Reply to Anyone regret getting child a neuropsych. eval.?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What’s weird about neuropsych testing is that it is a lot of money and professional time spent on not actually getting to understand the kid as an individual. I have the money to pay for another round of private testing but I don’t find it worthwhile at all to pay for. I would absolutely pay that much money for someone who would sit with my kid, observe him at school and with friends, talk to teachers, talk to parents, look at school records, and then provide actual tailored advice about supports and school choices and additional therapy needs. Infinitely more valuable and even more valuable than a diagnosis.

For just one example - my kid (who has an ASD dx) has been struggling in math. The knee jerk reaction was initially that the school based on neuropsych testing and their flawed understanding of autism wanted to say that because of autism he would struggle with higher level math that required conceptual understanding vs rote memorizing needed for younger years. Well that was totally and completely wrong. We got him into math tutoring and after 6 months with a fantastic tutor who really understands math and has tutored or taught many kids, the tutor was able to explain that the issue had nothing to do with kid’s ability to learn math concepts and that he didn’t even need any additional practice or repetition compared to other kids and completes work in a normal time period when he has heard the lesson. The issue was that he was missing the classroom explanation of concepts (zoning out or doing something else). Tutor’s theory (which I agree with) is that the lack of structure in the class and lack of written materials meant he was missing the cues about when to focus and then did not have any structure or written materials to easily go back and figure out what he had missed when he realized he didn’t know how to do the assignment.

That insight from someone who actually knows my kid was incredibly, incredibly valuable - not just for math but for everything going forward. You could say it was just ADHD (although the neuropsychs *never found ADHD* and teachers consistently said his focus was age appropriate) but even that label would not have identified with such concreteness what this issue is - which is an interplay between attention, attending to social cues, need for structure, playing out in an educational system that has gotten rid of major ways that they help kids self-monitor their learning (books! Syllabi!).[/quote]

I'm a tutor, and while I absolutely agree that math instruction itself, the instructional environment and the lack of textbooks or useful daily class notes are horrible for all students, but especially neurodivergent students, I also often read neuropsychological reports for kids that I tutor.  When I get them, I usually find them helpful. (If they are well-done, and I have seen some truly unprofessional, inadequate and deliberately misleading assessments from public schools.)  I can see how objective strengths and weaknesses match up to strengths and weaknesses in what I am teaching. Yes, I can tutor without it, but I may start out with the assumption that a kid takes in auditory information well, or has more memory than they do, so I have to take more time experimenting with different approaches when some testing might allow me to zero in sooner.

I think that the reason PPs are saying that neuropsychological testing is not useful is that there is a conflation of the testing itself and whether that gets the student any useful special instruction or accommodations or other knowledge that might help the parent and child make concrete changes.  The sad fact is that even with the best neuropsychological report, public schools are largely unequipped to teach kids with special needs unless they fall into a common diagnostic pattern (like autism).  Even though dyslexia is a well-established diagnosis, most schools do not use a dyslexia appropriate instructional package to teach reading.  And, schools can barely teach neurotypical students math let alone neurodivergent kids.  This is true even for the teaching profession at large, which is mostly NOT evidence based.  Entire curriculums are written and provided to students without any beta testing or post-hoc analysis of whether they are effective.  As a tutor, I see kids every day in schools that use Illustrative Math and/or Desmos, and I can very easily see where these curriculums are going wrong.  Universities like UCSD are ringing alarm bells about the absence of math skills in students entering college.[/quote]

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