: IEP help. Please

May 10, 2006

In a message dated 5/10/2006 8:26:59 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,

chester2001@... writes:

Barbara,

Do you live in MA? I'm not sure if it's to our advantage to have it doen

there if we're out of state. I'm going to visit there next Thursday for the

day. Can't wait!

We're in NY and one of our list-mates who lives close to me had her daughter

evaluated at . I believe a representative also came to some of

their IEP meetings. For an IEE it doesn't matter if the expert is from out of

town or out of state, only that they know their stuff and their recommendation

is on point.

Jill

May 10, 2006

Hi again Trish, been thinking about Bobby's scores. If you get a chance and

want to know about how these scores work, read this:

http://www.wrightslaw.com/advoc/articles/tests_measurements.html#anchor829789

If you ever took statistics, this will bring it all back to you! These

education scores are a whole different ballgame with gobs of jargon. But this

article is terrific and it's how I learned about this education stuff.

Basically, the Battelle scores are very low, very. And they have dropped

precipitously in one year. The - 2.33 is probably the Standard deviation.

Basically says he is now in the very bottom of the bell curve (below the 2nd

percentile), while last year he was in the " average " range of the bell curve.

However, the scores on the testing by the speech teacher don't jive with the

Battelle. They show him being 1 SD below the mean in receptive language (what

he understands) and going from almost 1 SD below the mean last year to right

smack dab at the mean (actually 4 points above it!) or average this year for

expressive language (what he can say). Generally kids understand a whole lot

more than they can say so while you might have an occasional discrepancy between

receptive and expressive scores, it is not realistic to think a child would be

significantly delayed in what they understand but right at average at what they

say. And if you were right close to the lower cutoff for average last year (87,

cut off is 85) you would have had to make great strides or massive improvements

in a years time to score 104. So one test shows him dropping precipitous ly,

one shows him staying the same and one shows him improving dramatically. And

there is considerable scatter on the CELF. A lot of that is to be expected,

the complete sentence score for instance would be low because all the little

words in English (like is, at, the, a, etc) are the hardest words to hear, so

lots of kids with hearing loss don't hear them and so leave them out of their

spoken language. I'm wondering why they just gave you what look to be the raw

scores on the CELF and didn't convert this to Standard Scores with Standard

deviations or at least give you an overall percentile rank.

If you are following me here, great, IF NOT, I'm just confirming what you

already know, that you really do need a good eval by folks who know hearing

loss. Because this doesn't make sense. So I wouldn't pay it any mind other

than if your school will use this data to recommend him for a summer program.

They might. It's worth a try because of the drastic drop in the Battelle.

Here iS MY BIG EPIPHANY!! Your do not need the CEE to get summer services. The

big thing they look at to determine if they need to provide summer services

(ESY) is regression. ANd what the Battelle shows is really really bad

regression. So you don't need to prove regression with a CEE, they have

already proven it themselves! If you can use their own testing to prove

regression, they can't argue with that - it's their own testing. You might not

even need a PPT to do this based on what said. If what you want right away

is summer services, they can't argue with their own testing so this is your

best ammo. If I understand what you have been saying, you want the CEE right

away because that will get him summer services. But the key to summer services

is proving regression and you can't get any better than what their Battelle

shows. You will still want to get the CEE, but you can wait until after he's

already in the summer program. It would take some of the urgency out of the

equation. I hope this helps. I know the kind of turmoil you are in because I

felt the same way 10 years ago. I don't want to get you all riled up for no

reason. in GA

May 10, 2006

,

Boy what a help you are! Now here's the problem. Yes, he already qualifies for

summer services. But the summer services they want him to have is summer school

with the public school system here, which again I will say obviously doesn't

know hearing impairment. So instead of getting intensive help for his cognitive

issues, from a teacher of the HOH, their plans for this summer are that they are

going to put him in with other spec ed kids, of all kids of levels, autism,

seizures, etc, and give him that infamous " resource " help. So my point is to

start NOW to make up what he has apparently missed for 5 years, to get the

CORRECT services that a hearing impaired child needs, but the school system

doesn't have a clue as to what those services should be. The contracted ed.

Audiologist is silent on the issue. So the only thing I can think of is getting

that CEE ASAP so I have some ammo to back why I want a teacher of the Deaf and

HOH to work with im, or to go to Soundbridge to get the intensive help he needs.

As far as I can tell, if they don't get someone who knows what they are doing,

their summer services are no more than a glorified baby sitting service. No?

Trish

.

Here iS MY BIG EPIPHANY!! Your do not need the CEE to get summer services.

The big thing they look at to determine if they need to provide summer services