Cruise's 3 Year Evaluation & IEP

I don't normally blog about Cruise's IEP, although, now that I think about it, I probably should. But this year was his 3 year psychological evaluation and so we decided to do his IEP 6 months early to sync them together. Feel free to skip down. This is mostly for my own records.

The usual gang was there (Principal Becker, Mr. Harris, Mrs. Lewis the mainstream 2nd grade teacher, and Mrs. Pruett, the speech therapist) as well as the school psychologist, an ancient little man who looked like he was ready to retire twenty years ago. It's almost overwhelming being there and having all these professionals explaining your child to you in numbers and charts. But I count myself very blessed to have such a wonderful team of professionals who adore Cruise. In fact, just as Principal Becker sat down, he looked at his paper and said, "Oh, it's Cruise! Oh, I just love Cruise!" He even compared him to his teacher Mr. Harris in the way he is always going and always has something on his mind.

So the first person to discuss Cruise was Mrs. Lewis, the mainstream 2nd grade teacher who pulls Cruise out of Harris' class for science. She said that he does so well in her class. He raises his hand, tries very hard to not talk out of turn, and gets a long well with his peers. She said he was very smart and loves going to science. She also discussed, along with Mr. Harris, where he is in comparison to his peers and the possibility of him being able to do more inclusion subjects next year, specifically reading.


Next up was the school psychologist. I think I'll just quote his results:

"Cruise demonstrated generally typical overall cognitive ability in the current intellectual assessment. A review of previous assessments indicates that his current results are a significant improvement from previous testing. It is noted, however, that this student was not consistent in his scores. For example, he had significant difficulty on the comprehension subtest, yet he produced normal scores on vocabulary and similarities, which produced an average verbal comprehension score. Cruise demonstrated some relative strength on the perceptual reasoning tasks and he has generally good visual problem solving ability. His working memory scores were his lowest area of functioning producing borderline performance.

On an academic assessment this student produced generally low-average to borderline achievement skills. His reading scores are borderline to low-average indicating that Cruise has some relative strengths in reading. He scored in the average range on the math problem solving test but he struggled with some writing skills.

An Autism rating scale from the teacher indicates that he has minimal characteristics of Autism. Cruise does have a diagnosis of Autism dating back to pre-school, but his current characteristics are minimal. His teacher currently rates him as having limited indications of Autism."

The psychologist did an autism assessment called the GARS. The GARS scoring says that and index of 85 or above, the individual is "very likely autistic", 70-84 means "possibly autistic", and a score of 69 or less is "unlikely to be autistic". Cruise scored a 68. He was also given the WISC-IV, which is an IQ test. Cruise received a score of 95, which is average. And finally, he was given the WJ-IV and got an 83 in reading and an 87 in math (both low average scores).

After looking at his scales and graphs, I was not surprised by his findings. On one hand, he has made so much progress over the past three years that his autism isn't as obvious or debilitating like it used to be. However, on the other hand, he still struggles significantly in other areas that qualify him to continue in the Autism Small Group class for 3rd grade.


Next was Mrs. Pruett, the SLP. She just adores Cruise and has so much fun with him when he goes to speech. She did a complete retesting of his speech as well and found that his lack of focus/attention, as well as his huge imagination keep him from answering questions the way they need to be answered. She actually said that she knew that HE knew the answers, but would go off on tangents or create a whole story about one specific thing she said in her question. And so, even though the scores she was showing me showed average to below average, she said that if she had tested him without repeating or helping him regain his attention, his scores would be well below average.

This was her assessment:

"Cruise has made really good progress on his speech goals this year even though his IEP was only 7 months ago so he hasn't had a full year ot work on these goals. His first goals was to restate and accurately follow a 3-step directions. Cruise can do this accurately about 50% of the time. When he is paying full attention, he can do it 80% of the time or more. His difficulties seem to be more related to attention and focus than to understanding or memory of language. Cruise's second goals was to maintain a topic not of his choosing over 5 turns without interrupting 80% of the time. Cruise does particularly well with adults and can maintain a conversation without interrupting about 60% of the time. This task is much more difficult with peers who tend to be less supportive than adults. His third goal was to follow directions with temporal concepts (before, after, etc.). This requires a much higher degree of concentration and focus, and Cruise is able to do this about half the time. Cruise's final goal was to identify 25 basic antonyms and 15 basic synonyms. Cruise has a good vocabulary, and he has mastered this goal. Cruise needs to be able to maintain his focus and attention to curricular information as well as be able to engage appropriately with his peers in conversation in order to progress in the general education curriculum."


Finally, Mr. Harris was up. He discussed Cruise's improvements as well as his difficulties. Here is his assessment:

"Cruise is a 2nd grader with a developmental disability that affects his ability to meet expected standards of state core. He requires specialized instruction, with general education mainstreaming where appropriate, in language arts and math to continue to progress through these standards. His IEP is only seven months old, but it was determined that, since we are convening for his 3 year evaluation, we would combine the two meetings and come up with updated goals.

Language Arts: According to recently administered testing and classroom observations, Cruise has made good progress with reading over the past year. He moved from a level 14 in the fall to a 20 as of mid-April. He improved his fluency by 10 words per minute to 60 and, outside of his wpm, every other score was at the independent level. Cruise is reading with good confidence, expression and improving fluency from level L, (well on pace to meet his previous goal of level M by this coming October). The Woodcock Jonson academic achievement test placed Cruise just below 2nd grade level for word identification and passage comprehension. His oral reading fluency and word attack skills were actually at a mid-2nd grade equivalence with significantly lower scores for spelling and other written language areas.

Math: Because of his love of everything science, Cruise is beginning to see the importance of math! With his multi-digit addition and subtraction, he completes the processes with very little support, but is also showing an emerging understanding of the underlying number-sense concepts. He is becoming very adept at both reading a clock and adding coins. According to the Woodcock Johnson, Cruise's ability to understand applied mathematic problems was in the mid-2nd grade level. His calculation was at the beginning 2nd grade level but his fluency was mid-1st grade. (Without support/reminders of efficient tools to use for those equations, he reverted to less-efficient methods.)"

Both his teacher and the speech therapist added some excellent goals into his IEP and I'm excited about all the progress he has made. However, at the end of the meeting, after listening to everyone's assessments, it became clear to me that the biggest, underlying issue that is affecting Cruise's progress is focus. He has a very difficult time focusing and attending to things. Even at home, I can't get that kid just to sit and eat for more than 5 seconds! So I asked everyone's opinion about the possibility of getting him on some sort of medication to help him focus. They all acknowledged that this was a major area of concern and told me that it may help significantly.

So that is the next step: meds. I have always been very hesitant to medicate Cruise, mostly because I wanted to be sure that I wasn't medicating him for something that could be remedied by behavioral therapy and consistently working on specific areas of concern. But this is an area really no one can help with, and so I feel good about moving forward with getting him some medication.