Tag: parent advocacy
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Practice the IEP Meeting Before You Walk In (Free AI Prompt for Parents)
Here is the thing nobody tells you about IEP meetings. You will walk in prepared. You will have your folder. You will have rehearsed what you want to say in the shower for three weeks. And then someone will smile warmly across the table and say “We’re really pleased with how she’s responding,” and you…
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How to Read a Psychoeducational Evaluation Report
A parent-friendly walkthrough of how to actually read your child’s psychoeducational evaluation: what to read first, how to compare cognitive to academic, where the dyslexia signs hide, and how to know if the conclusions match the data.
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Dyslexia vs ADHD vs 2e: How to Tell What’s Going On
Dyslexia, ADHD, and twice-exceptional (2e) overlap in confusing ways. Here’s how the underlying scores tell them apart, and what to ask the evaluator when more than one is on your radar.
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What Is Structured Literacy? A Parent-Friendly Guide
Structured literacy is a teaching approach with five specific characteristics, not a single program. Here’s what it actually means, what it isn’t, and how to tell if your kid is getting it.
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504 vs IEP: Which Does My Child Need?
504 plans and IEPs sound similar but are very different legal tools. Here’s how to tell which one your child actually needs, what each one provides, and what to do when the school pushes one over the other.
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How to Read Your Child’s Special Education Evaluation (Without Getting Talked Past)
Every single standard score on a special education evaluation has measurement error baked into it. If you get a report with a score of 81, the 81 isn’t a single fixed point. It’s the middle of a range. Depending on the test and the subtest, the actual ability the score is trying to capture could…
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5 Questions to Ask Your School About Its Reading Screener
Most parents never see the test their kid took. They see the result, sometimes a label like “approaching grade level” or “on track,” and they’re told the school’s plan based on it. The screener itself, the data behind the label, and the rules the school is using to decide who gets help: those usually stay…
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i-Ready Scored 50% in Michigan’s K-3 Screener Review. Here’s the Line-by-Line.
This is the deep dive. If you want the higher-level take on what California and Michigan said about i-Ready as a reading screener, start with Part 1 of the series. Then come back here for the receipts. In December 2025, the Michigan Department of Education completed its consensus scoring of the i-Ready Assessment under MCL…
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When a Diagnostic Pretends to Be a Screener
This is the third post in a series. If you started here, you might want Part 1 for the overview of what California and Michigan said about i-Ready, and Part 2 for the line-by-line of Michigan’s review. This one is the personal one. The one where I tell you what i-Ready missed for my own…
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Two States Just Said i-Ready Doesn’t Cut It as a Reading Screener
If you’ve been on parent Facebook lately, you’ve probably seen the i-Ready takes piling up. Kids hate it. Parents hate it. Teachers were quietly recruited as spokesmodels and didn’t know what they were signing up for. The data showing it actually moves reading scores is, charitably, thin. But almost every one of those posts ends…