There is at least one federal law every parent must know and take advantage of. That is – the law that entitles parents to independent educational evaluations – IEEs.
Parents MUST learn to ask for IEEs any time they are dissatisfied with ANY assessments done by the district.
How many times have YOU disagreed with the results of district testing or felt like the testing was not comprehensive or did not sound like your child?
What about …the testing is done, but the evaluator gives absolutely NO ANALYSIS of what the scores MEAN or NO RECOMMENDATIONS for what is needed going forward?
Under any of these circumstances, a private, unbiased evaluation by a provider of YOUR choosing who is highly credentialed could prove invaluable.
As an IEE, these evals would be conducted by private providers who should give you honest and accurate feedback about your child's strengths and weaknesses – their present levels of performance -- who should give you a baseline upon which to later compare future scores, and often most importantly, give you concrete, meaningful recommendations for services or supports or even specific schools, right for your child.
This will eliminate any guesswork for the parents (and for any lawyers) and is often the first step in figuring out what your child needs and what we need to fight for.
Every parent should know that this law allows a parent to use a PRIVATE evaluator of the parent's choosing. Do NOT choose from a district list without an independent referral.
It allows the evaluation to be paid in FULL. Do NOT accept partial payment.
It mandates that the district answer your request without unreasonable delay. Therefore, they either agree and pay for it quickly OR they will be forced to commence an action against you, defending their (likely subpar) evaluation.
Types of evaluations GDPC gets funded:
- Neuropsychological evaluations
- Psychiatric evaluations
- Occupational therapy evaluations
- Sensory Processing evaluations
- Audiological evaluations
- Vision evaluations
- Functional Behavioral Assessments
- Speech/language evaluations
- Physical therapy evaluations…
Just to name a few!!
Spread the word!