We had an independent evaluation done (at the district expense). We could have picked our own, but we used the one that the district selected.
The neuropsychologist that did the evaluation went to the IEP, and said it was the worst IEP she had ever been to. She said usually school districts actually want to help, but not ours.
After the IEP, the neuropsychologist said to my husband and I “So what school are you transferring your daughter to?”.
My daughter always performed high on the standardized testing. She does well with multiple choice tests. However, she could write a sentence because she has word finding problems. Also, she couldn’t sound out words she hadn’t memorized. We put her in a school with a pull-out multi-sensory reading program, and then her private speech therapist really worked on her word finding problems and taught her lots of tricks when writing. The therapist also taught me ways to get my daughter to recall words (mainly by asking questions).
School is still difficult for my daughter, and she has to work for good grades. She is a slow reader, but has good comprehension. She listens to books on CD/MP3s for book reports with lots of reading. Her writing is a bit simple, but she can pull out an essay when she has to. It takes her more time than most kids, but she can do it.
The good thing is that she is not lazy. She gets really irritated at kids that don’t do their homework or study. (I don’t blame her.) At this point, she’ll be able to go to college. We’re thinking a state college near our house, so she can still live at home and get any tutoring she might need.
No, that is not true about districts wanting to help. They only want to help with easy definable problems. If it gets too complicated, they tell you that the child doesn’t qualify because the help would do no good and just frustrate the child and everyone else.