Special Education??

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Natalie was going to be undergoing some testing at school to see if she was eligible for special education through the school district. You can click the link above to read my first post about our initial meeting.

Yesterday, we had another meeting to discuss her results and the plan. Her testing was quite extensive and it is honestly a lot to process. I am going to copy part of her assessment here because it describes her problem in a way I can't: 

Testing using the KABC-II and CTOPP2 suggest long-term retrieval is an area of deficit for Natalie. The narrow ability of associative memory falls within the "below average" range and measures the ability to remember previously unrelated information as being paired. (the example that explained this best for me is that she has trouble pairing a letter with it's sound or symbol with a name.) Individuals with deficits within this area may have a difficult time being able to associate a letter shape to its name and sound. The narrow ability of Naming Facility is the ability to rapidly produce accepted names for concepts or things when presented with the thing itself or a picture of it (or cued in some other appropriate way). Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) is highly related to reading automaticity and accuracy. 

According to the report:

Phonological processing and long-term retrieval deficits adversely impacts Natalie's ability to fluently read and understand grade level material across all academic content areas.  

Processing deficits in long-term retrieval and phonological processing impact Natalie's ability to make use of phonological information when processing written or oral language, associate letter sounds with symbols and efficiently store and retrieve phonological information from memory. This impacts her fluency, basic reading skills and comprehension in the area of reading. 

After this testing it has been determined that Natalie has a specific learning disability and is eligible for special education.

I will honestly admit, I had no idea there were different kinds of special education. Every time I thought about special education it was the room with the kids who are physically disabled. This isn't that kind of special education.

Natalie will get focused help in her areas of need. Forty minutes each day will be spent with a special education teacher who will help her in the areas of reading fluency and reading comprehension in the resource room. This comes out to be about ten percent of her day. It was so important to me that she be in her classroom with her peers.

Along with her individualized education plan (IEP) she will have special accommodations made for her in the classroom. When they are doing her state reading test, she will be tested in a familiar place by a familiar person. While she is in the classroom she will have the following accommodations:

• she will have someone who will make sure she understands written directions
• she will have the opportunity to finish assignments and tests in the resource room
• her homework will be in chunks (from what I understand this means she will get parts of what the average student would get) 
• someone will read or re-read directions to her 
• she will have extra time to complete tasks/assignments as she needs

Her IEP includes two SMART goals. For those unfamiliar with the term, this means they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented and Time-bound. 

Goal 1: When given a grade level reading probe, Natalie will read 35 words per minute with 95% accuracy on three trials, as measured by charting by 12/2016. 

Goal 2: When asked to respond to a reading passage at her instructional level, Natalie will demonstrate her understanding of the reading selection by answering who, what, why, where, or when questions with support from the text with 80% accuracy on five trials as measured by work samples and/or tests, using teacher criteria by 12/2016

In December 2016 we will have another meeting to see how she is doing. In three years they will re-test her to see if she still qualifies. 

Natalie starts her work with Mr DeForest after Christmas break. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers and I will keep you updated on what's going on with her and our family.