I Think Something Might Be Wrong. Where do I Start?
When your child is struggling, it is our natural instinct as parents to want to know what the problem is and how we can help. You may talk to friends, check out books, or consult a professional about what options you may have to best support your child. When your child is struggling in school, all of the above are still great options, however, you should also know what resources are already in place to support a student who may have a disability. Public schools have a responsibility under the Child Find mandate of IDEA (essentially the law that makes available a free and appropriate education for students with disabilities, read more here) to identify students who are suspected of having a disability. What constitutes a disability? The disability categories under IDEA are quite vast and consist of 13 categories. Those categories are:
Autism
Deaf-blindness
Deafness
Emotional disturbance
Hearing impairment
Intellectual disability
Multiple disabilities
Orthopedic impairment
Other health impairment (includes ADHD)
Specific learning disability (includes dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and other learning differences)
Speech or language impairment
Traumatic brain injury
Visual impairment, including blindness
Now, just because your student may have a disability that falls into one of these categories, does not necessarily mean they will qualify under IDEA for services like an IEP (Individualized Education Program). They may qualify for a 504 plan or potentially nothing at all. But…to find that out, it is necessary to know how they are doing in school and investigate if they should be evaluated for special education. In my opinion, this is the first step on your journey to supporting a struggling child at school, the evaluation. This is what we are going to talk about today, what the evaluation process looks like and how to navigate it.
I’m sure there are many of you out there who might have been told at one time or another by a staff member at your school…"We don’t test for dyslexia,” “We can’t evaluate your student, they aren’t two years behind,” or maybe “We have to go through our response to intervention process first before we consider an evaluation.” Guess what? None of these are true and unfortunately, because parents are generally not knowledgable in the process and their rights, they accept these responses. Now, not to say that the schools are all bad and aren’t trying to support students. We know teachers do an amazing job every day and bend over backward to support students, especially struggling ones. However, many teachers receive very little training in Special Education procedures and may very well believe some of these reasons above are valid. I’m not here to debate the ins and outs of training and what school staff should and shouldn’t know and do, I’m here to educate you (the parent) on what the process is and what you should do when you want to take the first step (evaluation) in supporting your child at school. So, this is it, this is the process, take notes…
Put in writing (I suggest email) a request for a special education evaluation and send it to your student’s teacher, the principal, and possible school psychologist if there is one at your school.
FYI, this is the most crucial part, IT HAS TO BE IN WRITING. Why? Because that is the only way you can prove you asked. I can’t tell you how many times a parent, myself included, has asked at pick up, at a parent-teacher conference, or while you are at school volunteering if your student can be evaluated in some way. If you have asked this way, you might have very well received one of the example excuses that I gave above. Putting it in writing creates a paper trail and generally, people are more careful about what they write when it is documented. It doesn’t have to be a long email. You essentially want to state that your student is struggling in school, you suspect they could have a disability and you would like a comprehensive evaluation to determine if that is the case and if they are eligible for Special Education services. That is it. If there is a disability suspected the school district is obligated to evaluate.
The school is then required to respond to you in a timely manner, generally, 10 calendar days is best practice. The response can only be one of two things. 1. Agreeance that evaluation is the next best step and a consent to evaluate form that you will need to sign. 2. Denial of your evaluation request through a PWN (Prior Written Notice) and provided data to support why they believe your student does not appear to be a student with disabilities. I will go into more detail on these topics in subsequent posts, FYI.
If the school agrees to evaluate, you will need to sign the consent form before they will be able to do so. The consent form should include a proposed assessment plan. Basically, in what areas they are going to evaluate and what assessments they plan to use. As a member of the team, you are able to request specific areas to be evaluated (i.e. OT, SLD, OHI (which includes ADHD behaviors) and also specific assessments that you feel will be beneficial. Again, the school doesn’t have to agree to evaluate in all areas or use the requested assessments, but if they don’t they are required to issue you a PWN with the reasoning. If you are concerned that your student is struggling in reading and has focus issues, you would want to see an assessment plan that is going to look at SLD (specific learning deficit - reading and OHI (other health impairment), which would include attention issues. 30-50% of kids who have ADHD also have a learning disability, so it is not uncommon for these to exist together. To really be able to best support a struggling learner, you need to be able to identify all disabilities and areas of need. Again, make sure these conversations are in writing. If you have an in-person conversation, just follow up with what was discussed in an e-mail.
Once the evaluation consent is signed, the school has 60 calendar days (not business days) to complete the evaluations and hold an eligibility meeting. Make sure you communicate to the team that you would like a copy of the evaluation report 5 days prior to the agreed-upon eligibility meeting date. There is often a lot of information in evaluation reports that will be very foreign to you as a parent. You will want to give yourself enough time to really digest the information, research items you may have questions about, and come to the table with a clear understanding so that you can be an impactful member of the team.
The eligibility meeting will be the next step and I will delve into that discussion in a future post. Special Education is very procedural and these processes were put in place to give every child a right to have a free and appropriate education regardless of disability. Many times parents never even get to this point because they aren’t aware of what the process is and may not even know that one exists. The most important takeaway…make sure you put your initial request and follow up in WRITING!
