Amy: My 14yr old daughter has a intellectual learning disability and she goes to public school but in a life skills class. Her teacher just did testing on her to determine what level she’s at and put on paper that she has mastered basic math, multiplication, divide, fraction. She let my daughter use a calculator during this test and my child can’t even add or subtract but only small numbers and can’t even understand divide. How can i get to retest my child since her teacher isn’t doing it right. Please help
In our instance, the school team isn’t testing appropriately. They tested in response to private speech & language testing (expressive language percentile in the teens, receptive language percentile in the high 80’s) – but, the subtests they used focused on receptive – the one subtest that focused on expressive appears to have a scoring/calculation error – not the only one I’ve found in their test reports either. They denied language services. More recently, in response to private testing, they chose to use a test that provided visual stimuli – a test described as not appropriate for kids who use compensatory strategies (my kid). Denied again. I’ve asked to see list of tests and subtests they plan to use for round of school testing #3, since I’m wise this time – what can I do?
Be sure you know what your district considers to be disordered and not just a weakness. Unfortunately where I am, you have to be below the 9th percentile before you can get services for speech! Frustrating since scores below the 25th percentile are below average.
yes, here it is below the 16th percentile. Of course, he is one point away from that. And 2e, so he’s just using compensatory strategies to even get that. My question is: do these districts have these requirements in writing anywhere? And it’s not like a kid just has that going on, in most cases – you’d think they’d consider the whole child, and if they have other things – dyslexia, dysgraphia – that would be enough to say “we need to provide language help”. Then, of course, there’s the question regarding whether they even have good services. I’m just looking for understanding from them, first of all.
I don’t know what state you are in, but I found this article to be rather interesting: https://www.smartspeechtherapy.com/the-limitations-of-using-totalcore-scores-when-determining-speech-language-eligibility/
…maybe there are some ideas that you can use.
yes, thank you! This is a great website that I need to explore further. It’s the same website that I referenced when I recently told my district that the CELF-5M was not an appropriate test for my child, when they used it and denied language services over a year ago. Still being denied, just based on a recent TOPS, since composite is 86, not the required 85 – and two of the subtests are in the single digits and teen percentiles. So having to go back to school testing for a third time in just over three years. I asked them to please consider CELF-5 instead, since we have index scores from almost four years ago that show a 70 pt percentile spread between expressive and receptive. Lesson learned: educate myself on every test administered.
another lesson: if they administer just some of the subtests of a test, at least make certain they administered subtests that highlight and probe the areas of weakness (not a heavy emphasis on subtests for receptive, for ex., if disorder is expressive)
It sounds like you have a few options. If the teacher created a “record”, you could challenge it for being misleading. You could ask for an IEE at the school district’s expense of the test directions weren’t followed. Is using a calculator part of her IEP or permitted on the test?