They didn't test him. We had it done privately - a complete neuropsychologist evaluation. He tested out as borderline intelligence across the board (but with reading his strongest suit, oddly enough), but with the strong caveat that it was lack of completion, lack of following directions, and off-task activity that lead to such a low score. My child literally has no attention span at all. None. So the evaluation. actually made the request for the IEP worse as it looked like my child is way outperforming his intelligence if he's anywhere near grade level, which of course his teacher said he was.
Good on you for organising private testing. Schools rarely have anyone quite so capable and qualified, because if they do, they would identify too many children with splinter skills, or with wide disparity between their high skill areas and their problem areas. It is cheaper for an education department to average out the high scores, which then disguises the low scores, so a child who is both gifted and talented plus learning disabled, can get totally lost in the system and passed off as merely average. Or maybe only a little above average, or only a little below. Any psychometric testing should NEVER average out the sub-scores when there is a wide gap between lowest and highest. Although the usual thing is to provide a single, average score, under these circumstances you don't. But schools tend to ignore this.
difficult child 1 was assessed when he was 6 and 'failed' his first IQ test. In his case it was because he was anxious, scared he had done something wrong, and was not able to sit still. The school counsellor stopped the test but then scored it as if he had completed it. This of course gave him a "retarded" score and the school counsellor then berated me because difficult child 1 was actually functioning in class at a level higher than his score should allow. Therefore he was only achieving because I was a pushy mother! (It is actually not possible to pressure a kid to achieve beyond their potential). She had her reasons for attacking me - easy child was bright but getting no support, I was nagging for her to be accelerated and they used difficult child 1's problems to attack me, to shut me up about both kids. Meanwhile I had easy child 2/difficult child 2 coming up behind difficult child 1, sitting quietly at the other end of the table while I copped a serve. easy child 2/difficult child 2 sat there quietly drawing a detailed picture and wrote her name - she was not yet 3 years old. When I was accused yet again of claiming my kids were gifted when they're not really, I just quietly pointed at my younger girl and said, "Did you see me do any of her drawing for her? Did you see her look toward me at any time for approval or 'Am I doing this right?' No? Then consider that you have just made a grave error."
difficult child 3 also 'failed' his first IQ test because he was mostly non-verbal at the time, had poor receptive language but was already reading. If they had given him the test in writing (at age 4) he would have done a lot better. The other issue when they are very young, is non-compliance because they don't understand the importance. difficult child 1, in a later assessment, said, "I'm bored by this. I don't want to answer any more of your questions. let's talk about birds." Feathered things were his obsession at that time.
A good tester will realise the shortcomings of the testing procedure. Also never forget that in most cases, these tests were originally developed by testing a cross-section of kids from schools across countries. This was at a time when special needs kids were often in institutions or kept home; there was a disproportionate lack of special needs kids, so the tests are less relevant to their abilities.
difficult child 1 first presented as severe ADHD. So severe that he could not sit still, he could only pay attention in class for short times and even then, only when there was absolutely nothing in between him and the teaching focus in the room (usually the teacher's face, or the blackboard). His K teacher actually had difficult child 1 sit on the floor literally on her feet, and she did well with him (she was reported to be a fairly useless teacher with other kids - she helped difficult child 1, though). But when he got anxious, it got worse and his Year 1 teacher was a martinet and created a lot of problems. She also put difficult students up the back, so they wouldn't distract others. That was when the school counsellor was called in and assessed him without my knowledge or permission (they kept doing that).
easy child 2/difficult child 2 turned out to have different problems which didn't become apparent for a few years. She was so bright that she masked the problems for a long time. She had ADD (inattentive type) without the hyperactivity, although she is more hyperactive these days. The result of the ADD when the problems really hit, was an inability to lay down the memories she needed, of the schoolwork she was doing. She would forget she had ever been taught some very basic and important work.
difficult child 1 developed a coping strategy with the fidgetiness (which upset his teachers) by 'zoning out'. He would be sitting perfectly still, face towards the teacher or the blackboard, but his mind would be elsewhere. The teacher would report he was a well-behaved quiet student, but we found out that difficult child 1 was just not aware of any lessons taught.
Medication made a huge difference to the attention issues. Even with the fidgets, difficult child 1 could take information on board and learn, much better. easy child 2/difficult child 2 laid down the memories of the work again, and once more demonstrated her high IQ.
I mentioned that difficult child 1 and difficult child 3 had both 'failed' their first IQ tests. LAter, privately done and more considered assessments showed IQ scores around 140. Even school counsellors later assessed both of them as above 100, even after averaging out some very low sub-scores.
All you can do with a kid whose sub-scores are so widely variable, or who for other reasons is difficult to assess, is get an estimate and use it a a working hypothesis. If a child is having difficulty reading, you need to identify why, and try to work from there.
There can be many reasons for a kid to have trouble reading. Sometimes it is lack of lesson 'sticking' at the right age. Either they miss out on learning at the optimum time (due to absence or other lack of opportunity); the inattention factor alone can be enough; eyesight can be an issue; there can be incomplete dominance in the brain which causes some left-right confusion over letter reversal (check for handedness - if it is not yet firmly locked in, or if the child seems ambidextrous, you may actually have an incomplete dominance problem); or you might have a problem of coordination between the eye and brain in tracking words across the page. Or you might have a child who is not a visual learner, so much as someone more tactile, or more aural. Some work done with indigenous Australians have shown that the children seem to learn better in a more traditional way in the early years; they sit them down and teach them with storytelling rather than more formal lessons. At about age 7 they then focus more intensely on reading, and these kids apparently do a lot better. It seems discriminatory to say this but I learned about this from a teacher (herself Aboriginal) who developed and researched this teaching method. I use it as an example only; I doubt this would apply so much to other racial groups, it's just that there were 50,000 years of isolated evolutionary development during which time Australian Aborigines learned the best way they could, in order to survive and thrive in that environment. Traditional learning methods often work, for good reasons. I'm just saying - different people find that they have different optimum learning methods.
A child who is more tactile, for example, can be given solid block letter shapes and feel them, learning to place them on the floor to spell out a word. Or touch objects that start with that letter. A child who is aural can learn with singing - I still remember being taught to sing the alphabet.
When a person looks at something, the eyes move to take in different scenes. As the eyes move, the brain switches off for a split second, switches back on as the eyes stop. This switching is important and develops more with experience. If the brain doesn't switch on and off properly, your brain records a blur as the eyes move. When a reader is wired up to measure eye movements while they read, you can see this in action - the eyes scan across the line of print and stop. At each stop, a number of words are seen. The eye moves on and stops again, taking in more words. There may be slight overlap, but the brain works it out with practice. On a recorder screen these eye movements look like a set of steps. Each step is called a saccade. A good reader saccades fast with wide 'steps' that take in a larger number of words at a time. A poor reader has small, short saccades or none at all, eyes roaming at random across the page going up, down, left, right at random. As a result, what they take in is jumbled and meaningless.
The Irlen kind of dyslexia (Google Helen Irlen) is a different kind of eye-brain problem. She found that coloured glasses could help screen out the frequencies of light that caused confusion in the brain. You could find a specialist pediatrician who can help, or maybe just a cooperative optometrist. Or if you're really broke but have a friend in the printing game, photography or the theatre who can get their hands on coloured transparent films, play with those and see if anything helps. You can save some time and energy this way. But whatever you do, take good notes so if/when you do go to a professional, they don't have to reinvent the wheel. You need a scientific attitude to this and your child is your junior associate researcher.
A child whose eyes are not saccading properly can be helped by a very simple exercise. You can set this up yourself (and save a bucketload of money). Get a brightly coloured or distinctive ball. Sit the child at the table and put the ball in the child's left hand. Get the child to keep eye contact with the ball as he/she rolls the ball across the table from left to right. The child catches the ball in the right hand, passes it back to the left UNDER the table, and repeat. As many times as the child can stand (up to ten times). Do this two to three times a day.
Next step - use large letters for the child's reading. Write a story for that child, about that child. If possible, take photos to go with it. Maybe the story can be an adventure the child went on, a family or school outing. If you can get the child to help compose the story, even better. Work on it together. Then print it out (large print, please!) and put it in a photo album or other durable presentation format and daily (or more often) sit with the child and read it together. It doesn't matter if the child memorises it - as long as they read it aloud with their finger/eyes following the line. Let them use a finger if they need to - it actually helps the eyes learn to saccade properly.
If this doesn't help fast enough (you should see improvement in a few weeks, certainly after two months) then the problem is more complex and needs further assessment. But what you have done will always be of benefit. And what you can do, is very inexpensive.
Never underestimate the validity and value (monetary as well as in every other way) of your own efforts.
Marg
