The school districts put kids in boxes, they limit the services according to IQ or potential benefit. So, if a low performing Downs syndrome kid has a speech problem, no services are provided, but a high performing child might get services.
It is possible that in my case, the school district was extra attentive because they were proved wrong. The speech therapist demonstrated that my daughter had a language deficit, not a low IQ. She just got words mixed up. She could describe what an object or picture was but could not name it. The private therapist made the school speech department look like a bunch of idiots. What happened in our case was that the speech therapist wrote a letter to the school explaining where they went wrong and demanded a full evaluation and IEP. We had meetings that were like hearings. The school lost.
The teachers on the west coast are still very deficient in learning disability training. My daughter went all the way through high school before I heard the term, dyscalclia, from a friend who is a learning disabilities specialist in Florida.
We had an independent evaluation done (at the district expense). We could have picked our own, but we used the one that the district selected.
The neuropsychologist that did the evaluation went to the IEP, and said it was the worst IEP she had ever been to. She said usually school districts actually want to help, but not ours.
After the IEP, the neuropsychologist said to my husband and I “So what school are you transferring your daughter to?”.
My daughter always performed high on the standardized testing. She does well with multiple choice tests. However, she could write a sentence because she has word finding problems. Also, she couldn’t sound out words she hadn’t memorized. We put her in a school with a pull-out multi-sensory reading program, and then her private speech therapist really worked on her word finding problems and taught her lots of tricks when writing. The therapist also taught me ways to get my daughter to recall words (mainly by asking questions).
School is still difficult for my daughter, and she has to work for good grades. She is a slow reader, but has good comprehension. She listens to books on CD/MP3s for book reports with lots of reading. Her writing is a bit simple, but she can pull out an essay when she has to. It takes her more time than most kids, but she can do it.
The good thing is that she is not lazy. She gets really irritated at kids that don’t do their homework or study. (I don’t blame her.) At this point, she’ll be able to go to college. We’re thinking a state college near our house, so she can still live at home and get any tutoring she might need.