Reply to Please help!! School does not want to provide 504 high tech accommodations for dysgraphia-help with counter arguments?

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "Please help!! School does not want to provide 504 high tech accommodations for dysgraphia-help with counter arguments?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]The big flags to me are:

*school did not measure her at all on the areas in which you report difficulty - production. of writing and ability to edit. Where is the data collection on the physical formation of her letters?  Do you have samples of written work with these kinds of errors?  Visit your child’s classroom regularly, and take pics when written work of kids is posted. Teachers commonly post the entire class’s work - take pics that compare your kids handwriting to others.

* less time writing is irrelevant.  in fact, it may suggest that writing is so cognitively laborious that she she is substantially limited by her dysgraphia because she cannot output for the same amount of time as her peers.  It is possible that her work would be better than it is otherwise if she could sustain output.

*what kind of samples are being compared - is the length and type sufficient to be reflective of her dysgraphia? My ADHD kid had extreme difficulty writing argumentative essays but less difficulty writing creatively because the latter has no organizational restrictions

*grades cannot be the only measure of “adverse impact on education” or “substantial limitation”.  In other words, students with good grades can get IEPs and 504s.  It’s problematic that the things you are complaining about - handwriting, capitalization, spelling and organization are typically things that are not graded at all.  Writing grades are very subjective - MCPS lied about our DS’s writing and gave “pity” grades all the way through HS. It was only when he began failing the PARCC sub-section on writing that we had non-subjective evidence that his writing was below grade level.

*it is wrong to compare a child immediately on use of an aid - kids often need time and instruction on how to use the aid. Also if there is no aid it may mean she needs access to MORE aids and instruction rather than none.  She may need to learn to touch type before a computer would really help her to write. She may need speech to text as an accommodation. She may need access to spell check. She may need text to speech for editing (this may be the only way a kid with ADHD can recognize their mistakes - by “hearing” that there is no period when the text is read back.)

* who are the “non-disabled peers” and how is she being compared? is it other kids with high average IQ? (that is the legally appropriate comparison set - i.e. those are the her peers) how is the comparison made? is it by grade average? Ask to see the data sets - what are the grades of each member of the whole class? what is the average? what is the range?  You have a right to see the underlying data - ask for it with names stripped off to preserve privacy. Often when we asked for this data, it became clear that there everyone was getting the same grade regardless of production or that DC was at or near the bottom of the class even though his IQ was above average. That in itself is proof of adverse impact.

*confusing about their data collection - are they comparing 7 samples while she is using the computer to the handwritten samples of her peers? that would suggest that she is producing the same as her peers *with* the computer, which means it should be kept?  They need to do data collection and compare her written samples to peer written samples - that is apples to apples.

* did you see all the written and computer samples they evaluated/compared?  you have a right to it a they are educational records. ask in writing for them. take the samples to a special educator or psychologist and ask them if they are on grade-level, commensurate with IQ and oral expressive ability.

Other issues strike me in your OP -

*has she had a full assessment including IQ and achievement testing (either privately or via the school)? your characterization of her as “high average” cognition suggests she has. was she tested in the Rey-osterreith figure? how was her IQ coding subscore? Did she have any standardized writing testing - spelling, spelling of sounds, writing fluency, writing samples, editing? (All these are WJ achievement sections, although not sure what matches with her age). These standardized and normed results are as or more important than subjective, non-standardized data collected in the classroom. (This was a trick that MCPS often played on is - standardized data reflects problem but subjective classroom data says no problem.)

*I would be *very concerned* about MAP scores that drop from 80th to 60th percentile, although the school might argue that those percentiles are not significantly different from IQ.

Third grade is a tricky time to evaluate reading and writing. The demands are not high and smart kids can often still compensate by working harder.

Finally, it strikes me that you might be asking for the wrong thing - you have mentioned “substantial limitation” which suggests you have asked for a 504 plan.  And yet, dysgraphia often requires special instruction - handwriting instruction, keyboarding instruction, explicit instruction in spelling, explicit instruction in punctuation and grammar, explicit instruction in writing organization - and need for special instruction means you should ask for an IEP.  IEP’s are guided by a different section of the law - IDEA - under which you have more die process rights.

Sorry to go on at length but IMO, you are being gaslit in several different ways.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics