Katherine, 


Please follow up on the assessments Brant suggests, and find out whether the sped department has used these or COMPARABLE assessments. They can pin down what your daughter can actually do, and then where she needs more skilled help. 


Andrea 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt" <katherine.gotthardt at gmail.com> 
To: "The Learning Disabilities Discussion List" <learningdisabilities at nifl.gov> 
Sent: Friday, November 6, 2009 9:11:09 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4271] Re: What to look for in a readingassessment 

Barbara, what a wonderful success story! 

Believe me, I am at all those meetings and make a nuisance of myself to the school and teachers : ) I learned back when my kids were in Kindergarten that you have to push your way through the system because no one is going to dangle a carrot. Both my children have very good teachers, and the school administration is supportive. The system, however, like any other, is often self defeating and it always comes down to money. Providing testing and special education is expensive, and the money-givers don't want to do it--to which I inevitably respond, "Too bad. You HAVE to do it." 

Like every other parent, I wish it didn't have to be such an uphill battle, but it is. 


On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Barbara Smith < basmith at wflboces.org > wrote: 


Katherine.. Brant is entirely correct. My daughter, a 1972 baby, is dyslexic and was lucky that her 2nd grade teacher identified her and then the spec. educ. dept was tops and did all the assessments - Woodcock.., Weschler... etc and started working with her. Her extraordinary high math abilities compensated and helped her self esteem issues (feeling dumb is common) but it was the early intervention and the excellent teachers she had that helped her succeed in high school (she even took an AP course) and college. Today she is the assistant to the CFO of a NHL hockey team. Brant has the keys - he is right. You need to educate yourself, be the advocate for her, get tutors if needed, know her teachers and her school and always go to the CSE meetings that discuss her and her program. While in the elementary school, my daughter could have all the special education without being labeled - this help preserve her self esteem (which was very fragile). Bobbi 


>>> "Brant Hayenga" < bhayenga at rrps.net > 11/05/09 1:50 PM >>> 




Katherine: 
Unless your pediatrician has indicated some health problem there is 
never any need for an MRI or any other brain scan to diagnose and plan 
remediation for a possible reading disability. Is your daughter 
receiving special education services? You may request an evaluation form 
the school district. If you attend private school, but live in a public 
school district, you may request an evaluation from the public school 
where your daughter would attend. 

Andrea is correct about the urgent need to know what reading skills your 
daughter already has, and which ones she still needs to acquire. Do not 
delay. That she has stalled out at the 2-3 grade level is very typical. 
Students with reading disabilities can often attain this level, but 
pushing beyond this level is very difficult without a more intensive and 
systematic intervention, which is almost never available in a general 
education setting. 

All evaluations are not created equal. You need information about your 
daughter's phonemic awareness skills, letter/sound association 
knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, reading fluency, reading comprehension, 
and her receptive and expressive language skills. There are cognitive 
processing skills that are strongly associated with reading acquisition 
that should also be measured (auditory/phonological processing, verbal 
working memory, executive attention, long term retrieval fluency, etc.) 
The evaluation might include the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive 
Abilities (WJ Cog III), the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test III 
(WIAT-III), the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP), 
and the Gray Oral Reading Test IV (GORT IV). Ask specifically for the 
skills and processes to be measured and ask if the tests the evaluator 
has selected will yield scores in those areas. 

All intervention teachers are not created equal. Even if you get a 
proper evaluation, the next step is to plan an appropriate intervention. 
The plan must include measurable goals (i.e. today she can read this 
many words correct in 1 minute from a second grade level text, with this 
percentage of words read correctly. Next month she needs to be reading 
more words correctly). Don't settle with vague goals such as "Will be 
able to read grade level text for comprehension." That is a nice goal, 
but it is hard to measure, and if you can't measure the progress the 
chances of wasting time are high. She needs to learn more than her peers 
in order to get caught up. You must always keep in mind whether or not 
she is catching up. If not, the intervention needs to be changed 
somehow. Your daughter should be able to catch up in her ability to read 
words and her ability to comprehend (unless she has a rare low-incidence 
problem such autism, and this is very unlikely. If she had an obvious 
disorder such as that she likely would have been diagnosed long ago). 
However, it is likely that she will always be a slow reader. That is ok 
if you can normalize her ability to read words accurately, and to her 
ability to comprehend what she reads. 

Your daughter likely needs help restoring her self-confidence. This is 
critical. She needs to work harder than her peers in order to get caught 
up. She will need a lot of motivation and self-confidence in order to 
sustain the level of effort needed. 

Self educate! You need to be an expert advocate for your daughter. A 
good place to start is with the FREE publication form the National 
Institute for Literacy, A Child Becomes a Reader: Proven Ideas from 
Research for Parents, Kindergarten through grade 3. This can be 
downloaded for FREE at www.nifl.gov < http://www.nifl.gov/ > , or you can 

call 800-228-8813 and have a free copy mailed to you. This is a great 
publication! You should read the whole pub, but focus on the second 
grade section for ideas about what you should do at home, and what to 
look for at her school. There are many other good titles available for 
free. 

Hope that helps. 



Brant Hayenga 
Educational Diagnostician 
Stapleton Elementary/Rio Rancho Middle School 
(505) 896-0667 ext. 226 (District Office) 
(505) 891-8473 ext. 519 (Stapleton Elementary) 
bhayenga at rrps.net 





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Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt 
Community Writer for NEWS AND MESSENGER 
www.insidenova.com 

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