Is it typical to not tell parents their child received intensive reading support and progress monitoring in K-2?

[AM23]

Hi!  We're in southeast PA. My 8th grade son qualifies for an IEP under Autism. 2e. Very into math, science, and figuring out how things work. He learns well by doing and watching videos. Reading and writing are weak areas. I recently requested most of his education records. Among the info we asked for was DIBELS info and received the attached document showing that my son received reading support and progress monitoring in K-2nd that my husband and I were never informed of.  Is this normal? This feels like a huge violation of trust, but maybe this is typical. We have been very open with the school and shared a lot of information with them in the spirit of collaboration.

We first had concerns in K and brought them to his teachers and the school counselors attention in first and second grades. The feedback was that he was doing great, and they had no concerns which I have in emails. All I ever heard was, "We have no concerns." I had a lot of concerns! His first grade teacher asked my son why he was giving us such a hard time with homework and refused to do any or to read or write at home. (There were behaviors at home with reading and writing including refusal, frustration, anger, and yelling.) My son later told me he couldn't understand why other kids were reading chapter books and he wasn't. My gut kept telling me something wasn't right. When I verbally asked about an evaluation in 2nd grade, I was told he wouldn't qualify and was just a little "quirky".  (I didn't know to put this in writing at the time.) We have continually been made to feel that we are making a big deal out of nothing. He has had some writing support over the years that has been hit or miss. School staff continue to say his reading is fine, but his reading is pretty limited to comics and magazines, and he has a lot of difficulty with spelling and writing (mechanics, grammar, and getting thoughts out wise.) School has agreed to accommodations for writing and reading.   At his annual IEP meeting in May, school staff casually mentioned that because he met his writing goal, they no longer consider him to have writing needs despite his writing being riddled with grammar and spelling errors when not typing and using spell/grammar check. We're asking for a reevaluation in writing, auditory processing, and reading to help sort this out. His IEP does not match him and what he needs. 

Now, I am wondering if there are there other documents I should request from the school? (We received a counseling contact log, report cards, attendance records, and DIBELS and associated progress monitoring. I was permitted to view evaluations and special ed records at the district office. In their replies, the school considered this a FERPA request.)

Also, I reviewed his reevaluation protocols from 6th grade at the district office to see what his writing looked like, since we have significant concerns about this area. I asked to review the protocols for his initial school evaluation from 4th grade (prompted after we presented a private evaluation to school staff at beginning of 4th). I was told that staff couldn't find the protocols and they think they were destroyed which is permitted after 6 months. Should I expect the 6th grade protocols to be destroyed at some point, too? This seems ridiculous, because then there is no record of his writing from those evaluations. The school refuses to give us copies of his writing from the evals, because we aren't professionals. 

What do I do with this new info that we weren't told about? How does this affect our relationship with school staff?

Thanks!

 DIBELS xname.pdfDIBELS xname.pdf

[AM23]

Hi, again.  

I'm providing some more info, as I am not sure that the document I attached is viewable. What it shows is that my son received intensive and strategic reading support in k and first grades. He had a mix of intensive, strategic, and core support in 3rd (coded red, yellow, green). In the student rostering section the following is listed under "Progress Monitoring":

K No

1st Yes

2nd Yes (disabled)

3rd No

We didn't receive any info past 3rd grade, so I am guessing DIBELS wasn't used from 4th grade on. 

I'm confused and wondering why "disabled" is listed in 2nd grade progress monitoring, while we were verbally told this same year that the school would not do an evaluation as he wouldn't qualify for an IEP. They said that he was doing great and teachers had no concerns. Am I just misunderstanding regular classroom support, RTI/MTSS, and special education? 

 

Thanks.

[Carolyn Rowlett]

I am not in PA and others on this site are, so I didn't do a thorough dive into what's required in your state, but I did find "A Parent's Guide to Response to Intervention in Pennsylvania," which appears to answer some of your questions.  In that guide, it refers to parental involvement as a "key feature" in the response to intervention process.  It also requires that progress monitoring be provided to the parents.  Neither of these things seem to have happened in your case.

It is good that you have asked for a re-evaluation in writing and to add reading (I assume this was done via email/in writing).  Have they approved this yet?  Have you signed for consent?  You need to push for this so that the 60 days can begin.

What is the school district basing their accommodations on for writing and reading?  These have to be tied back to the present levels.  If he needs accommodations, there could be some data in the present levels that he needs specialized instruction, as well.

You state you were "permitted to view evaluations and special ed records at the district office."  Is there an evaluation report?  Was an IEP meeting help to go over the results?

With respect to the destruction of evaluation protocols, you need to request a copy (or find on the school district's website) of their records retention policy.  There is no reason why the school can't give you copies of his writing only (without the protocols).  But if you continue to get pushback on this, ask for writing samples from his general education teachers or have him do something at home with a prompt from you.

Additional documents I would request are results of all dyslexia screeners from Kindergarten on and all standardized testing results from K on (these may not start until 3rd grade).

As far as this affecting your relationship, you now know you need to be very diligent in requesting what, if any, interventions are occurring with you son, as well as progress monitoring resulting from such interventions.  You also should not rely on school staff telling you "he is fine."  Ask for evaluations.

[JSD24]

Many schools in PA use an MTSS framework for providing extra support to students in general ed.  I don't believe that progress reports are part of what's done in MTSS.  From what I'm aware of, only IEP goals require that progress reports are given to parents.  Since RTI & MTSS are part of general ed, I don't expect any type of regular parent communication about what's going on.  What I would expect is for something to be mentioned during parent/teacher conferences.  Something like:  He sees the reading specialist 2X a week and seems to be making progress.  Saying 'we have no concerns' and then providing extra support seems like an outright lie.

I was able to open the attachment.  The way I read this was that progress monitoring was turned on in 2019-2020 and turned off/disabled for the 2020-2021 school year.  This might have been due to COVID and not seeing students for MTSS that year with social distancing and only having 50% of students in the building at a time.

My kids brought home some school work.  These are 'writing samples'.  They aren't part of an eval, simply 'classwork'.  If you feel what you see being brought home isn't at his grade level, you can use this as data to base concerns on.  (Protol with evals is you gather the sample, write the eval report and then shred the sample.)  My suggestion and I'm not sure if this will work (it did work for me) is this.  Let the school know that you have concerns about academics with your child.  You're read through the evaluation report and you feel the report doesn't describe the struggles you see your child having.  You'd like the school to do a neuropsychological evaluation to see if there is something more than the autism diagnosis/what was looked at during the school's eval.  You feel there might be an element of him masking at school because he's smart.

Based on him saying "he couldn't understand why other kids were reading chapter books and he wasn't." my guess would be SLD reading or dyslexia.  Could also be dysgraphia.  It could be executive function or having difficult starting a project.  Difficulty starting things can be an autism thing.

They lied to you.  Shouldn't this change your perspective of the school?

[AM23]

Thank you for these great suggestions.

Yes, there was an IEP meeting to review the most recent school eval and report from the end of 6th which focused on reading, speech, and writing that was done in response to a private language and literacy SLP eval we shared with the school that diagnosed  Disorder of Written Expression, Specific Reading Disorder with impaired comprehension, issues with spelling, and Expressive Language Disorder. I reviewed the protocols for the school eval, because I wanted to see his writing. The school was saying he just needed to work on editing his work, and this did not fit with what I was seeing in his school work or writing done for the private eval.

I will continue to collect writing samples and present them to school staff. What seems to hold weight though is the writing done for standardized and normed assessments done as part of school evaluations. So, it seems important that I can see that writing that is described as "average". 

Reading support and progress monitoring - My son told me he did not work with anyone other than his teachers for reading other than for DIBELS testing. I also found a document from the PA Dept of Ed. that described parental engagement as a key factor that made PA's RTII unique, but I'm not sure this document is current.

It makes sense that "disabled" meant that progress monitoring was "turned off".  Thanks, I didn't think of that. 

I like the idea of asking for a neuropsychological evaluation. My son is a student who is really curious, wants to learn and do well., and does what the teacher asks. He's quiet, polite, and hard working. He's masking so much at school! JSD24,  did getting a school neuropysch open doors to support or at least understanding that weren't available before? Does the school usually have someone on staff to do neuropsychs?  If we are able to get a school neuropsych, can we ask for an IEE if we feel it isn't thorough/don't agree with it? Alternatively, is there any way to get an IEE neuropsych even though his last school eval was 15 months ago? Are there criteria that this eval must meet? Is it a good idea to get put on a waiting list for an IEE neuropsych? It seems important that the school withheld information and didn't tell us our son was receiving reading help at the same time we were presenting major concerns about reading and writing. Does this help our ask? This reading support is not mentioned anywhere in his school evals. His report card comments from first grade mention he's working on his decoding skills and show he's approaching meeting grade level skills in this area. (I didn't know at the time this meant he was getting extra help of some sort.) His first eval report from 4th grade describes writing as his weakest skill and subsequent evals just suggest he work on editing his work. It also seems that having extra reading support in school may have swayed our private evaluations a different direction if we had this info at the time. As I said, my son is very good at masking his challenges, and we have helped support/remediate reading at home which was not really accounted for in his private or school evals. 

I am really angry about all of this. School staff didn't just lie to me and my husband. They lied to my son. And they continue to lie to us. I'm angry  because we lost  time to remediate reading and writing early on. I'm angry because this has caused my son a lot of heartache, frustration, confusion, and to feel badly about himself. This has hurt him deeply.  It's not okay to be told you're doing great, are one of the best readers and writers in your class and to know inside that this isn't true.

I have a new thing that came up this week, too. My son is learning a foreign language this year, Spanish, and I am curious to see how he does and also very concerned. I asked his case manager if my son's spelling, writing, and reading accommodations would apply for this class. (I feel they should as they are written to apply to all academic or general ed classes but wanted to double check.)   His case manager emailed and said  that spelling SDIs are not applied in Spanish. The reasoning is that spelling is a key part of language acquisition. One letter can change the meaning of a word in Spanish which makes accuracy very important. Assessments are aligned with IEP supports and often  include helpers like word banks, multiple choice, and matching. Spelling deductions are small. The case mgr noted that extended writing assignments (which my son struggles with in English) might be the biggest challenge and can be handled on a case-by-case basis. Upon closer inspection, there isn't a specific SDI for spell check in the IEP, but my son's most recent writing goal was met using spell and grammar check. His unedited (by computer) work has many spelling (sometimes even with a word bank), grammar, and convention errors (lack of capital letters and punctuation) . I am confused why staff are so concerned about his spelling for Spanish but are perfectly fine accommodating spelling in English with spell check.

Is my best option to ask the school for a neuropsych?