Can you share your experiences with ps?

[mo2]

We are thinking of involving ps in testing, etc, because we can't afford to go the private testing route. I am a little nervous about it though. Would anyone be willing to share their experiences with ps?

Thanks.

[Saille]

Our district ran the Woodcock-Johnson on my two oldest this summer. I couldn't find a local tester, and of course you can't just order a form with the WJ. It was fine. The woman who administered the testing was very nice to my kids, and other than suggesting I take the kid not being tested to the playground two schools over b/c there was summer school recess going on and he could "socialize" (where is my eyeroll emoticon? I need it!) she was professional and polite. I'll probably run the Iowa from here on out, but I wanted the breadth and the skill breakdowns offered by the WJ.

HTH!

[AnitaMcC]

We are thinking of involving ps in testing, etc, because we can't afford to go the private testing route. I am a little nervous about it though. Would anyone be willing to share their experiences with ps?

Thanks.


I have four kids who are a "challenge". Never did the school evaluate any of them to give a dx. From my understanding schools can not dx a child. They evaluate them to see if they qualify for public school services (OT, Speech, Social work, PT, resource help, etc).

In general I never had any help from the schools with my boys until after I got their dx's and evaluations done in the private sector, and even then the schools didn't help much if at all.

Oldest didn't get a IEP until 8th grade... after I had to get an advocate from the state. He attended ps schools 4-12th grades (we received legal guardianship when he just turned 9).

Ds14 didn't get an IEP until 4th grade... after years of school saying they didn't know what to do with ds. He attended ps K-8th grades. He was dx with Asperger Syndrome, Sensory Integratin Disorder, ADD the summer before 4th grade and that is when the school finally gave him an IEP and said "Oh, that explains it all".... no duh!!!! We are homeschooling him and his twin sister for high school.

Ds 10 still has no services from the school but I have a 504 appointment tomorrow. He was dx with ADHD privately when he was 5yrs old. I plan to start homeschooling him next year in 6th grade.

Ds 8 is the only one the school district did anything to help. But he was recieving services through Easter Seals since he was 14months old until 36 months old (then the school HAD to evaluate him for their early intervention services). Ds didn't qualify for school services at age 3, but was placed in at-risk preschool program. Re-evaluated at age 4 and did qualify for IEP/speech, OT, PT, social work. Re-evaluated at age 5 and lost his services as he got "caught up enough" although he was still delayed. I took him to be officially evaluated and get a dx in hopes that would be enough to get him services at elementary level... he was dx autism spectrum disorder, ADHD. But nope.. the school didn't give him any services. But the autism specialist for school district checked on him periodically and met with teachers to give them advice on how to work with Ds. He finally got his 504 late 1st grade when the teachers were just feeling lost in how to help Ds. But he still does not get any services outside the teacher giving him classroom accommodations. I don't know if or when we will homeschool him. I hope to homeschool him starting 6th grade.

[Momto2Ns]

I am from Missouri too and had great success with the ps, but that was before we started homeschooling. MO law does require the ps to test and provide services to homeschoolers, so you can get all the help that a ps student can. What help you will get varies by district. Some are just better with special needs than others. Our district is known for being the best in the area for special needs. People move here from all the surrounding districts when they find out their kids have problems because they can get better services here. It leaves the system overtaxed, and compared to some, it still isn't good, but they did a lot for us.

In Missouri, there is no harm in trying. The worst that can happen is that they can be rude and do nothing for you. There is a good chance you will get more than that.

If you have specific questions or need help, feel free to PM me.

[Dobela]

I was going to use our school distrcit for the basic testing - the IQ tests and acheivement tests. First I dealt with a rude secretary. Then when I spoke to the Special Ed supervisor to schedule testing, she was nice but I could tell she wasn't too happy about it. I knew (from my former career as a teacher) what would be done. First my son had to go thru their vision/hearing screenings. I was given 15 minutes notice to drive across town for that , which was when I decided the school wouldn't be doing our testing.

Schools cannot diagnose. They can say that child a is/is not performing at an academic level expected with their IQ as assessed that day. Then they can say if the child would or would not qualify for special education services at that district according to your state laws. That is all the testing they will do. It typically is a process that can legally take up to 3 months to complete, if not more. In some states if a child is homeschooled and qualifies for special ed, you may be forced to work with the district then (as in a visiting teacher that approves curriculum or progress) from what I understand.

We went to an educational psychologist and paid out of pocket. It did take several trips for my son due to fatigue, but I had the results in 1 month. Once I had the achievement/IQ results I was able to go to his pediatrician and ask for referrals for more specialized evaluations to rule out or idetify other possible issues.

If you can get the school to do the initial testing, it can save you lots of money. Depending on your school district,it might be a rude, frustrating route to go. Or it can be wonderful.

[sparrow]

We've had a very pleasant experience with our school district so far. They obviously have my son's best interest at hand. The first meeting was our longest. They tested for a few hours, gave ds a break, asked if he felt he could do more, and did so. Ds began testing in mid December, but due to the break, his final speech testing won't be done until this Friday. The psychologist has already shared his 20 page report with me. Dh and I will meet with the psychologists and speech pathologist this Friday afternoon to hear our options. We already know he will qualify for some services, including speech.

The school has been very open with me that I may pick and choose (kind of a la carte!) what services and/or classes we'd like. We may choose to have him attend speech classes and art or music, or just art, or just speech, etc. We will most likely have him go to speech, at least.

I'm quite happy with the entire experience and I'm sorry I didn't start the process sooner, to be honest. I have a grasp on what we're dealing with now and I feel empowered :).

[Shari]

Your experiences with the ps will all probably depend not only on your specific state, but also your district. All I can say is that every person I've talked to in my area with special needs children have had a horrible time with the public schools. As someone else has said, the p.s. do not diagnose special needs, they will only accomodate and give therapies when a problem has already been identified. And you have to fight to get that.

My experience with trying to get help through the school system was Special Education director, after learning I was a homeschooler, telling me, "You know, when they get behind in first grade, it can take them three years to catch up." After that, she offered to give my child an IQ test. That's it.

A friend of mine, who homeschooled for five years, put her dyslexic (diagnosed by a ed psych) dd is ps two years ago .... and is still trying to get an IEP. Another friend, whose son is dyslexic (also diagnosed) and probably mildly AS too, put her son in ps 1st grade. She had meetings with the ps teacher and principal before he started, and he is so obviously special needs, she assumed this child would receive help right away. No. He sat in class, unable to read, write, or do any work on his own at all until Christmas break. So so sad.

We paid for private testing. Some of our costs were offset by our medical insurance, as we had our primary care dr refer us to a psychologist. Maybe check your policy for Mental Health Benefits. It was still quite a bit of $, but the ps route totally flopped for us.

[AngieW in Texas]

I've had my youngest tested through the ps twice without any problems at all.

The first time was the summer between 1st and 2nd grades. I called the week before they shut down summer school. My phone number was shunted around to several different people. Over the two days after I left my initial phone message I got several calls from people in the administration saying that they saw my message and they weren't the people I should talk to, but weren't sure who the new person was since everything switches over to different people in the summer. After two days (and probably 5 phone calls from various people I had never talked to, so I knew my message wasn't lost), my message got to the right person and she set up an initial meeting with me for the next Monday (it was Friday at that point). I met with a meeting coordinator, speech therapist, occupational therapist, diagnostician, general ed representative, and special ed representative. I took all my notes that I had made about my dd so I wouldn't forget anything. Together we decided that what my dd needed was just LD testing. There weren't any concerns about her speech or motor skills (I'd already been there with my middle dd and knew my youngest didn't have those challenges).

The actual testing didn't occur until the 2nd week of school in August. My dd was there for about 5 hours. They had me pack a lunch for her since the testing was going to take so long. They did the WISC-IV (IQ test), WJ-III (achievement test), and CTOPP (nearly always indicated when dyslexia is suspected). We had the meeting to go over the test results the next week.

They said they'd never seen test scores like my dd's. She had huge scatter among the subtests of the WISC-IV. A variance of more than 4-5 points among the subtests is supposed to be significant. My dd's scores had an 11 point range. Since there are only 19 points possible for any of the subtests, that's enormous. I have seen some post here with even bigger ranges though. My dd's "diagnosis" was gifted with severe learning disabilities affected all academic areas, but most severe in reading and written expression. My dd had a discrepancy (full score IQ minus achievement score) of more than 3 standard deviations in those two areas when just 1 standard deviation difference is considered significant.

The ps staff encouraged me to continue hsing. They said special ed was the wrong place for my dd, but she would get lost in general ed. I had already done more with my dd than they would do. They encouraged me to continue hsing (which I had every intention of doing from the beginning).

I took her back for retesting 3 years later. This time it was at the end of her 4th grade year. I called on Friday the week before school let out. They called me back immediately to set up testing for the following Monday. She did the same tests as before, but also did the GORT and TOWRE. We went over the results on Thursday one hour after school let out for the summer. My dd's total IQ score dropped 10 points overall this time, primarily because of her difficulty with alphabetical order. Her score on that subtest was half of what it had been before. The other test that goes into the working memory score dropped by 4 points, but that wasn't nearly as significant as the 7 point drop she experienced with letter-number sequencing. Those two subtests dropped her working memory score by 33 points (two standard deviations). Her verbal comprehension and processing speed subtest scores were identical to what they had been before. Her perceptual reasoning score dropped a few points, but less than half of a standard deviation. Some of the subtests were different for that composite score because she was older.

My dd's scores were all over the place. The variability in my dd's scores was even worse this time. My dd's CTOPP scores were especially interesting and ranged from 5th percentile to 84th percentile, more variability than the diagnostician had ever seen before. She said that it's hard to pin a particular number to my dd. Her performance is so variable that she'll have one or two subtests in the 5th-25th percentile, but then have another subtest where she scores in the 90th-99th percentile for an overall score that's average. Average doesn't tell you anything about my dd though. You have to see all the scores to understand that there's the part she's really good at and the part she barely manages to muddle through.

We'll continue to do the testing every 3 years at the ps. It gives us a paper trail if we need it for college board testing.