In my old district, we never qualified kids solely for writing. Here, they do. I've never seen so many kids qualified OHI-ADHD and with writing minutes. It's insane.
Writing issues are super common with ADHD. Is is possible that a writing disability is a comorbid issue for some of these kids? I don't know if your area allows secondary identifications (I've never worked in a state that did).
It wasn't until I moved to my current area that I saw so many kids only being allowed 504 plans with ADHD, regardless of the impact it had on other areas of learning. Of course, before I moved here I had also seen social skills groups 'allowed' for kids on a 504 as a related service but here it's only an option if a child has an IEP. It's wild how differently places do things.
First, I had to look up comorbid, and I rarely have to look up words.
I think a large part of it is because, for the first time in my career. I’m in a very well to do district, and this is a way to qualify kids to appease parents.
I’ve never seen kids qualify with such average skills. I have kids with one goal of “writing with correct grammar and punctuation,” “Write 1-2 paragraphs with topic sentence, details and conclusion,”. It’s insane.
AND, Dr. GraceKrispy this will kill you, as an accommodation the case manager just added “have tests read to him,”. He only has a writing goal and his reading is basically at grade level, but he “struggles because he rushes,”. Huh?!?!? I didn’t think that was legal.
My school does an amazing job at providing incredibly robust interventions for all students. The double edged sword to that is that the kids who then actually end up on IEPs tend to be extremely low. The vast majority end up referred because they're not learning to read in the first place, despite a crazy amount of intervention. Most kids I end up testing are like 3rd percentile or below.
So I've definitely never had a case where a student tested high enough in reading to not qualify in that, but then tested lower in writing. Here, in order to have an IEP for OHI vs. 504, you'd have to test around the same cut off points as we use for SLD (12th percentile). Our kids that have OHI IEPs tend to have pretty significant needs and receive services in many areas.
See, and the school district where I spent the majority of my career did an amazing job of never qualifying kids and letting them fail. So, to get an IEP required an act of God, and you had to be at least in the 3rd percentile. Generally, in the 1st percentile.
So to see not only one kid, but the majority of the kids I see qualify who are essentially at grade level is astounding to me.
I have only worked as a teacher in low SES districts.
The only time I have heard of a kid getting just writing minutes was when they wanted to pull back OT services and did not want to piss the parent off.
I should also qualify that this was a parent with another child with significant needs who had almost come to due process with that child.
In the two districts I've been in students with ADHD can get an IEP under the Other Health Impairment label is they had a 504 plan and still weren't making progress on their interventions. All that to say, yes I've seen several kids with ADHD get services for writing.
The best thing we ever did for our ADHD kids for writing was let them record a verbal response to their writing prompt. Then they could stop and listen to their recording as they were writing. This helped because they didn't have to try remembering their thoughts while they tried remembering how to spell or write/form the letters.
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02-01-2021, 02:08 PM
