I have been lurking for awhile and have decided to jump in.
I have a DS9
who was accepted as a DYS in May. Our school dist. still does not accept him as gifted or LD. We are really frustrated that we see this child as 2E but our school simply says not gifted, not LD just an average kid with some mild learning struggles.
He has CAPD, SPD, and dyslexia. How do you get the official 2E label from the school? Do you really need to be below grade level to be considered 2E?

Welcome, moonbeam. Congratulations on your ds being accepted into the DYS program. I find it puzzling that your district will not accept your YS into their gifted program. I would ask your family consultant to contact them for you.

I'm sorry I am not very knowledgeable about LDs, but I'm sure someone else with some LD experience will be able to answer your question soon.

I just wanted to welcome you to the forum.

Summer

My 10 year old has SPD and motor dyspraxia and when he went to Kindergarten he was not eligible for any kind of therapy because he was not below grade level in anything. When I contacted our state's special ed dept. and the gifted ed coordinator they confirmed that there is no law requiring them to provide an appropriate education for twice exceptional children. My son would have had to be below grade level to receive help for the LD and handwriting issues and he would been held back from learning at the level he was capable of because of his issues. The state gifted coordinator and teachers at our school and even the superintendent agreed it wasn't fair, but said there was nothing they could do unless the laws were changed. I was told that I needed to homeschool so that is what we are doing now. I wrote letters to my legislators and the governor and the state superintendent of public schools and didn't even receive a reply. I hope you have better luck than I did.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!

Oh, excuse my manners, welcome, hello, congrats.

Now, then...
What the heck! I cannot believe that is possible.

Is DYS attempting to help you?
I hope so.

Neato

Welcome!! Yes I would try to get DYS to intercede since from what I read, is one of the helpful things being DYS gets you!


Dazey

Welcome!

Sounds like a job for the DYS folks. Have to agree with neato on this one. Hard to believe any SD could argue that a kid who qualifies for DYS isn't gifted. That is mindboggling.

Thank you everyone for the welcome.

DYS is in the process of writing letters- it is summer and there are lots of vacations and re-assignments of principals and staff. When I spoke with the new principal last week, he said he had never heard of the DYS program. DH and I have been living in a nightmare for about 4 years. We are in a highly rated urban school dist. that does not believe in "outside" testing. They have certain achievement criteria that must be met within the school to be in the gifted program.

I have felt rather alone and unsupported. It was on the advice of our family consultant that I decided to post here asking for support. I would still like to know how do you receive the official 2E label for a child? Because DS remains above or at grade level, he is not considered to have an LD.I am not sure I want any services, I would like him to be challenged academically and have some understanding from the teachers for his difficulties.

We have been homeschooling DS and he is happy but I feel like a fish out of water. Is the big secret that 2E children are all homeschooled?

Hi Moonbeam and welcome! I think your best support has to come somewhat locally, which given your school situation, could be hard to do. I can only speak for what we've been able to get in place here in PA. My DD11 is "2E", without a single test score below SS100. We were very fortunate with her tester, as it was a delicate situation that someone else could have easily blessed as "average kid with mild learning struggles".

PA doesn't have a set criteria, but I believe our district must use some form of the discrepancy model, as DD's diagnosis came after having greater than 2 standard deviations between her IQ and some of her achievement data. (Schools often use scores with 1-2 standard deviations of difference....1.5 is a common middle point.) She fits a classic SLD profile in that her comprehension and reasoning achievement scores are significantly higher than her more rote ability scores. This did the trick for us, but I sadly know of others elsewhere with similar scores that were not so fortunate.

But I did want to chime in to say it can be done. There is nothing in IDEA that specifically says scores must be so much below average.

Where are your son's achievement strengths? And how do these coincide or differ from the school's mandated tests? Is it a timed issue?

Isn't it usually as a result of a discrepency between the IQ and achievement test scores? A child with a PG IQ and average achievement scores, for example, is both GT and not living up to potential.

What testing does your school do to ID GT kids? Maybe that is the place to start if they will not accept outside testing. Do they do any IQ testing, or only achievement tests for GT program placement?

Another consideration: is the GT program worth the fight? What I mean is that if your child is only going to get, say, 30 minutes of pull-out program per week, and it will be "fluff" instead of actual challenge work, then maybe it's not worth banging your head against the wall to get him in.

Assuming you think the GT program will meet your son's needs, then I'd say that homeschooling is one potential solution for 2E kids. But if that's not what you want to do, then I vote to stick a pin in that and try to solve the school problem. Homeschooling isn't going anywhere. You can always go to that if DYS can't help you.

I'm glad you're here, and I hope we can help! Or at least make you feel better...

IDEA (LD law) was recently revised, and I'm not fully up to speed on the changes. I believe nothing says you can't be identified by discrepancy, but the current popular method is by "response to intervention" (RTI), or rather I guess lack thereof. The newer entry methods do not bode well for 2E children, and really do seem to require a child to "fail" before allowing identification. The idea is to catch the children with learning issues even earlier, but we all know the typical 2E profile, and I fear more 2E's will get missed.

On the bright side, 2E's in general are not as unknown as they were in the very recent past, so things are also getting better. It's sad that so few educators are aware of this potential dichotomy.