2 standard deviations from what?

[Anonymous]

My child's DC Public Charter School has deemed my child ineligible for an IEP because she is not "2 standard deviations below the norm." But they will not tell me what norm they are referring to, or how it is measured. My child is in Pk4 and scores average to below average on her special ed evals and and low on standardized testing, and has three diagnoses (ADHD, GAD, pragmatic communication disorder). The school's evaluators recommend services but their recommendations are overridden by the principal and Sped coordinator. I have already filed a complaint with the OSSE and we are heading to mediation. I could not find mention of standard deviations on wrightlaws' explanations of eligibility.

Relatedly, her classroom teacher tells me at every parent-teacher conference about how my daughter's behaviors are preventing her from accessing the curriculum, but the teacher then lies about this in the SST meetings.

Advice on either one of these topics would be most welcome!

[Anonymous]

When a test is designed, the creators "norm" the test on a (hopefully) large population of children, and that helps them to see the way that the scores should be interpreted. Standard deviation is a term that means that if you average all of the test scores of all of the children taking it, 50% will be above a point, and 50% below. That is your mean, and it is usually 100.

One standard deviation is 34.1% of the population both above and below the mean, and that is your average range-68% of the population falls in this group and is average. Usually this is 15, but sometimes 10. So a score of 85-115 is average if the SD is 15, and these scores account for 68% of the population.

Another SD adds 13.6% of the population; one above and one below the mean. Two SDs below the mean would be scores less than 70, and two above would be scores higher than 130. Scores between 84 and 71 are below average (more than one SD below the mean), scores below 70 are significantly below average (two SDs below the mean), and the same for above the mean. All the scores from 70-130 account for about 95% of the population. Therefore, only about 2.5% of the population would score more than two SDs below the mean, which is a rather rigid definition of impairment. Many school districts use 1.5 SDs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation has pictures and more information.

[Anonymous]

No one in our MCPS school ever whined about 2 SDs below the mean when they wrote an IEP for DS. Is there anything written anywhere that requires a child to score that low before getting services?

[Anonymous]

MCPS generally uses 1.5, sometimes closer to 1 depending on classroom performance. The school teams have some discretion.

[Anonymous]

OP - look at these charts for bell curves for I.Q. standard deviations. 100 is normal and that is the top of the bell curve. Each stardard deviation away is 34.1% of the population. It's a stastistical analysis taught in psychology classes to help with classification. Note there is no top or bottom to the bell curve. So there is no top I.Q. score. At both ends, it just becomes easiers for technicians to say "we are dealing with four standard deviatons above or below normal" for whatever the testing subject it. For example, my DC, while having an I.Q. 3 standard deviations above nowmal, has processing speeds, 2 standard deviations below I.Q; hence, the brain is working fast but the child has difficulty framing sentences or getting thoughts out because thte brain has already moved onto the next thought.
https://www.google.com/search?q=i.q.+standard+deviations&biw=1920&bih=1021&tbm=isch&imgil=Qu4tsHyTjx-d0M%253A%253BrpGp7xC2NOUiLM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fen.wikipedia.org%25252Fwiki%25252FIntelligence_quotient&source=iu&pf=m&fir=Qu4tsHyTjx-d0M%253A%252CrpGp7xC2NOUiLM%252C_&usg=__oJjLPclUmo3l8Rmo6a8p16Sx5zE%3D&ved=0ahUKEwjKvauEv-XMAhXFND4KHeudD00QyjcINg&ei=p1o9V4rOMMXp-AHru77oBA#imgrc=Qu4tsHyTjx-d0M%3A

[Anonymous]

Here is Wrightslaw's explanation

http://www.wrightslaw.com/whitepaper/test.scores.whitepaper.pdf

[Anonymous]

OP-what assessments did they give that have this result?

[Anonymous]

Each state (district) as different criteria for determining if a child qualifies for services. In DC you qualify if you are 2 SD.

When I get home tonight, I will pull out my binder (note, if you do not have 1 start 1 now). In the binder print and file every email, log every communication (on Dec 4th at the parent teach conference it was said ....)

Place a copy of all report cards, assessments, and copies of DC documents.

[Anonymous]

Contact Advocates for Justice and Education. They help DC parents.

[Anonymous]

You need to get the teacher's feedback about classroom behavior in writing - are there notes on the report card?

[Anonymous]

The 2 SD is an arbitrary cut off that some DC schools use to refuse to provide services to some children. That said, it shouldn't be used for eligibility (it shouldn't really be used for services either) - except for DD, which as currently written requires a 50% delay or a delay of 2SDs. But with an ADHD and other diagnosis, other disability eligibility categories should be considered - namely, OHI and SLI, possibly ED for the GAD, all depends on what's impacting the educational piece. So the 2SD shouldn't be an issue at the eligibility stage (is there a disability? is it impacting the child's educational performance - which in this case, particularly at PreK level, includes behavior, peer relations, social emotional, group learning skills, etc, not just academics). That's not part of the question, at all. There are disability worksheets - eligibility questionnaires - force the team to work through those. You'll see (and the school won't be able to defend) that there is no 2 SD requirement.

Then, there's no requirement, written anywhere, that to receive specialized instruction, speech, OT, PT whatever that there needs to be a 2 SD delay. They made it up and it's not legal to use that arbitrary number. They need to provide the child with the services required to access the curriculum, and then to benefit from specialized instruction, regardless of the SD on some test. Particularly since, at this age, formal standardized testing could very well fail to capture the issues that occur in the classroom (such evals are terrible at picking up functional deficits - that is, deficits in performing skills (behaviors, etc) IN THE CLASSROOM, versus on some isolated evaluation - particularly where issues that might trigger behavior aren't even remotely present in the evaluation context). This is where classroom observations, teacher comments, etc come into play.

Also it's a huge issue that the evaluators recommend services and the principal/SEC overrode that - the evaluators are the ones with expertise in their particular area, the principal really has no particular expertise (and I'd guess the SEC either) to override those recommendations. I think you have a good chance with your complaint, it's a very strong position, but as others have said, collect anything you have regarding the issues that are showing up. Also request IEEs - then you'll have two sets of evaluations (including hopefully the independent set which will better document the deficits to get around the arbitrary 2 SD thing) that say services needed. Contacting AJE is probably a good idea, help never hurts, or getting your own advocate.

[Anonymous]

00:52's post is helpful, but two notes:

- The point that divides the sample into two halves is the median, not the mean.
- The standard deviation depends on the distribution of the data; this discussion assumes the distribution is normal, which makes sense here, but is not always the case.

[Anonymous]

I think you need a lawyer or an advocate.

[Anonymous]

OP here: Thank you to the previous posters. I do understand what a standard deviation is. My question was regarding the role that it plays in the eligibility process. We do have an advocate from AJE.

[Anonymous]

OP again: To the poster at 7:53, do you by any chance have a link to the disability worksheets/eligibility questionnaires that you mention?

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to respond to my post.