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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is no such thing as co-taught honors classes, you can either have sped support or honors classes.

Teachers don’t have to be trained I. The program to administer it with Fidelity- they can just read the teacher guide.

There is no such thing as certification in teaching OG programs.

Teachers can’t say the word dyslexia in parent teacher conferences, it is illegal.

To be fair- I think some of the people saying these things believed them.  But the mysterious district policy trainings seem to be the source.[/quote]

Some of these seem like just a miscommunication. At the schools where I’ve taught there are no cotaught honors sections because there isn’t the enrollment to justify it. If 10 kids needed cotaught honors algebra then sure it could be created, but for 1-3 kids they can’t use the staffing for it. FAPE doesn’t require honors cotaught, just an “appropriate” course. Some schools don’t offer honors at all in certain subjects, others it’s only honors. It just depends on the demands.

F[b]or the last one, teachers aren’t allowed to diagnose or suggest. [/b]If your child has dyslexia then I will happily talk to you about it, but if it hasn’t been diagnosed all I can share is factual observations of what I’m seeing. We can then test reading and comprehension ability, but I will never say I think a kid might have xyz in any meeting.[/quote]

This is true.  For the same reason, teachers cannot tell a parent "I think your kid has ADHD" because they aren't qualified to make a diagnosis.[/quote]

Teachers can’t diagnose, that is correct.  But is is absolutely NOT ILLEGAL for them to suggest that a child be screened for a learning disability such as dyslexia based on their observations. More than 1 teacher has told me that suggesting screening is illegal, when in fact Child Find is required by law. If there are concerns, a child should be screened.

I am not sure if they are hearing this in teacher college or from their admins. But it needs to be fixed.  K and 1st grade teachers are on the frontlines for identifying kids with learning challenges.[/quote]

In fact, the law requires schools to locate and identify children for special education. It's called the Child Find requirement. [/quote]

I'm a teacher.

The law requires teachers and other school staff to notice when a student's performance indicates that they may be eligible for special education.  At the initial meeting the law requires me to present data on the patterns I see.  But it's absolutely not either required, or best practice, for me to speculate about the specific disability category.  I don't say "I think this child has a learning disability".  That's not my place.  I say "I notice that her math, and her understanding of science and social studies concepts are much stronger than her reading and writing.  I also notice that when we do activities that involve blending and segmenting sounds she struggles. Here are some assessment data, and some work samples that I think illustrate that pattern."  Being an observant teacher, with many years of experience, I can guess that that kid is more likely to come back as SLD than as deafblind, for example, but it's not my place to make that comment. And I have absolutely seen kids referred to testing by teachers who have speculated to me that a kid has A, but they really have B.  That's why we have testing.  Kids with SLDs, and kids with inattentive ADHD, or vision issues, or receptive language issues, or mild hearing loss can be hard to differentiate.  If that wasn't true we wouldn't do testing.

As to the term "dyslexia", the obligation of the child find team is to figure out which of the listed disability categories a student falls into.  One of the categories is "specific learning disability", and most but not all kids with dyslexia will qualify under that category.  I can write the term "dyslexia" into the notes, or the present level of performance, but most teachers will keep it consistent and use the term specific learning disability in the area of reading.  Since the terms are synonyms, parents who over focus on this are out of line.  [/quote]

What about when we are told the school can't diagnose dyslexia as a reason to not even evaluate? I don't care what it's called, but why can't they test for it?[/quote]

Strangely we really can’t diagnose dyslexia. DCPS has some supports for it but they call it ‘specific learning disability’ As a teacher I find this very odd but there’s a long and frankly political reasons for this.[/quote]

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