Results from teacher conference and neuropsych testing

Post Reply New Topic

If you've been following my posts, you may recall that DS8 is in a tiny (10 students) non-public school specifically designed for kids with Aspergers. His reading is about a year behind, and some vision testing we had done indicated possible dyslexia. We recently moved to a new school district, and hired an advocate who was successful in getting them to do a full neuropychological evaluation (they actually have a neuropsychologist on staff!)

Over a month ago, I asked his teacher to sit down with me and explain in depth how his reading program is structured. I was really expecting to find that it was some loosey goosey make-it-up-as-you-go program, and to have to have a meeting with the school director to convince her that something different needed to be done. I'm not sure if my query triggered it, or if this was already in the works, but when we finally had the parent/teacher meeting yesterday, the director had hired a dyslexia consultant to help the school restructure its reading program, and the teacher is going for training tomorrow on a phonics based Orrington-Gilliam program called Sonday! The rest of the school aides will be trained on Jan 2. (The school had a big influx of 1st and 2nd graders this year, and most are behind in reading. Apparently before this they mostly had gotten older students or hyperlexic kids and had never had to really teach reading from the ground up.)

So as long as they are effective in implementing the new program, my biggest concern about the school is solved and I'm happy for DS to stay there.

We also just got all the reports from the 20 hours of testing for DS's tri-annual IEP, including the neuro-psych testing. The big shocker is that in the areas most related to the most common types of dyslexia -- phonemic awareness, blending, auditory processing, etc. -- DS actually scored in the Superior range! Not just Above Average, but Superior (he scored 133, where the average range is 85-115). So the auditory parts related to reading are actually his greatest area of strength.

His greatest area of weakness, on the other hand, was SensoriMotor, where he was in the <2% range. To me this explains his difficulty learning to write.

He showed severe impairment in visual memory. This seems to me to agree with the visual processing testing we had done, where they indicated the possibility of "visual" dyslexia -- difficulty in storing and recalling high-frequency words, which impacts reading speed and fluency.

She also used the Brown ADD rating scales, which seemed to be more thorough and detailed than the other scales I've seen in the past. His teacher rated him in the "Somewhat atypical, probably significant problem" range in all areas, while I rated him in the "Moderately atypical, significant problem" range. And this is on a high dose of stimulant medication! He's due to see his developmental pediatrician in Jan, so I will share the report with the doctor then...

I don't fully understand the report, but there were a lot of "low average" and "mild" problem areas.

The best news of all is that the draft IEP proposes keeping him in a "non-public" setting! Everyone who observed him in class got to see just how much he moves around and how often he has little escalations that the staff is good at redirecting -- and no one thought general ed was a good fit for him. Unless they are proposing to switch to a different school (unlikely in my opinion), we don't have a big fight on our hands, and the district is going to pay for his current school!! !

Great news!

THRILLED for you-- doubly happy that it looks like an otherwise good school is going to get the reading issue addressed!! !!

That must be such a relief! Having a school that you feel good about is so important!

I am so happy for you!