“I just don’t understand,” says a parent bewilderingly, “she’s receiving so many different therapies and tutoring every week, but her scores on educational, speech-language, and psychological tests just keep dropping!” I hear a variation of this comment far too frequently in both my private practice as well as an outpatient school in a hospital setting, […]
Why Are My Child’s Test Scores Dropping? Read More »
As a speech-language pathologist (SLP) working with school-age children, I frequently assess students whose language and literacy abilities adversely impact their academic functioning. For the parents of school-aged children with suspected language and literacy deficits as well as for the SLPs tasked with screening and evaluating them, the concept of ‘academic impact’ comes up
Why “good grades” do not automatically rule out “adverse educational impact” Read More »
Previously, I wrote a blog post entitled: “Special Education Disputes and Comprehensive Language Testing: What Parents, Attorneys, and Advocates Need to Know“. In it, I used 4 very different scenarios to illustrate the importance of comprehensive language evaluations for children with subtle language and learning needs. Today I would like to elaborate further on that post in order
What Makes an Independent Speech-Language-Literacy Evaluation a GOOD Evaluation? Read More »
There are numerous posts on social media asking for testing suggestions for students who exhibit subtle language-based difficulties. Many of these children are typically referred for initial assessments or reassessments as part of advocate/attorney involved cases, while others are being assessed due to the parental insistence that something “is not quite right” with their language
For years I have been performing comprehensive independent speech and language evaluations (IEEs). For those of you who may be hearing the term IEE for the first time, an Independent Educational Evaluation is “an evaluation conducted by a qualified examiner who is not employed by the public agency responsible for the education of the child in