Learning Disabilities & Reading Disabilities

What you want from and ask an evaluator depends on her specific discipline. It addition to reading and special education evaluations, children with reading disabilities may need evaluations from applied behavior analysis specialists, clinical psychologists, neurologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, psychiatrists, school psychologists, social workers, and speech and language therapists. The list can be long, seemingly too long. It might also include allergists, art therapists, music therapists, and nutritionists. Of course, your child should be evaluated only in areas that might be causing him academic, social, emotional, or health problems. By itself, too many evaluations can create problems.

For evaluations to have as great and as positive an influence as possible in the schools, they should answer important questions, questions that comport with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. Below are sample questions that do this. To use them, I suggest you modify them to match the evaluator’s discipline, write them out, give a copy to the evaluator well before the evaluation, discuss them with her, and ask her to answer them in her report.

Sample Questions: A Baker’s Dozen

1. What are my son’s strengths?
2. What are his weaknesses?
3. What services does he need to support and extend his strengths?
4. What services does he need to overcome his weaknesses?
5. If the recommended services are organized by sessions, how frequently should he get the services and how long should each session last?
6. What does he have to learn (academically, socially, emotionally, recreationally, vocationally, behaviorally) to succeed in general education classes, with the general education curriculum?
7. What services does he need to master the general education curriculum?
8. What services does he need to do well in general education classes?
9. What services does he need to do benefit from special education?
10. Specifically and explicitly, how should his progress be measured?
11. How frequently should his progress be measured so any difficulties can quickly be eradicated and his progress accelerated?
12. What annual goals and quarterly objectives would produce important progress without overwhelming or frustrating him?
13. If school personnel have questions, how can they contact you?

By discussing these questions with the evaluator, well in advance of the evaluation, you’re learning which of these questions she can answer. Your learning about her ability and willingness to help. And importantly, you’re helping her to make the evaluation a force that schools will have to consider.

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