Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses

Does a student with a diagnosed disability who is performing at an average level in general education nonetheless qualify for special education under IDEA because of underlying academic struggles?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I often hear people say the kid would benefit from this service. And they were very clear in this case that it's not about would benefit from, it's about requires. And I'm always trying to change people's language on that. I'm like, be very careful about making a kid eligible and then talking about they they could benefit. Everyone could benefit, like Stefan said, from an individualized educational plan. I mean.

SPEAKER_04 0:28

Welcome to SPEDS Planning, where special education gets decoded one case at a time. I'm Stefan, a former classroom teacher and current instructional coach, and I'm joined by three brilliant minds in special education. Darcy, Anna, and Leanne. Each week, they take real stories, often from right here in Washington, and break them down into plain language. We use these stories as a launch pad to explore the wild, wonderful, and sometimes frustrating world of general and special education. Whether you're an educator, parent, advocate, or just curious about how the system really works, we've got you. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

And I don't think we've had a case that talked about that particular method. So right now, our state uses severe discrepancy model, and we've talked about that quite a bit. And we're transitioning to an MTSS model in 2028. But there is a third model that some states use that's called patterns of strengths and weaknesses. Anybody got a really quick explanation of what that is? I worked on it, but it's it's a little complicated.

SPEAKER_03 2:00

Um I am not a school psych, so I'm gonna let you take that. I am also not a school psychologist.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

I imagine that Stefan, you should guess. You should guess what it is.

SPEAKER_04 2:12

Pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Is that what it was? I was trying to write it down. Yes. You said currently we're on a severe discrepancy model, moving to an MTSS model. It's it's March 19th, 2026. Uh, in the next year, right? 2028. 20, oh, two years.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

And some of the exact attitude a lot of districts have, and that is a problem. That's a long time. Come on.

SPEAKER_04 2:43

Futur us.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

You know what you're not gonna be able to do in a summer break? How an entire MPSS system.

SPEAKER_04 2:50

To shift your entire model for the what is evaluations and and qualification, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:57

That's the not just that. I mean, it's it hopefully it benefits the gen inside as well. It's a structured intervention system. So yeah, we have a lot of work to do.

SPEAKER_04 3:10

Okay, so moving to an MTSS model, and then some places use a pattern of patterns of strengths and weaknesses model. That's that's okay. If I had to guess, I would say that a pattern of strengths and weaknesses model is one where you're observing a student over an extended period of time, and you are taking data on in areas where they really excel and where they are not meeting grade level and could really use some support. And then based off of that long-term data, you make a recommendation for services.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

I mean, that was vague enough that it's not totally wrong.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

I don't, I don't, I don't work in the SPED world. That's the best I can do, man. All you gave me was patterns of strengths and weaknesses. So I described a system that would observe patterns of strengths and weaknesses.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

And it's about as clear as most people would describe it, but I think school psychologists are experts in dealing with the minutiae and the very, you know, they're granular people. So they would explain it in lots more words. Um, but it kind of goes back to that severe discrepancy model where you're looking for is there a specific learning disability that stands out and has a pattern in testing and in performance that um shows that there's this one area of academics where the student has a learning disability. Um, we see lots of times in our work that students will qualify for a specific learning disability in reading, writing, and math, which is confusing to have a specific learning disability in all three areas. You know, most of it would be an average IQ student who just has this big reading disability or this math disability. So when you see all three areas, it can point to a bigger cognitive deficit rather than a specific learning disability. So they're taking all of these different measurements, academic testing that happens within the school building for all students, and then their own academic testing, and they're looking to see if there's a pattern of overall low performance in those specific areas of learning.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

And you're also one of those.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Sorry, well, one at a they're looking at one at a time, but you can qualify in more than one.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

And in that you're also like you have those exclusionary factors that you rule out. So, like we're gonna say it's they're not struggling because of their vision and hearing. I mean, there's more than that, but like these so much. Yeah, you look at a lot of other things to say it's not, it is a disability because we've ruled out that it's not these other things.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Right. So there's the rule out factors for SLD that are apply no matter what um process you use. So whether it's patterns of strengths and weaknesses, MTSS, or um severe discrepancy, you're always dealing with the rule-out factors, which are also second language, exposure to academ or to and good instruction, which is a tough one.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

How common do you think PSW is used in Washington State among our our cyber SLD?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

So PSW being patterns of strengths and weaknesses, I would say it's not common at all. Do you think on the West side it might be?

SPEAKER_03 6:58

I I would guess not. I'm just you know, in our wax, we have that as one of our three options for sure, but I'm not sure that I've I've seen, and that could be training, it could be practice, it could be systematic, but I'm just kind of curious where it where it's common.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

I know that our school psychologists are trained minimally in graduate school on PSW. And so they all have a foundational knowledge of it if they've attended graduate school in the last 10 years. But I don't think we have a district in our region, I know we don't, that has adopted it as their method for identifying specific learning disability.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

So this is I would also think it takes a like a significant difference in time that you're because like you're looking really at historical state testing and CBMs and work samples and for I mean that's a that's not on your 35-day timeline.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Yeah, it's it's a heavy lift because you're not really eliminating standardized testing. You're still doing a lot of that. You're also probably doing some interventions, although it's not part of identifying a child, but you're looking at all of their existing data in their classroom and from district-wide testing and all of those to see if there's truly a pattern of learning disability.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

And I think our sites do that now. It's just not the sole, like they also do the standardized testing and they're looking more like recent in terms of what their those other measures are rather than a maybe a longer historical factor.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

And when you really dig into PSW, which I'm not saying that I have, but I have heard school psychs say that if you find this area of weakness, then you give more standardized tests on that area. So you end up testing a little bit more than our psychs are testing right now. That sounds horrible. It does.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

So you said this case is you know what?

SPEAKER_03 9:22

You're not good at this. Let's do some more testing for you. Let's spend some more time on it.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

You said this is in Maryland, it is, and it made it all the way to the Fourth Circuit, and uh it was brought up at our law conference in the section of child find because it was a case related to PSW, and they wanted to highlight that. Um so in our at our law conference Stefan, they have topics and then they'll go through like the the most recent law cases on those topics. And this was in the child find group, which we're always interested in that because child find is definitely an area where districts are at risk if they don't do it well. So not only like finding students and referring them, but completing a comprehensive evaluation, those are places where a district could lose. And we don't want to miss students either, like it's more important about the kid than the lawsuit, but yeah. So this student was working hard, had a diagnosis of ADHD, elementary student. His parents felt like even though he was technically keeping up, it was unusually hard for him to do so. Everything I read made me assume that this is a pretty well-educated family with a very high expectation for their students' performance in school. So they were feeling like his writing was lagging, his reading wasn't coming easily enough. Um, so they started to seek out their own private evaluations. We've definitely talked about that before with their concern being dyslexia. So they ended up pulling them out of school and putting them into a private program specializing in dyslexia. There are schools, even in Washington, that specialize in dyslexia. I only know of one of them in Tacoma area, but there may be more.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

So was he diagnosed with dyslexia and like outside source? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Yes, they paid somebody and he was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and phonological awareness um disorder. So he was also tested by an SLP who found him average in everything except for word finding, and that was at the parents' cost. Then the district did their assessment and found that he had above average test scores in math, and that then he had um low average in phonological awareness, and a lot of teacher reports would say things like there is weakness in his writing or in his reading, but the test scores that they had, and there they did maps testing, which we do in in our region too. So we're familiar with that. It's a district-wide assessment. He was average or low average at the lowest, sometimes even high average in in areas. So nothing like super glaring on that end. The district found him ineligible under SLD, they also found him ineligible under OHI, even though he had a diagnosis of ADHD, they did not find an educational impact. So the parents filed due process and they made the argument that because their student had made so much growth using Burton Gillingham, uh, which is a specific dyslexia curriculum, that that in itself would indicate that he needs specially designed instruction as a student with a specific learning disability and reading, which dyslexia falls under that umbrella. And the d district denied that that was true. What do you guys think the court would say on that?

SPEAKER_01 13:58

I have a question.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

So if he went through that curriculum and made the growth, isn't that couldn't that be argued as an intervention that was effective and now he doesn't need SDI?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

But it was at a private school that they wanted reimbursed for.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

But like couldn't the district say that? Like he doesn't need SDI because he's he is average in all of these areas. Like families get private tutoring and things all the time to help because kids are struggling in math, right? Or like we do extra math. Well, we don't, but we should with our first grader because he struggles in math. And so like there are there are errors.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

Because he struggles, if we're being honest, it's hard and miserable.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

He's just so sad.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Really hard.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Don't for the seven-year-old thing that you hate the most.

SPEAKER_03 14:53

Let's do the yeah, yep, that's what we do.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

So, but you know what I mean? Like, so so family has done an intervention that is now effective for school, and now the child is not struggling in school. Is that is that an argument? I'm genuinely asking.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Well, it is, but that's not they're not asking to come back to the school and you continue this intervention. They're saying we have to stay here and you need to pay for it because you said that he didn't have a learning disability, and he obviously does because he's benefiting from this curriculum. So I'm not saying that their argument's great, but that is their argument.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

Well, and from a from a I don't know, from a gen ed perspective, you said there is a diagnosis of ADHD and he's keeping up, but parents think it's harder for him. They're saying, well, we think he's just struggling. He's he has to work a little bit harder. And they get a diagnosis of dyslexia and dysgraphia, and there's no adverse educational impact, right? Like there's it's not uh impacting as you said, elementary school, but like grades or if it's socializing or any of those measures. I think that I don't know. To me, that seems like an easy slam dunk on on the court, right? Like it's uh the kid was doing fine, just not as well as you wanted him to. So you put him into a specialized school with a very specific uh program, probably with more attention. And of course he did better. You could make that argument for literally every kid in school. And that would seem I don't have to eat my words if this goes the other way that I'm not thinking, but like that would seem like a crazy precedent to set. It's like, hey, if you're just if your kids are doing okay and you really wish they were excelling, then go put them in a private school and the school district will just pay for it.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

Like that's not like the unilateral placement piece, but I do think for all the things we talked about at the beginning of this, was so hopefully somebody put some serious time into that evaluation using patterns of strengths and weaknesses. And as we discussed, they have to do more. They have to go further back in a file review, they have to go further back in kind of what am I actually looking for for a pattern. So I feel like the school would have a pretty strong evaluation to say there isn't an educational impact. I mean, the student might not be in the one percenter club in academics, but I don't think that there was anything that you said that was really like glaringly well below or not making progress on those averages that you talked about.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Yeah, the district did dig really deep because of that patterns of strengths and weaknesses um model that they're using. They were looking at every everything that had been done in the general education setting, and then, like you said, testing deeper and deeper into all of those areas that teachers made remarks about being weak and parents had concerns in, which was mostly reading and write and writing, right? He was stronger in math. The parents interpreted that though to show a discrepancy. So here's his math scores, and here's reading and writing, and they're still average, but they're lower than math. And so that was their argument that no, he has this specific learning disability in reading and writing.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 18:45

I also think when you think of like a varied learner profile, we all have that.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

That's what I was just gonna say. Like, what kid has the exact same score? Like you get a B in math and an A in English, right? I mean, you just get you have different performances A's and B's.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

I loved everybody's face though when I said that. It's like, well, of course, there's buried learning, you know. Well, it's different.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

It's literally a problem. I've been dealing with this last week professionally, where I was going out to a district, I was gonna model some ELA lessons, some writing lessons, because that's I used to teach that. And then I also on that same day had to go model a math lesson, and I was like, I can't do this. I use the words irresponsible. It's irresponsible for me to go model this because this is my strength.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Let me tell you.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

But what I did was I consulted our math coach and he upskilled me a little bit and we got some stuff there, but I'm no one's good at everything, you know, and we all want the best for our kid and we want them to achieve a high level, but you're gonna piss off every elementary school teacher right now, Stefan.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Why has to teach every single subject every single day?

SPEAKER_04 19:59

Fine. No one's excellent at everything. But if you get pissed off by me saying no one's perfect, then that's a you problem. You know, like that's it, I and I get and I respect that elementary teachers teach all of it and they do have to be content like proficient in all that stuff. But but if you're talking about a student, right, like they're gonna do better on some things than others, and that's just the fact of of adolescence and and education in general. But then if you take a kid out and you give them to a very specific program where they get more attention and they have this specially designed curriculum, um, I Googled um well that's I think they came up with the wrong one. It doesn't really matter. Like you get this Barton Gilliam, right? Is that that what you said it was? Like the specialized of course they're gonna do better. Like I I feel like your data is faulty from the parents' end because you've changed so many variables and saying they're doing it better, but like I don't know, schools are not set up to currently, we've talked about this before, to meet the individual needs of every single kid. And if this kid is toe in the line, then there's a certain element of it's the parents also if they want to push them farther, it's on the parents to do those types of things. So my guess would be unless they screwed something up procedurally from the school district, which didn't occur to me until Darcy said it, unless they screwed something up procedurally from the school district, there's no way the parents are winning this.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

And I would think to have a pattern of strengths and weaknesses, and yes, we all have variable learner learning profiles, right? But it would have to be such a gap. Like it would have to be like I'm engineering math and I can't read. Not like I'm I'm still within grade level, but I'm not as good at math. To me, that is there's a there's a really distinct line that I would want to address in that evaluation.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Before I was gonna say for it to go to the circuit court, that to me sounds like there's a much bigger argument than we're not understanding.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

So a couple things that you guys made me think of. One of the quotes from the case was funny. It said, Parents did not want to settle for average achievement. And I thought that is perfect.

SPEAKER_04 22:22

Was this Monica and Bruce Stroutman? This is like East Coast, right? You said Maryland, did you say?

SPEAKER_02 22:29

Yes. But it's not like we don't see it here. I I have definitely heard the argument so many times in IEP meetings where families will say, but you don't see the struggle we go through at home. And that was part of this. And I get that. I also think there was confusion maybe in the discrepancy model where you have cognitive and academic skills, and there's a discrepancy that's wide enough that you qualify. It's not exactly like that with patterns of strengths and weaknesses. You don't just go, oh, math is here and reading's here, they qualify. So some confusion on how that works. Um, it still has to be an educational impact, right? That's that might show that yes, there's weakness compared to his math skills, but where's that educational impact? It doesn't take away the three prongs to do patterns of strengths and weaknesses. Um so I don't know why there isn't anything like super crazy about this case that would make sense for it to be appealed, but it was. And first of all, the lower court did in favor of the district. Yeah, it's money. Um so the courts found in favor of the district. They said that they did a very thorough job of looking at whether he qualifies for OHI and SLD, and he did not meet eligibility for either. And then it went to the Fourth Circuit, and they don't retry the case, they just look at did they follow the procedure? Did the low lower court follow procedure and um on preponderous preponderance of evidence, and they found what you guys have to do?

SPEAKER_03 24:26

And then if they overturned that, I'm gonna be shocked.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

I was gonna say, I feel like it's still in favor of just sandbagging us a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Yeah. I mean, we've had cases that might we might disagree with the findings, but no, this one they they absolutely supported that lower court. So um family did not get their private school paid for, which is just really a trend out there in all in a lot of the cases that we've reviewed.

SPEAKER_04 24:51

Well, and that's the danger of like you gotta go pay for it before you can ask for it to be covered and reimbursed. It's like they took a risk on like a private school placement, and but clearly good for the kid, though. Like, I mean, that's not that's not gonna help your bank account. What would what you just paid for?

SPEAKER_02 25:13

That they spent more money in attorney fees than they did on the private school, potentially. So um I don't know. It's not as well.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

Clearly, they're not taking a loan out, so I think they'll be okay. Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Some other points that I thought were great from this case is I I often hear people say the kid would benefit from this service.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

And they were very clear in this case that it's not about would benefit from, it's about requires. And I'm always trying to change people's language on that. I'm like, be very careful about making a kid eligible and then talking about they they could benefit. Oh, everyone could benefit, like Stefan said, from an individualized educational plan. I mean, that's obvious. It's whether or not they require it in order to make progress in their academics and in order to not be discriminated against.

SPEAKER_04 26:09

That's the same way that they rope you into pyramid schemes. It's like you could make so much money. You know, like what am I gonna have to spend is the real question you should be asking.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

The other big point was just because a student does better with a specific curriculum that may be designed for a disability like Orton Gillingham is designed for dyslexia doesn't mean that that is specially designed instruction. It that was an argument that was part of the cases no, he needs SDI because of this curriculum. And they said that SDI is not determined by the method, the need for it. So those were cool things that I feel like come up quite a bit, and I liked the outcome of this case, and I don't want to do PSW in Washington. But we do have it as an option. Yes, we do. Will we still when we go to 2028? I would guess so, but I don't. I don't know. That's interesting. I mean, it could be part of your eligibility still to I mean it's not s it's so different than the other ones where it's more specific. I feel like PSW is like this really, I don't know, difficult to define, nuanced specifications.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Well, and like and I kind of feel like it almost feels like PSW is embedded in MTSS because you're talking about utilizing kids' strengths and weaknesses, and then how are those interventions going throughout your system? So they should be getting varying levels of interventions based on their strengths and areas of growth.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

And I think it's embedded even right now, with I mean, sure, we technically use discrepancy, but a good eval talks about that learner profile and where their where their strengths are and where their weaknesses are.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely part of all of it. But I think with um MTSS we're going to have to do more specific little tests to dig into the area of weakness so we can figure out which intervention. So yeah, I mean it does even maybe require more testing to get granular there, but I don't know, it's it's I am somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 28:58

I've never really seen a kid where I'm like, you know what's the best idea is we should take them out, let them in a room by themselves, and test them. More tests for you.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

These are just little subtests though. But yeah, I don't know. I haven't done the school psych part of this to really speak with a lot of like experience on it.

unknown 29:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:24

So definitely what did you learn? Dot your I's, cross your T's. Uh, and maybe we got this. If your kid's not achieving at the level you want them to achieve at, suck it up. We've all got problems. Just kidding.

SPEAKER_03 29:42

Uh what it There's nothing wrong with average kids, okay? You know what? They're gonna be happy adults. Leave them alone.

SPEAKER_04 29:50

No kidding. There are billions of just average adults out there. Uh no, of course we all want our kids to achieve. Like, and I say we as in like educators and parents want the kids achieving at the highest level. It makes me think of a professional development I was doing with a bunch of teachers. And uh we we lobbed them, like we had planned this thing as part of a as like a uh like a community, like we like a team of us had planned something. And we lobbed what we thought was going to be a softball question, Adam, which was all kids can achieve at high levels. And we're like, yeah, duh. Like let's just like set this as a baseline and move on. We were there for two hours. We spent the entire two hours discussing the question. We had a bunch of other stuff we were supposed to be doing because it was it what it came down to was the philosophical difference between what is a high level. And for some people, that was like passing, you know, like AP US history. And for other people, it was um, you know, getting getting a B in the class. It's all, you know, specially designed. And so uh it was literally a 50-50 split of this room of like 20 people. And uh I think there's a lot of like, what does high levels mean? We all want something different for our kids. It it does, this is a shock to no one, but this case outlines just how much room to how how much room to grow there is in public education, because you'd love to live in a world where this kid doesn't have to go to a private school and advocate for a special curriculum or set of materials in order to achieve to where their parents think they're capable of, you know. And I joke about like we're all going to be happy average individuals, but those are also the kids that fall through the cracks, you know. And thankfully this was a a family that seems privileged, if not monetarily, but with time to advocate and knowledge of access to resources. Um, and so that's good. Good that kid got what they needed, but that doesn't apply to every single kid in our class. Um But I don't know. I think sometimes we also put too much of a burden on schools. Like they need to do everything when you know, we need to be better about doing math homework with our seven-year-old, because that is our responsibility as parents. So it's never a clear line where you cut that off, but um at least there was an ALJ that could that could draw the line for them. And also maybe in a future episode, you guys just need to collaborate and outline what a transition to an MTSS model would look like. We could spend an hour.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

You see the backgrounds on all of our screens. Yeah, we'll do it.

SPEAKER_04 32:31

We can we can plug that again.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

Come to the conference.

SPEAKER_04 32:34

Uh the uh yeah, MTSS conference, sure. But it might be interesting also to record uh these are the big things that people should be considering and these are the the small shifts you can be making now. I know it's not that easy, right? It's a comprehensive system overhaul. But um if Anna's going, you know how long it takes to shift, I'm sure there's there's varying levels of that actually happening and some people sticking their heads in the sand. And I don't know, the opportunity of a platform like this to be able to drip feed some kind of information out there, you never know who that's gonna reach. So I don't know, consider it.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

Considered.

SPEAKER_03 33:13

Our next recording and we'll release before the MTSS conference July 28th through the 30th. Come join us in Wenatchee. Learn all about MTSS and changing your system or working within your system. Let's not change it all. There's good things happening out there. Progress, not perfection.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Thanks for tuning in to Spence Plaining. If you've got questions or thoughts about today's episode, we'd love to hear from you. Head over to our links where you can drop your questions, join the conversation, and connect with us. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode if you found it helpful. Until next time, keep on learning and stay curious.