Please Help Me On An IEP Question

[Dani]

Hi everyone, thank you so much for reading this question.  I have a new student in our school who was identified as twice exceptional, gifted in math, and on an IEP for dyslexia, dysgraphia.  The student has a decoding goal on his IEP from his previous school and his advocate wants us to add a fluency goal as well.  As we are getting to know the student, we are also planning for his annual review.  In his beginning of the year assessment he scored in the 95th percentile for overall reading, and after some additional data collection, he decoded three syllable words with all six syllable types,  placed two years above his grade in reading comprehension and is one year ahead in reading fluency.

I proposed to the family, the advocate, and the private tutor that these reading goals should be removed as it is clear based on our data that this student does not need specialized instruction in the areas of fluency and decoding.  I do strongly believe that the student has dysgraphia and would continue to support him in the areas of writing.  I feel that I am being forced to keep a reading goal for the student.  Can you please help guide me?  Am I wrong for suggesting that we remove these goals?  Looking forward to hearing from you all.  Thank you!

[Carolyn Rowlett]

Are you a school district employee?  If so, what is your position?

[Dani]

Yes.  I'm a special education teacher and also a certified dyslexia specialist.

[JSD24]

IEP identification/child find should be based on multiple measures.  Same with exiting from IEP services.  Was the eval that showed 95th percentile a normed evaluation?  Given that background knowledge will increase comprehension levels, were the topics in the assessment that was used something this student was familiar with where this was why the comprehension levels were so high?  Given the student is gifted, the giftedness could be masking the inability to decode with automaticity which is the hallmark of dyslexia - or it could be due to background knowledge.

It's also possible that the prior school held students to a higher level of academic rigor where there was a need for specially designed instruction.

I'd want to see additional testing in case this one test score was an anomaly.  Do you have any data on this sort of testing from his prior school?  What tests did they use?  How did he do on them?

I think you were OK to make a suggestion based on the data you saw.  I believe you want to see 4 or 5 data points before you can determine if the data has statistical significance.  Was oral reading fluency assessed?  How does he do with nonsense words?

[Carolyn Rowlett]

I'm going to assume the "beginning of year assessment" you refer to in which he had high scores is a standardized assessment that all students take.  If so, I would want an academic re-evaluation in the area of decoding and reading fluency before I removed any goals.  JSD24 is correct that a standardized test is not going to catch his deficiencies if he's gifted and masking.  A re-evaluation that included nonsense words would be a much indicator of his true reading level.

[Dani]

Thank you all for the help and the advice.  Yes, the BOY assessment was general, not a standardized assessment.