504 to IEP writing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP again - is your child medicated? If yes, has the dose been adjusted? If no, you'd better get on that pronto. Accommodations and services are supposed to be used in addition to meds, for moderate to severe cases of ADHD with accompanying LDs.

That's crazy. The goals and services in an IEP are based on what a child needs now. Whether meds are appropriate is a decision for the parents, in consultation with a doctor. An IEP cannot require meds, regardless of diagnosis.

[Anonymous]

Just my 2 cents but I speak from experience. Get a private neuropsychologist eval. They will provide good recommendations. Then hire an advocate.

I have heard and seen it all. I fought for years, even when we already had an IEP for speech. School finally agreed to testing in 2nd and surprise! It came back saying our child was fine! CHe couldn't write a single coherent sentence! In 3rd a private eval showed an LD of Written Expression. He also couldn't write anything legible in 2nd after years of OT but they refused to allow technology because they didn't want him to give up on trying to write.

The neuropsychologist and advocate attending our meeting changed the entire dynamic. The IEP team did a complete about face and gave him services and reasonable accommodations including extra time, scribe, pull out instruction, OT, etc.

Too bad they did such a crummy job of providing intervention even with a wonderful IEP. We found school staff were dedicated but untrained to help our son and had too many kids to provide the hours promised. We did a lot private OT and summer writing programs. Make sure you monitor the delivery of services. We couldn't afford private or I would have pulled DS earlier. We eventually did leave MCPS because his grandparents offered to foot the tuition. We are now headed back to MCPS and I am dreading it.

[Anonymous]

Have a similar situation with a 10 year-old who writes about as well as a six year-old, but "meets expectations" on PARCC for English and Math (she has ADD and language processing LDs which make organizing thoughts, spelling, and writing really challenging - she is starting to fall behind in reading because her ability to inference is not very good which makes sense given its requirement for higher level language processing). In DC with no services. - have been told over and over again that she doesn't qualify for an IEP because she has measurable progress (I've had her privately evaluated twice now, once in first grade then in fourth with full neuro-psych and battery of speech and language testing). We are going to a special private school next year in the hopes that some of these issues will be resolved without spending $10k+ on speech therapy, etc. The only "saving grace" in my experience is that the speech therapist in my daughter's DCPS is not very good so I know the money I am spending privately is worth it because even an IEP would not have helped us much. Speech therapy has helped with reading but not with writing which is all about practice, practice, practice and for my child about combatting the crippling anxiety that comes with writing.

I have a friend whose son is on the spectrum but really gifted in math and science. He's in middle school in Montgomery County with an IEP and they have been pleased - he's pulled out for English and Social Studies with other kids who have trouble writing and he's made real demonstrable progress. So they key seems to be advocating for and obtaining the right services. I think the website understood.org has some checklists for what to ask for in an IEP for kids with various learning issues including writing issues (which apparently, are amorphous for lots of kids like my daughter who have issues with ADHD, slower processing speed, some auditory processing issues and other ADHD related organizational issues). A good evaluation will help you figure out the right things to ask for - you already know your child has ADHD, so if money is an issue, perhaps getting a language evaluation will be money better spent. My daughter's psychiatrist recommended Sharon Lockwood - she was wonderful, and because her husband is a psychiatrist, she is really cognizant of all the issues that can come with ADHD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the previous person noted, it is important that if you do not agree, do not sign. We have had the school play games with writing (in our case dysgraphia)-have been told several times that you cannot get an IEP for this, which is not the case. Just wanted to mention in case you have this issue.

Other well-worn excuses not to provide an IEP that I have heard in my 10 years dealing with this.

Your child is doing better than the average student (said when grades are not "failing" - you still can get an IEP with above average grades).

Your child has average skills (said even when the psychological assessment is showing low average, close to borderline scores, discrepant from IQ. Achievement scores which are highly discrepant from IQ indicate there may be a problem necessitating special instruction. )

Your child just isn't motivated, or is lazy.... that's the problem.

Your parenting is the problem, you just want your child to be smarter than he/she is. You need to accept your child is just not that bright.

Your child's 99th percentile IQ scores are not representative of his ability. All kids from wealthy families who are able to provide good environments for their growth and development have high IQs. Thus, the discrepancy between IQ and achievement is nothing to worry about.

All students have trouble with this. (This line is especially used in the lower grades when all reading and writing skills are considered "in development" and nothing to worry about... until it is too late and harder to fix.)

Our testing shows your child is doing fine. (Said when the school has not done any standardized, norm-referenced testing, but merely tests that are scored on a highly subjective basis.)

The teachers think your child is doing great. (I have actually had schools deliberately fail to include teacher reports from classes where DC was struggling, hoping I wouldn't notice their absence in a stack of last minute papers. I have also had a teacher report describe the student as doing very well, even though the student had gotten Cs, Ds, and Es on all tests and quizzes which were only pulled up by homework completion.)

We can't give you an IEP until we have done "response to intervention". (This is where the school tries to convince you that you can't get an IEP until they try additional teaching methods in the classroom and see if your DC responds. This delay is explicitly forbidden under IDEA.)

Also, if you disagree with the IEP, make it clear that you will do more than not sign -- that you will pursue your "due process" options. Make sure you audio record the meeting. Make sure that you follow up the IEP meeting notes with any addition to the record you want about what was said and promised during the meeting. We find that the IEP meeting notes are often a very skewed record, and we use FERPA to ask for an amendment to the "educational record" so that our view of what was said during the meeting is on the record.

I could have written this-really frustrating. The people who are supposed to help and teach your child hurt them. We just had an IEP meeting where the school indicated that the findings of our very qualified and respected neurologist must be wrong because they do not agree-would make things harder for school. They questioned the findings on a number of LD. Also, indicated that our child with dysgraphia was choosing not to write neatly even though teacher acknowledged issues. Really disappointed at how shameless schools can be at these meetings. I really don't get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As the previous person noted, it is important that if you do not agree, do not sign. We have had the school play games with writing (in our case dysgraphia)-have been told several times that you cannot get an IEP for this, which is not the case. Just wanted to mention in case you have this issue.

We also have consistently heard this -- "you cannot get .... this" -- in a different way. We have heard it in reference to a 504 plan for an advanced student. We have heard it repeatedly when asking for specific kinds of accommodations. It is false.

[Anonymous]

I would not go into this expecting a fight. So many parents do and I believe it really harms the process. There are plenty of parents like me who have had nothing but outstanding cooperation from the school. Our IEP meetings were the complete opposite of what I see described here. We went into the process assuming that everyone wanted what was best of our child. And we were never disappointed. No lawyers. No advocates. We never needed that. My son is 17. We started this jouney when he was six.

I would suggest that you assume the best until you are proven wrong. I hope your experience is more like ours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP again - is your child medicated? If yes, has the dose been adjusted? If no, you'd better get on that pronto. Accommodations and services are supposed to be used in addition to meds, for moderate to severe cases of ADHD with accompanying LDs.

That's crazy. The goals and services in an IEP are based on what a child needs now. Whether meds are appropriate is a decision for the parents, in consultation with a doctor. An IEP cannot require meds, regardless of diagnosis.

That's not at all what I meant, PP. I mean that in cases of moderate to severe ADHD with LDs, expecting the IEP to make all problems magically go away is unrealistic. The school is not supposed to ask about medical treatment, so it is not a subject for discussion at the meeting, and not a reason to add or subtract services. But OP needs to know that meds will greatly increase her child's functioning, and therefore her child will be better able to access the services/accommodations given by the school.

[Anonymous]

We got IEP. We used help of educational consultants. Educational testing showed all average, however we got surprising support from school psychologist who confirmed educational impact with testing and had great recommendations. This is our second experience with school psychologists (two different) and we were pleasantly surprised this time (first time was a disaster.)
Biggest child's problems are old suspects: executive functioning/organisation and low processing speed with low working memory. I do not think that medicating would help in such case. Due to medical situation we cannot medicate anyway.
Do you know that your child will be always average unless he/she at the very left of normal distributions? (2 standard deviations!). I.e. unless your child is in low 1 or 2 % of population, she is always average. Even when she is 16th percentile!
That is why you need educational consultants and good psychologists on your side to look beyond average...