iep help needed: where do I start?

[One_Girl]

My DD has been struggling with math understanding since first grade. She seems to have a lot of concepts half understood bur not fully. Her teachers and I have all assumed that she is capable but is just being a lazy student until I got her first report card and saw that she was failing math. I brought her to a private tutoring center and she tested at a first grade level in math. When she first started tutoring she struggled with adding and subtracting correctly even with manipulatives but they recommended having her stay in the regular math without requesting accommodations because she learned quickly and it was good to expose her to the concepts.

Her second report card came out and she is still failing, her teacher describes her in very negative terms in it, and the teacher has moved the class so quickly through the curriculum that my DD is getting nothing but frustration and a negative self image in regards to math. Her tutor recommended requesting an iep in math to protect her from some of this and ensure that she is receiving more appropriate instruction.

I am not sure where to start or what to ask for. I expect a fight from the teacher because she continues to insist that this is all caused by my dd's refusal to do her work. I have initiated all contact about the failing grades and was the one who decided to go ahead with testing despite her insistance that it is only a behavior problem. At the beginning of tge year theu had a good teacher student relationship so i wasn't as worrief but that is changing because they are both frustrated. I really feel lost and am unsure how to proceed without teacher support. Advice on how to proceed and what to ask for would be helpful

[Emmeline II]

First the school will have to do an evaluation. Request the school do education/learning disability testing. You need to "start the clock" in your letter of request; the school has 60 days from the date they received parental consent for evaluation to do one; your written request should note that this letter is the consent for evaluation. (And, if you did not do it in writing, it never happened!).

I would collect all the education records you can find of hers and flag anything that relates to this. I'd also ask the tutoring place if they would provide you a summary of what they have been working on and her progress, that you can show the school.

Something you may want to read up on is dyscalculia.

What Is Dyscalculia?

Math Remediation and Learning Strategies

Wrightslaw.com is a good source of information; they also have several books--I recommend reading Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy, ASAP.

Determining Eligibility: How Many Days is 60 Days? - Wrightslaw

The Art of Writing Letters by Pam and Pete Wright - Advocacy ...

Making a Special Education Referral for Testing

Books:

Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy, 2nd Edition - The Special Education Survival Guide

In Wrightslaw: All About IEPs,

[chaimom]

I second the recommendation to read everything you can on Wrightslaw.com.  Search IEPs and you'll learn an amazing amount.  

Does your school use RTI as its intervention method?  If so, your dd should be getting intervention already; she shouldn't simply be failing.    The school should be trying different methods to get her help.  I would email the teacher, principal and special ed person at your school to say you suspect a learning disability and that you request a learning evaluation immediately for your daughter.  Wrightslaw will tell you how to do it, but do it right away.  I think they have just two weeks to respond to you and get a meeting set up.  They might have more time than that to do the testing.  I hope it's not 60 days, but maybe it is. 

I would share the private testing results and ask the school what they're going to do to bring your dd up to grade level. 

Just a word to the wise, though. It might be up to you entirely to get your daughter the help she needs. My son has dyslexia.  The school didn't offer any help until we brought private testing results in.  At that point, they offered him 3 months of interventions, plus accomodations.  Since those first three months, he's had no intervention at all.  We've had him privately tutored for 2 years now and he's reading a grade level ahead, but still struggles a bit with writing. It's incredibly expensive, but without it, he basically wouldn't know how to read.  

Good luck!

[Emmeline II]

Originally Posted by chaimom 

Just a word to the wise, though. It might be up to you entirely to get your daughter the help she needs. My son has dyslexia.  The school didn't offer any help until we brought private testing results in.  At that point, they offered him 3 months of interventions, plus accomodations.  Since those first three months, he's had no intervention at all.  We've had him privately tutored for 2 years now and he's reading a grade level ahead, but still struggles a bit with writing. It's incredibly expensive, but without it, he basically wouldn't know how to read.  

Good luck!

Ds had an ADHD diagnosis when he started at his current school and we were able to get a 504 in place quickly, but special education testing/evaluation wasn't suggested until I showed the school the evaluation (IEE) we had done at the behavior clinic at the children's hospital.

RTI Links

Response to Intervention (RTI): A Primer for Parents


A Parent Guide to RTI

[jes h]

On RTI,

My experience as a SpEd teacher as my school implemented RTI was that when we had parents request evaluations, some school psychs started students down the RTI path instead (it was our first years of official RTI, kids were getting help, just not in the RTI structure).   In my understanding of IDEA, this is NOT OK... but was still is done and parents unaware of the law don't realize it.  In our school,  it could be another 16-24 weeks (or more) before the student is at the point on the RTI model where referral for SpEd eligibility was required; and then they would start the 45 days (Nevada gives 45 school days, instead of 60).   This was very frustrating for kids who clearly had something serious going on, but were funneled through this bureaucracy first. 

If they suggest an RTI tier, and you talk it over and decide that's the way to go, awesome!  I'm not for labeling kids with disabilities willy-nilly, but if you really suspect a disability, and feel that an evaluation is appropriate, don't let them tell you that 'this is how it is done now.'  The law says 60 days for assessments - not gen. ed. interventions (which is what RTI is).

NOT defending the teacher, but as pressure mounts more and more for teachers to get through a curriculum before the testing date, I fear we will see more and more of this situation.  It makes for very sad situations for students who struggle. 

[chaimom]

Originally Posted by jes h 

If they suggest an RTI tier, and you talk it over and decide that's the way to go, awesome!  I'm not for labeling kids with disabilities willy-nilly, but if you really suspect a disability, and feel that an evaluation is appropriate, don't let them tell you that 'this is how it is done now.'  The law says 60 days for assessments - not gen. ed. interventions (which is what RTI is).

That's exactly what happened to us. The teacher stalled and put off my concerns until RTI was adopted in our district, and then when I requested an evaluation, I was told my son could go into RTI.  At that point, we had private testing done because the RTI involved "gathering evidence" for 6 weeks, then having him meet for 15 minutes here and there with a teachers aid who quizzed him on phonics.  Once we had private testing results, it still didn't get him anything more than the 3 months of intervention (plus a 504 accomodation plan).   

[LynnS6]

No help on the IEP, but there's a good book called "The Myth of Laziness" that might be very relevant to your daughter's situation. Most children want to be able to perform -- their inability to do so sometimes causes them to shut down, but that's a defense mechanism, not the cause of not doing work.

[One_Girl]

Thank you for all of the input. I was actually hoping that they would have suggested the RTI process earlier because she is really very close to catching up and will be caught up with tutoring.  After talking it over with my dd and getting more of a run around from the school, plus an outright refusal to meet with me, I wound up deciding to take her out and put her in our neighborhood school where the math curriculum is slower and just a few weeks ahead of where she is.  She used to go to the neighborhood school and is looking forward to it again.  I think that the one I just pulled her from had great ideas and may be good in a few years, but as a start up charter school they are still too experimental to be a good fit for my dd and they don't even offer math pull out groups yet. 

I hate pulling her but I think this will turn out for the best in the long run.  I will definitely look for "The Myth of Laziness" to see if I can find things to help her get over her shutting down.  She does tend to think that if she can't do something automatically that she isn't good at it so she doesn't try.  She has many subjects that just seem to come naturally and that seems to have reinforced for her the belief that she isn't good at things she has to try at.