Teachers, how does your state qualify kids as LD? MR?

[proud2BlibKansan]

I teach in MO. For a kid to be LD, there needs to be a 22 point discrepancy between IQ and achievement.

In KS, where I live, there is a formula that includes teacher judgment but I am not sure of the details.

In MO, to be MR, your IQ has to be below 70 with similar adaptive behavior scores.

I was inspired to post this after a discussion here involving the fact that a kid can be classified as disabled in one state but not in another, due to the different qualifying formulas used.

And yes, I think that is nutz.

[tonysam]

1. In Nevada, it was similar to your state

I still had at least two students who didn't qualify as MR but had been diagnosed as such. Their adaptive skills were perfectly normal.

One of these two students we finally changed to LD, and the other one wasn't up for his three-year eval until high school. I hope he was changed as well.

I had one student who was labeled as traumatic brain injury and supposedly qualified for alternate testing because he had fallen as a baby and young child--the kid told me this--but it really didn't impact him except a bit on speech. The alternate testing was simply too easy for him--he was extremely good in math for being life skills (probably fourth or fifth grade level) and could figure out sales tax, according to his mother! He was taken off alternate testing.

[MichiganVote]

2. Right now the discrepency model is still in effect but the state is moving to RtI.

All students who come from out of state with out of state evaluations have to be re-evaluated per Michigan rules. So yes, some are de-certified.

[tonysam]

3. Yeah, my old district went to RTI

More stupid paperwork, more testing of students on a weekly basis, and input data so it can generate a cutesy little graph so the parents can see it during the annual IEP meetings.

What a stupid waste.

[MichiganVote]

4. Yup.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. We re-eval most who come in from out of state

but we generally honor existing IEPs and only rarely deny services.