The Written Request the Team Wants to Wait On
Malik is a fourth grader who reads 42 words correct per minute on grade-level passages while classmates average 98; his math computation sits at the 55th percentile. He has attended three schools in two years and has missed 22 days this year. The school has run Tier 2 intervention (25 minutes, four days a week, small group, scripted decoding program) for 14 weeks, and his decoding score has not moved past the first benchmark. When his mother submits a written request for a full evaluation, the school psychologist tells the team: "His IQ is 108 - there's no discrepancy, so he won't qualify as SLD. Let's give Tier 2 another nine weeks and reconvene." The mother works two jobs and says she cannot attend a meeting for a month.
1. The team wants to extend Tier 2 and delay the evaluation. What is required now that the parent has made a written request, and how should the team handle the parent's scheduling conflict?
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What the request triggers
- A written parent request for evaluation starts the child-find/initial-evaluation clock. The district must respond in writing within the state's timeline - either by initiating evaluation with parental consent, or by issuing prior written notice explaining why it declines and what information it relied on.
- Silence is not an option, and MTSS/RTI data cannot be used as a reason to postpone indefinitely. Intervention data are evidence the team may consider, not a gate the parent must clear before a request is honored.
- If consent is given, the evaluation must be completed and eligibility determined within the state timeline (commonly 60 days, excluding school breaks).
The scheduling issue
- A parent's inability to attend a meeting does not suspend the district's obligations. Options: hold the meeting and document repeated, documented attempts to secure participation; offer alternate times (early morning, evening, before a shift); offer phone/video participation; use a qualified interpreter if needed.
- Parent attendance problems are a logistics problem, not a legal excuse.
Judgment point: the defensible move is to send prior written notice the same week, offer consent paperwork, and schedule around her shifts - not to trade nine more weeks of Tier 2 for a meeting she can attend.
2. Evaluate the psychologist's "no discrepancy, no SLD" reasoning.
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The reasoning rests on an ability–achievement discrepancy model, which is not the only permissible approach and, in many states, is not permitted as the sole criterion.
- SLD identification may use RTI/response-to-intervention frameworks, patterns of strengths and weaknesses, or a combination. Under any of them, a student can be identified with an average or above-average IQ whose achievement is well below expectation and who has not responded to research-based intervention.
- An IQ of 108 does not preclude SLD. It actually sharpens the question: why is a student with above-average reasoning reading at a second-grade level after 14 weeks of a scripted program with no growth?
- The non-response is the strongest piece of evidence here, not a reason to wait longer. Fourteen weeks with a scripted program and flat benchmark scores is a reasonable trial; "another nine weeks" needs a stated criterion for what would change the conclusion.
- Caution in both directions: attendance (22 absences) and mobility (three schools) are exclusionary factors that must be investigated - they may explain the gap, or they may coexist with a disability. Investigating them is not the same as using them to delay evaluation.
Bottom line: the psychologist's statement is a conclusion dressed as a rule; the team must justify identification decisions with data, not a single IQ number.
3. What data must be in hand before an eligibility determination, and what would a defensible "not eligible" or "eligible under a different category" finding look like?
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Required breadth of data
- A full and individual evaluation using multiple measures, not a single test: cognitive, academic achievement, and - where relevant - speech/language, attention/executive function, social-emotional, and sensory/motor information.
- Observation in the general education setting during reading instruction, not just in the testing room.
- Review of existing data: attendance records, school history (three schools in two years), progress-monitoring graphs, work samples, report cards, any prior interventions.
- Parent and teacher input, including developmental and home history, and health/vision/hearing screening.
- Exclusionary-factor analysis: was the student provided appropriate instruction in reading (high-quality core plus the Tier 2 program delivered with fidelity)? Was the gap primarily due to limited English proficiency, chronic absence, or lack of opportunity to learn?
A defensible finding would state which category criteria were and were not met, cite the specific data, address each exclusionary factor explicitly (e.g., "absences were concentrated in October; progress-monitoring data show flat scores in months with 95% attendance"), and record the team's reasoning in the eligibility report and prior written notice.
Red flag to avoid: using IQ as the deciding variable, or listing exclusionary factors without analyzing them. The analysis is the product - not the score.