Dyslexia in MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to resurrect it to ask whether this has improved at all.

My kid has dyslexia and ADHD. She also has a high IQ (136). She’s going into 2nd grade.

We’re currently paying nearly $100,000/year for private school and tutoring. It’s helping, but is a financial stranglehold.

I know MD passed legislation mandating dyslexia screening. Has that improved the situation at all, or are we better off just continuing to pay for private school and tutoring?

Um, tiniest violin ever.

Making fun of someone for struggling to pay for support for their SN child. A new low for DCUM.

DP. If they're paying $100k/year, they're clearly not "struggling."

[Anonymous]

One PP mentions that MD passed legislation mandating dyslexia screening, and it seems like that it is required to screen all kindergarteners. Can someone provide more information on this? I have a child just joins kindergarten in MCPS, and he has IEP. There is a reading specialist from the staff directory. Do parents have to request for screening or it is mandatory screening for all kids (include K kids)? When will they do screening?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to resurrect it to ask whether this has improved at all.

My kid has dyslexia and ADHD. She also has a high IQ (136). She’s going into 2nd grade.

We’re currently paying nearly $100,000/year for private school and tutoring. It’s helping, but is a financial stranglehold.

I know MD passed legislation mandating dyslexia screening. Has that improved the situation at all, or are we better off just continuing to pay for private school and tutoring?

Um, tiniest violin ever.

Making fun of someone for struggling to pay for support for their SN child. A new low for DCUM.

DP. If they're paying $100k/year, they're clearly not "struggling."

I told you it’s a financial stranglehold. But sure — choose to be a jerk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to resurrect it to ask whether this has improved at all.

My kid has dyslexia and ADHD. She also has a high IQ (136). She’s going into 2nd grade.

We’re currently paying nearly $100,000/year for private school and tutoring. It’s helping, but is a financial stranglehold.

I know MD passed legislation mandating dyslexia screening. Has that improved the situation at all, or are we better off just continuing to pay for private school and tutoring?

Um, tiniest violin ever.

Making fun of someone for struggling to pay for support for their SN child. A new low for DCUM.

DP. If they're paying $100k/year, they're clearly not "struggling."

I told you it’s a financial stranglehold. But sure — choose to be a jerk.

Moreover, we’re talking about a family with a SN kid. You could choose to have some grace.

[Anonymous]

Are you suggesting the school should evaluate kids who are less than one year behind (aka ok grade level)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you suggesting the school should evaluate kids who are less than one year behind (aka ok grade level)?

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to resurrect it to ask whether this has improved at all.

My kid has dyslexia and ADHD. She also has a high IQ (136). She’s going into 2nd grade.

We’re currently paying nearly $100,000/year for private school and tutoring. It’s helping, but is a financial stranglehold.

I know MD passed legislation mandating dyslexia screening. Has that improved the situation at all, or are we better off just continuing to pay for private school and tutoring?

Um, tiniest violin ever.

Making fun of someone for struggling to pay for support for their SN child. A new low for DCUM.

DP. If they're paying $100k/year, they're clearly not "struggling."

I told you it’s a financial stranglehold. But sure — choose to be a jerk.

You have to be making $250-500K a year to be able to pay $100K a year for a school post tax and probably extra services. Many people make less thank $100K a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to resurrect it to ask whether this has improved at all.

My kid has dyslexia and ADHD. She also has a high IQ (136). She’s going into 2nd grade.

We’re currently paying nearly $100,000/year for private school and tutoring. It’s helping, but is a financial stranglehold.

I know MD passed legislation mandating dyslexia screening. Has that improved the situation at all, or are we better off just continuing to pay for private school and tutoring?

Um, tiniest violin ever.

Making fun of someone for struggling to pay for support for their SN child. A new low for DCUM.

DP. If they're paying $100k/year, they're clearly not "struggling."

I told you it’s a financial stranglehold. But sure — choose to be a jerk.

You have to be making $250-500K a year to be able to pay $100K a year for a school post tax and probably extra services. Many people make less thank $100K a year.

Once again: you’re giving someone a hard time who is struggling to pay for services for their special needs kid.

Just sit with that for a second.

[Anonymous]

So parents need to be warned that mcps will not effectively evaluate for or intervene with dyslexia. If a child reaches age 10 without effective intervention it takes 4x as long to intervene. By age 12, the window for learning to read is mostly closed as the brain is much less malleable. The wait to fail approach in mcps...where kids are not evaluated until they are 1 or more grade levels behind (and then not given systematic intervention once they are) is creating a generation of illiteracy. MCPS does not have enough school psychologists to do the evaluations and they do not have enough special educators to then do research-based interventions, for which there is no district wide adopted approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our third grader was diagnosed with specific learning disability/dyslexia at the end of second grade. The data used to diagnose him came from testing MCPS did, which was thorough and IMO an accurate reflection of his strengths and weaknesses. He has a hefty IEP that's being implemented this year, including 90 minutes of daily reading instruction (mostly small group and not all at once), along with other accommodations. We may need to supplement more if they insist on OG only, but I'm hoping for flexibility to use more accelerated evidence-based approaches.

We haven't had to fight the school at all, yet. They implemented an evidence-based Tier 2 intervention last year and then we moved to the evaluation/IEP when he failed to respond to that. So, apparently our school is a unicorn, but in our experience, at least MCPS can and does identify "dyslexia" and is helping to remediate it.

What is the name of your school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our third grader was diagnosed with specific learning disability/dyslexia at the end of second grade. The data used to diagnose him came from testing MCPS did, which was thorough and IMO an accurate reflection of his strengths and weaknesses. He has a hefty IEP that's being implemented this year, including 90 minutes of daily reading instruction (mostly small group and not all at once), along with other accommodations. We may need to supplement more if they insist on OG only, but I'm hoping for flexibility to use more accelerated evidence-based approaches.

We haven't had to fight the school at all, yet. They implemented an evidence-based Tier 2 intervention last year and then we moved to the evaluation/IEP when he failed to respond to that. So, apparently our school is a unicorn, but in our experience, at least MCPS can and does identify "dyslexia" and is helping to remediate it.

What is the name of your school?

I know that sounds good -- Tier 2 intervention, but the law says the schools do not have to use a Response to Intervention model and can't make parents wait for kid to "fail" RTI before offering an evaluation, so actually your school failed you. If your student was having enough trouble to offer Tier 2, the school just should have done an evaluation right away.

MCPS often tries to convince parents that they have to try "intervention" first before getting an IEP -- it's not true and it's not legal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our third grader was diagnosed with specific learning disability/dyslexia at the end of second grade. The data used to diagnose him came from testing MCPS did, which was thorough and IMO an accurate reflection of his strengths and weaknesses. He has a hefty IEP that's being implemented this year, including 90 minutes of daily reading instruction (mostly small group and not all at once), along with other accommodations. We may need to supplement more if they insist on OG only, but I'm hoping for flexibility to use more accelerated evidence-based approaches.

We haven't had to fight the school at all, yet. They implemented an evidence-based Tier 2 intervention last year and then we moved to the evaluation/IEP when he failed to respond to that. So, apparently our school is a unicorn, but in our experience, at least MCPS can and does identify "dyslexia" and is helping to remediate it.

What is the name of your school?

I know that sounds good -- Tier 2 intervention, but the law says the schools do not have to use a Response to Intervention model and can't make parents wait for kid to "fail" RTI before offering an evaluation, so actually your school failed you. If your student was having enough trouble to offer Tier 2, the school just should have done an evaluation right away.

MCPS often tries to convince parents that they have to try "intervention" first before getting an IEP -- it's not true and it's not legal.

Yeah this sounds more on point to me. (Parent of dyslexic in MCPS in the crucial early years, now a decade out, praise Jesus himself.)

I have said it before - and I’ll say it again - it is criminal to use the ‘wait to fail’ model but this is MCPS culture towards their dyslexic students. In our day (my kid will graduate next year from a different county’s high school (Frederick) and just received acceptances to 8 of 10 universities with significant merit from all but one) this felt very far away. (We left Moco in second grade.) This success these past 2 weeks is despite an MCPS ‘education’.

If you have a child in the system you are facing an organization who will lie. It will lie behind your back. It will lie to your face. It is a school system who had no honor towards dyslexic students in their care before the pandemic and I cannot imagine how poorly it must be treating their dyslexic students in the years after pandemic.

You are the hero your dyslexic kid is looking for!

ASDEC is the life boat you’re looking for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our third grader was diagnosed with specific learning disability/dyslexia at the end of second grade. The data used to diagnose him came from testing MCPS did, which was thorough and IMO an accurate reflection of his strengths and weaknesses. He has a hefty IEP that's being implemented this year, including 90 minutes of daily reading instruction (mostly small group and not all at once), along with other accommodations. We may need to supplement more if they insist on OG only, but I'm hoping for flexibility to use more accelerated evidence-based approaches.

We haven't had to fight the school at all, yet. They implemented an evidence-based Tier 2 intervention last year and then we moved to the evaluation/IEP when he failed to respond to that. So, apparently our school is a unicorn, but in our experience, at least MCPS can and does identify "dyslexia" and is helping to remediate it.

What is the name of your school?

I know that sounds good -- Tier 2 intervention, but the law says the schools do not have to use a Response to Intervention model and can't make parents wait for kid to "fail" RTI before offering an evaluation, so actually your school failed you. If your student was having enough trouble to offer Tier 2, the school just should have done an evaluation right away.

MCPS often tries to convince parents that they have to try "intervention" first before getting an IEP -- it's not true and it's not legal.

Yeah this sounds more on point to me. (Parent of dyslexic in MCPS in the crucial early years, now a decade out, praise Jesus himself.)

I have said it before - and I’ll say it again - it is criminal to use the ‘wait to fail’ model but this is MCPS culture towards their dyslexic students. In our day (my kid will graduate next year from a different county’s high school (Frederick) and just received acceptances to 8 of 10 universities with significant merit from all but one) this felt very far away. (We left Moco in second grade.) This success these past 2 weeks is despite an MCPS ‘education’.

If you have a child in the system you are facing an organization who will lie. It will lie behind your back. It will lie to your face. It is a school system who had no honor towards dyslexic students in their care before the pandemic and I cannot imagine how poorly it must be treating their dyslexic students in the years after pandemic.

You are the hero your dyslexic kid is looking for!

ASDEC is the life boat you’re looking for.

This is 100 percent accurate! MCPS educator with a child with an LD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our third grader was diagnosed with specific learning disability/dyslexia at the end of second grade. The data used to diagnose him came from testing MCPS did, which was thorough and IMO an accurate reflection of his strengths and weaknesses. He has a hefty IEP that's being implemented this year, including 90 minutes of daily reading instruction (mostly small group and not all at once), along with other accommodations. We may need to supplement more if they insist on OG only, but I'm hoping for flexibility to use more accelerated evidence-based approaches.

We haven't had to fight the school at all, yet. They implemented an evidence-based Tier 2 intervention last year and then we moved to the evaluation/IEP when he failed to respond to that. So, apparently our school is a unicorn, but in our experience, at least MCPS can and does identify "dyslexia" and is helping to remediate it.

What is the name of your school?

I know that sounds good -- Tier 2 intervention, but the law says the schools do not have to use a Response to Intervention model and can't make parents wait for kid to "fail" RTI before offering an evaluation, so actually your school failed you. If your student was having enough trouble to offer Tier 2, the school just should have done an evaluation right away.

MCPS often tries to convince parents that they have to try "intervention" first before getting an IEP -- it's not true and it's not legal.

[/quote

I'm the original PP who is happy with how MCPS has handled my child's IEP for dyslexia.

This post strikes me as an example of letting the perfect (testing before offering Tier 2 intervention) be the enemy of the good (in this case, moving to evaluation after ~two months of Tier 2 intervention with failure to respond). Our kid's teachers and administrators didn't try to "convince" us of anything. We knew our kid was struggling, they recommended evidence-based intervention, we tried that for about two months, and then all agreed to move to evaluation. He's doing well with the help he's currently receiving and his teachers have communicated well with us this year.

If you consider that a "failure," we define that word differently.

[Anonymous]

+1