed this type of thing with IEPs-- overall your kid is doing well but there are a couple issues that should be addressed? |
Anonymous
Yes, but first, has she had an IQ test, and if so, what percentile are scores? |
Anonymous
You will not have any issues getting an IEP just show the school the audiologist's report documenting the hearing loss. Once you do that, it's pretty much a done deal even though you will still go through the steps for getting an IEP. My child attends a language immersion charter school and there are several kids with hearing loss there. (All doing great!). Our school provides a FM tuner system for these kids. The FM system is definitely something you should ask for in the IEP no matter where your child ends up. The school should provide it at no cost to you. GL! |
Anonymous
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Try Dolley Madison:
http://www.dolleymadisonpreschool.org/ |
Anonymous
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OP:
Why would an IQ test be useful? |
Anonymous
SLP here. What specific tests did they give her and how recent. Usually, many slps give the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation and The Preschool Language Scale (PLS). And it usually goes by standard scores versus percentiles. If they haven't given that then I would definitely ask for it because if there is a gap between expressive and receptive and if the expressive falls below a certain standard score, as well as the articulation, then you should easily get an IEP ..... Which is very helpful since getting a placement may not be based on hearing loss alone. |
Anonymous
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OP answer to last post:
She had PLS-5 (total language score 120) and Arizona articulation std score of 103 at age 2 yr 8 mo. The school district here said "these are not qualifying scores but re-test in fall to determine qualification." I'll ask to have her tested in DC. Her long-time SLP did the testing and it seemed to me that she understood way more of my daughter's speech than a stranger would, simply b/c she knows her so well. I imagine SLPs are trained to listen "objectively" but I do wonder if she would score lower if done by someone new. |
Anonymous
Those scores will definitely not qualify her - but in reality that's a good thing. 120 is amazing for a total language score since 100 is considered average! But, yes, it can't hurt to re evaluate her. I would ask for them to do a language sample with an intelligibility rating - because typically articulation tests target single words versus spontaneous language. So even if her articulation is good, there could be difficulty understanding her everyday speech. |
Anonymous
Not the OP, but with all due respect have you had to go through the process with a child with hearing loss? My child has a documented moderate-to-severe loss in one ear and the school district we are in is fighting us on an IEP. Simply providing an audiologist's report isn't enough. |
Anonymous
To get an IEP in any state, you must show 1) disorder 2) adverse impact on education and 3) need for specialized instruction. It is not enough just to show "disorder," i.e that the child has a hearing loss. In many school systems, IEP teams will equate "good grades" with "no adverse impact" -- but this is not "legal" in that the law says that the IEP determination can't rest on just one measure (grades) and that even kids with good grades are eligible to get an IEP. OP in Idaho, it sounds like you are having issues like I did with my GT/LD son who has a high IQ and does very well in some areas and very poorly in others, but sort of seems "average" overall. The IEP team must consider "a pattern of strengths and weaknesses" in it's "adverse impact" evaluation. IQ is one part of evaluating this. A child with an IQ at the 60th percentile who also has 60th percentile expressive language scores is "doing OK". A child with an IQ at the 99th percentile and expressive language scores at the 60th percentile scores is by definition experiencing a "significant discrepancy" that indicates a problem. (Anytime achievement scores are 15 standard score points or more away from IQ that is "1 standard deviation" and indicates a "significant discrepancy".) The psychologist on the IEP team is often the one that you need to focus questions along this line. Our speech pathologist quite literally didn't understand the significance of the numbers of the scores. If DC was "average" in the composite score, then there was no problem, in her opinion. Only when I went through each score that had a 1+ standard deviation and asked the psychologist, "now that's a significant discrepancy, isn't it?" during an IEP team meeting, did the psychologist overrule the speech/language pathologist and say that in her professional problem my child had an adverse impact. Once I tipped the psychologist, the entire team had to follow. Look both at the difference within IQ subscores, difference between IQ and composites on speech/language scores, and the difference between IQ and achievement/SPL subscores and the difference between subscores. A 90/60 split between expressive and receptive is pretty close to 1 standard deviation, but that might not be quite enough (usually you need 1 1/2 standard deviations at least). If the school didn't provide the IQ testing, you can refile for an IEP and specifically ask for IQ testing, saying that you think that your child is GT/2E (meaning that in addition to being GT, you think that she has a second "exceptionality"). Worst case scenario -- you can do the IQ testing privately. It is usually less than $500 (a lot, but far less than a full speech or neuropsych exam.) I will tell you, based on my experience with my child, that it is often difficult to document "achievement/IQ discrepancy" before 1st grade, because there is such a wide age range tolerated. For example, with some kinds of articulation disorders, they are considered "developmental" and should disappear before age 7. If your child has one of these (like a frontal lisp), the school will not do anything until the window closes for the time during which it might be expected that a child can develop it on their own. It doesn't make sense from the individual perspective -- earlier intervention means an easier fix with fewer problems as a result. But, from a public health/education system perspective it does make sense -- why devote limited resources to something that might not need assistance to fix? Also, many of the "academic skills" that are related to good hearing aren't taught or expected to be mastered until 3rd grade, like reading, writing, spelling, grammar, etc. Similar ideas apply as with articulation disorders -- if your child is only mildly behind in reading in K or 1st, it will not be considered as big a problem as if they were mildly behind in 3rd (until which age, the school will tell you "don't worry, they all learn to read by 3rd".) As my son aged from 4 to 8, what had been "mild" differences or discrepancies" widened substantially. He finally qualified for an IEP in 2nd grade. OP, I would encourage you to think carefully about documenting adverse impact and what kind of specialized instruction is necessary. Are you documenting examples of when your child is trying to express a need and can't and then isn't participating in preschool or has a tantrum, etc.? That's documenting the adverse impact of the articulation disorder. On "specialized instruction" for example, your child might have strong receptive language skills, but how is she doing with phonics? Is she able to associate symbols and sounds? Segment sound? Blend sound? These are key early reading skills, and I can easily imagine how a HoH child might have more problems with this due to inaccurate hearing of the incoming sound and might thus need more specialized instruction, perhaps in the way of clear delivery of words. Yet, age 3 may be too early to test for or expect these skills to be testable. Does your child need specialized instruction on how to manage her hearing aids, how to best position herself in the classroom, etc.? |