Five years since they were evaluated (by the University of Washington Autism Center--they did the full battery of testing then).
My thing is that the kids have shown great improvement and continue to do so, even S15 still. D9 has come from reading bat-sat-cat a year ago to reading almost on grade level this year (can read almost every word on 3rd grade level). S15 had a huge improvement with reading a few years ago, from significant delays to reading adult level books last year. And this year his writing has jumped up maybe 4 to 5 grades in the past year. They seem to have delays but then make up some of them dramatically all of a sudden like that.
S15 still has significant delays in math, I know they found short-term memory issues with him and I think he has long-term memory issues also b/c I have to reteach, reteach, and reteach which has always been frustrating. I've just been working on basic math skills with him and also if we keep hsing would like to spend the next couple years working on life math skills, you know for grocery shopping, bills, checking account, etc. I could have used that myself in school, but I think he could esp. use that. I want to keep him using the Florida Virtual school which is public school online but he can do his own pace, and eventually community college dual-enrollment when he's old enough in 2 years.
I just talked to the evaluator when she called me back and told her my concerns. Testing will show he has significant math delays at this point, and some writing delays, but without the testing which reveals his lds, autism, and processing issues, I'm afraid that H could/would use that against me in court suggesting that public school would be a better fit.
I do think it would be fine in most states, but northwest FL where I live has minimal special ed. There was a student in 5th grade when I was student teaching that couldn't read and they pulled him out for reading tutoring about one hour a week. In my opinion, it should have been at least an hour or 2 a day and that's what I did with S15 until he could read. They just don't have funding. When he got speech therapy, she had 120 kids and didn't have time to see him, so what little you can even get they can't do. H at the time was disgusted with the ps system and said they couldn't offer anything as good as my homeschooling was for him. Times change I guess!
I asked the evaluator if there was some reason or justification for not doing the full testing on S15, and she said it was H's idea, and he hadn't said why....She's going to talk to him tomorrow and I told her I would prefer complete testing, but if not, then I wouldn't want S15 to have the partial testing. I asked her to call me and if there's a problem with that (if h doesn't agree) I'd like to know so I can talk to my L about it and she said she would.
