JJJ is absolutely correct about the current IEP being expanded rather than a second one being written. However, an IEP can be changed without another evaluation, especially a full evaluation. Changes can be based on CBAs, observations, anecdotal notes, or just consensus (all decisions are supposed to be data-based but we know that this is not so.)
As far as getting your own evaluation first or after theirs: it depends upon your objectives in my opinion. If you want to REFUTE their evaluation, then it is always better for your IE to be second. If, however, you want an "unbiased" (as in the evaluators have no financial stake in the outcome) or you want to "steer" the SD evaluation to certain areas, then it can be a good idea to have your own done first.
If you go first, it will be at your expense--which is a downside of this approach.
I always had ex-difficult child evaluated first because I wanted to know what MY experts were saying because of the bias issue--the SD had every reason to find "nothing" because, as is often the case with bright kids, ex-difficult child's standardized testing was within normal limits. Normal standardized testing does not mean there is no negative educational impact because testing is not the totality of educational impact.
Another hint: I never turned over my private evaluations in their entirety. Many contained information I did not want the SD to have because it would have been used against us. I always asked for a "Summary of Findings" that could be presented to the school (I told the evaluators that I wanted this and would not be releasing their whole report--this sometimes frees an evaluator to be more candid.) However, in a spirit of cooperation, I would respond to school requests: for example, my independent psychologist indicated that ex-difficult child was neither ADHD nor Learning Disability (LD). The public school psychologist wanted the WISC subscales instead of just the FSIQ. I released them. I NEVER released any projective testing NOR did I consent to the school conducting projective testing. If projective testing is done by a highly qualified examiner, the results can be helpful. Trust me: I train school psychologists and you do not want them interpreting projective tests on your child; it will always come back negatively on the family, whether there are problems or not. I did allow a Bender on ex-difficult child and it was used as a projective and it was a crock: Ex-difficult child has a "constricted" personality due to his adoption and punitive parenting because his (perfectly) copied figures were smaller than the models. Hello??? Ex-difficult child was in his "small" phase and EVERYTHING from handwriting to illustrations were small. Overall, this might have had some meaning, (I think he might have been making himself 'disappear' to avoid bullies) but that, of course, was not considered on the
Bender interpretation because 1) the school psychologist did not have handwriting samples bec. there was no issue with handwriting and 2) subconsciously making everything small to avoid bullies would have put responsibility on the school to control bullying whereas his interpretation of the Bender blamed the parents.
You didn't really need this example to know that the outcome of subjective testing almost always blames the parent, did you :wink:
Martie
