If your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, they are entitled to special accommodations from the school, per Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.  Such accommodations, logically called 504 Plans, should be agreed in writing by your child’s school.  The 504 Plan will not call for specialized instruction, but will expect your child’s teachers to make provisions that help your child manage their ADHD — for example, preferred seating away from distractions or extra time on tests.

If your child has a disability that does require specialized instruction, the relevant law is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the school should develop an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP). The IEP requires documentation of measurable growth and will spell out specific educational goals.

It can be pretty overwhelming knowing how to go about getting the right services for your student. You’ll be doing a lot of research on your own.  The purpose of this post is simply to provide a printable handout that will give you some idea of the sort of accommodations and requests you should consider for your child’s IEP or 504 Plan.  Here it is: click and print!

HomeworkCoach offers limited Advocacy services, including IEP or 504 Plan review.  Call us at 877-715-5442 if we can help.

Free Download: Accommodations List for IEP and 504 Plan

The post What Should Go In My Child’s IEP or 504 Plan? appeared first on HomeworkCoach.

A few nights ago, my six-year-old asked to set the table. I left the kitchen to put on America’s Got Talent. When I came back, my daughter had loaded the table with Bavarian dessert plates, melamine Hello Kitty dishes, Japanese rice bowls, plastic champagne flutes, and a family heirloom–a 1910 deviled egg platter–that I’ve been looking for since the Fourth of July before last.

She had abandoned the place-setting to scrub maniacally at a dinosaur sticker that has never come up since my three-year-old stuck it there after a trip to the museum. For this task, she was using two rags, a scrub brush, and about a quart of water. She looked up at me, did a backward somersault off of the high-backed chair, and burst into tears when her knee banged against a cabinet.

As you may have guessed, my daughter has ADHD. If your child also struggles with this invisible disability, I think this guide will help. This back-to-school toolkit is the culmination of years tutoring ADHD kids, plus a comprehensive review of the best current literature on ADHD tools and best practices.

Setting up the Perfect Homework Station

As an ADHD tutor, I don’t always expect much out of the first tutoring session with a new student. I often walk in to find my new pupil clearing space in a bonus room, tracking down his laptop, ransacking a junk drawer for a ballpoint pen, and yelling, “Mom, what’s the Wifi password?”

I like to tell these parents the same thing I’m about to tell you: if you want your child to take her schoolwork seriously, you have no idea how far a clean, organized, dedicated homework station will get you!

Photo by Nick Amoscato / CC BY

This is not just for organization–though ADHD students really do need help here. A personal work space makes children feel like their work matters. It makes them feel important. It gives them a sense of ownership.

If you have room in your home office or even a spare kitchen nook, set up an inviting homework space. Fill a nearby cabinet or rolling storage cart with little baskets and totes for pens and pencils, paper clips, loose leaf paper, binders, and other supplies.

While many kids use their parents’ home computers, I usually recommend that they have their own. Kids take their work more seriously when they don’t feel like they’re working on a borrowed computer. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. Google Chromebooks are lightweight, simple, and reliable; plus, they’re less than $200 a pop. Make sure to bookmark important websites, such as school portals and an online dictionary.

Photo by lozikiki / CC BY

Younger kids and extraverted kids often do well at the kitchen table. In this case, you can imbue the space with importance by having a caddy nearby with supplies, folders documenting finished assignments, and cork boards and family calendars hung up just high enough for them to access and see. By the time kids reach high school, they do better in a quiet office or a desk in the bedroom. Introverted children often relish the private, studious rush of excitement in their own personal space.

ADHD children benefit from something called proprioceptive input. They fidget and squirm because it helps them focus. For this reason, you may want to buy your child a special seat. Younger kids do great in a HowdaHUG. This chair allows them to rock gently, and they tend to stay a lot more focused. Some of my older students swear by exercise balls. I have also seen success with exercise bike chairs such as the DeskCycle.

Telling Teachers That Your Child has ADHD

We all know that first impressions matter. That’s why it can be nerve-wracking to tell your child’s teachers, right off the bat, about her ADHD diagnosis. But things really do go more smoothly when you get it out in the open.

I usually recommend that you write down the most important information ahead of time–especially if it isn’t obvious.

Last year, one of my fellow tutor’s students, whom we’ll call Julie, was going from a small private middle school to Westpoint High School in Connecticut. Along with ADHD, Julie suffered from social phobia and agoraphobia (a fear of crowds). Julie’s mother explained to her teachers that they would probably see this manifest in ways they didn’t expect. Julie sometimes came to class late. Or, she would forget to get her homework from her locker. Because her teachers knew that she was not only forgetful–a hallmark symptom of ADHD–but also unsettled by crowds, they didn’t assume that she was being careless or lazy. They were more careful not to reproach her in front of her schoolmates. And they allowed her to sit in the back of the classroom where she would not feel as exposed.

Our understanding of ADHD is advancing all the time. Teachers are usually too busy to keep up with the latest research. Because you, the parent, know your child best, you will be doing everyone a favor by discussing what works and doesn’t. If your child acts like he doesn’t care to cover up shame and embarrassment, his teachers can really work with that. If he learns better with a discreet fidget cube in his pocket, that’s good information, too.

Here are some other examples of great talking points:

Discuss options. These may include 5-minute movement breaks, an extra set of textbooks, copied notes (perhaps in collaboration with another student), a pocket fidget cube, etc.
Get parent contacts. Ask to be introduced, perhaps via email, to other parents of classmates with ADHD.
Go Over the 504 Plan. Discuss the details of whatever IEP or 504 plan you have set up with the school to make sure the teacher’s understanding of what is required matches yours.

The Phone Buddy System

If your school sends home the contact information of other families, send out some emails until you are able to designate a “phone buddy” list. ADHD children are constantly leaving books and papers at school and forgetting to write down instructions. These extra contacts will be lifesavers in those moments. If your child is old enough, have her get the names, numbers, and addresses herself: one for each class.

Corkboards, Calendars and Clocks

Remember how cool office supplies seemed when you were a kid? All those brightly colored sticky notes; those important-seeming “While You Were Out” pads with the yellow and pink receipts. Office supplies can bring a sense of fun to schedules, agendas, routines, and to-do lists. They can make those lists seem like something more than a jumble of information in their brains and a mess of paper stuffed into their book bags.

There are a lot of ways you can use office supplies to engage your ADHD child. Here are some ideas.

Write morning, afternoon, and homework checklists on chalkboards or dry-erase boards within eye level of your child. That way, instead of asking in that strained voice why his shoes aren’t by the door, you can say, “OK honey, go ahead and check your after school board to make sure you remembered everything.”

Photo by eflon/ CC BY

Get a corkboard, thumbtacks, and flashcards for things that need to get done at school, from turning in a research outline, to getting a classmate’s contact information for a science project. After school, ask your child what he did. Let him take those items off the board herself!

For kids with ADHD, it isn’t enough to simply write down due dates on a calendar. There are some really fabulous academic planners that will help you and your child diagram the minutiae of her life into a schedule that works. One award-winning planner by Order Out of Chaos has such clever features as an after-school 2-9pm planning section and a vertical index design that allows students to write down their school subjects just once.

Other tools that are well-known for helping ADHD students include color-coded binders, sticker charts and analog clocks and timer — choose analog so that your student can visualize the passing of time. You can even go shopping together and let her pick them out herself. Target has some seriously cute office supplies.

Leaving Summer Behind

When I was in highschool, my friend Cam dared me to try and drive his dad’s Miata. We were hanging out at his house. We wanted to hit up Wendy’s for our favorite snack–french fries and a Frosty. I had never tried to drive a stick shift before. I figured it was just a mile away though, and he said he would buy my food if I made it there without wrecking the car. We spent at least ten minutes in the driveway as I tried to engage the clutch, stalling the car over and over instead. Then I almost hit his mailbox as the car lurched sideways like I’d hit a patch of ice. I made it to the end of the neighborhood, then tried to turn onto the main road as an ominous grinding growl sounded from deep inside the car’s metal entrails. The car jerked halfway into the road then froze, oncoming traffic approached, Cam screamed, I screamed, I hit the gas, and we careened into a ditch. This was the beginning and end of my career driving stick shift.

This experience may not have been my most proud formative moment, but it did prime me for the task of parenting a child with ADHD. No, they are not more likely to go joyriding in their dads’ precious sports cars. But they are more likely to struggle terribly with transitions.

Psychologists call this problem cognitive inflexibility. This is the inability to flow smoothly from one task to another, to multitask effectively, and to try a new strategy when the old one no longer works. As anxiety levels rise, kids can act out or become uncooperative.

Cognitive inflexibility can cause your child anxiety as the school year looms closer. Just when you need to start getting them to bed earlier, limiting their screen time, and reigning in their nightly Nutty Buddy consumption, you may encounter way more pushback than you expected.

The best way I have found parents work around this problem is by making external changes without the power struggle. They may put up a new family schedule on the fridge, for example, and when their children resist, they refer to the schedule itself as the “bad guy.”

Conversations can go something like:

“I’m sorry, I wish we could watch another episode of Heartland, too. But it says on the schedule, no screen time after 7.”
“I know, I don’t want to make you do your homework, either. It’s just that it’s on the schedule for right after school today, so we have to do it.”
“No, we can’t go to the pool after school. The schedule says bedtime is at 8. But we do get to take the boat out into the harbor on Labor Day. That will be fun, right?”

Ease your child into the year by talking about the good things late August will bring. Anything you can do to drum up excitement–new lockers, better cafeteria food, basketball tryouts, brand new back-to-school clothes–can alleviate fears. Walk through the new routines often. Talk about how your child will put out clothes at night for the next morning, and how your morning will go from wake-up call to walking out to the bus-stop.

Perhaps the best thing you can do, though, is help your child get a good sleep schedule.

You can tuck your child in at 8, but that doesn’t mean they will go to sleep. ADHD kids are far more likely to suffer from sleep-onset insomnia. This isn’t a side effect of ADHD medication, as unmedicated children also have this problem. Their minds race as they try and go to sleep, only to drift off into a shallow, fragmented state often punctuated by nightmares. Many of my students admit that they have a real fear of going to sleep. Maybe that’s why they tend to catch that after-dinner second wind that’s so pervasive in the ADHD population.

If you are wary of the idea of a melatonin supplement, take a look at the research. It’s well-studied as safe and effective for treating insomnia in ADHD kids. Just check in with your pediatrician first.

Your To-Do List

Let me end by modeling how you should often end a discussion with your ADHD teen. Don’t expect them to hold many thoughts in their working memory. Instead, write them a brief, actionable to do list. Here’s your back to school checklist:

• Create and stock an appealing homework space
  Prepare well for a conversation with your child’s teacher, then make sure it happens
• Put together buddy list you can call when your child loses a book or is confused about an assignment
• Create a family calendar showing daily routines and extra-curricular activities
• Ease the transition by frequently talking through back-to-school routines

The post The Ultimate Back-to-School Guide for the ADHD Student appeared first on HomeworkCoach.

It creeps up on you: the uncomfortable realization that your son or daughter is not doing well in school. Soon after, you reach the point where you know you need to intervene. Where to start? In this blog post educational consultant Amy Eisner leads you through the steps you should take to seek help for your struggling child. (Amy is also one of our best Connecticut tutors.)

The first thing every parent with a struggling child in school should do: get a copy of your child’s cumulative files.  Simply write a note to your school “requesting a complete copy of my child’s cumulative files”. You sign and date this, and then give this to your school secretary (keep your own copy). Under federal law your school has 10 business days to produce a free copy of your child’s cumulative files.

Something magical happens when you put in a note for these files! Some people in your school may start paying more attention to your child, or will tell you about some brainstorm they had to help your child. This happens because bad news travels fast! The schools are very aware that a parent who asks a copy of your child’s cumulative files is probably getting advice from an attorney or a savvy advocate. Your school is now on alert that you are serious about getting your child some help.

Your school will not call you to tell you that your records are done. I advise my clients to call the school about 3-4 days after they submit the letter. Your school is on the defensive now, and they suddenly become very accommodating.

Hiring an advocate

You’ll need your child’s cumulative files for your advocate. “Do I need an advocate?” you may ask. Yes, if you are serious about helping your child, you should hire an advocate to represent you at your local school. Your child is your most precious commodity but this also means you may not be objective about their situation. An advocate will give you unbiased advice on how – or whether – you should go about seeking the special services your child is entitled to.

When should you hire an advocate? My advice is don’t delay. Contact an advocate as soon as it becomes clear to you that you need to talk to the school about your child’s progress.
Make a checklist to help you choose the right advocate. In my view, a good advocate should:

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]know the curriculum (a former teacher is ideal)[/list]
[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]have knowledge of all forms of ancillary testing[/list]
[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]strong test interpretation skills[/list]
[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]be a skilled negotiator[/list]

Of course it’s hard to tell that just from talking to the advocate, so be sure to ask for references! A good advocate will have a list of happy clients which you should read carefully

What is the difference between hiring an attorney vs. hiring an advocate?

An attorney will be 10 times more expensive! And many don’t know a thing about curriculum, testing requests, or testing interpretations. We’ll discuss later when you may need an attorney but for most parents, all you will need is a good advocate.

You cannot trust the school to do the right thing for your child.

In an ideal world, you, your school system and your child’s teacher would all be on the same side, wanting the best for your child. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Why? It is all about money! Your school is not going to tell you about all of the services you can get to assist your child. In fact, many school systems impose a gag order on teachers, preventing them from advising you on how to get either extra help or special education services for your child. Special education/accommodation plans are more work for your school. This means it is labor intensive, costing your school more money. This is another reason to have an advocate who can walk you through the eligibility process to getting those special education services for your child. It is also the main reason I left teaching. If I cannot advocate for the kids in my own classroom, then I really shouldn’t be there!

Major red flags from your schools that your child really needs extra help are comments from your school such as “She is so cute;” “Oh, he is just a little immature don’t worry;” “She really tries hard” and stories to regale to you about something your child did are frequently deliberate avoidance tactics by your school.

Types of help the school should provide. Accommodations vs. Special Education

Services to assist your child to be more successful in school usually fall under two categories. This first category is from the American Disabilities Act. This law was originally written so that children who had diabetes could not be excluded from gym. Under this law, your child may be eligible for a 504 Accommodation Plan. Accommodations usually do not involve direct teaching services from a teacher. Examples of what you can get from your 504 accommodation plan include things like seating in the front of the classroom (to help your child stay focused); being provided with a copy of the teachers’ notes; extra time on tests; prior notice of any/all tests and quizzes; being allowed to take tests in a separate, quiet room; all are examples of accommodations that can be made for your child.

A 504 accommodation plan is not for special education students, who require a specifically designed curriculum in order to learn the concepts. It is ideal for the student who only requires a “few extras” to get by. There are many pluses and minuses of the 504 Plan. A 504 plan does not get your child extra help from either a special education teacher or the regular education teacher. But it does not include due process rights! There really is no accountability in a 504 plan unless you are a diligent parent. My son has ADHD of the combined type, and I put him on the 504-accommodation plan instead of under special education. He does not require a special curriculum to learn. (He would have been mortified to be pulled out of his regular classes to go work with a special education teacher!) My son gets 50% extra time on math tests, preferential seating, and is also entitled to a copy of the teachers notes. He is also allowed to take a picture of the blackboard at the end of his classes to ensure that his notes are adequate. This has been a great plan for him: his grades went from D’s to being an honor roll student!

If your child is significantly behind his peers what should you do?

Accommodations may not be enough. Let’s get back to that advocate you found and your cumulative records. A good advocate should go through your entire cumulative files, paying particular attention to teacher comments, low grades, and especially your state’s annual standardized test results.

Each state has its own name for its annual assessments. In Connecticut it’s the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Georgia has Milestones, Florida the Florida Standards Assessment, and so on. You need to pay attention to this data! It shows you where your child is functioning in the Language Arts and math in comparison to his/her peers. If you take the time to read it there are clear statements such as “a child functioning of this level will most likely require significant help to achieve this task.” Your advocate should be gaining information on the specific testing to request to flush out the nature of your child’s disability. For example, when if I see a low score in the area of phonemic awareness then I am going to ask your school to do the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)

How do I get Special Education Services for my Child?  Remember that teachers are often discouraged from advising you when it comes to spending the school’s money on testing!  Your advocate should tell you to get a “special education referral form”. Every school district has their own referral form. The form will ask you the nature of your concerns and what interventions have been tried in the past.

Once you turn in this form, the school should schedule an initial meeting promptly. Different states have different names (and slightly different processes). I will use Connecticut’s terminology. In CT, you will be invited to a Planning and Placement Team (PPT) meeting. It takes two PPTs to get through the eligibility process.

PPTs are often scheduled back to back for multiple children. The schools like to rush you in and out! When they start your meeting by saying there is only a half hour time slot for the meeting, request another one that offers you more time.

Preparing for your PPT

Being prepared for your meeting is key! Bring in work samples that your child has done which shows he is struggling to understand concepts, or which demonstrate immature handwriting to help make your case.

Another key component at your PPT is that special education comes with its own form of language by using 3-4 letter anachronisms, such as IEP, SLD, ISS. You will need to learn the special ed lingo, or you will be lost the entire meeting! (Check out our “learn the lingo” guide.)  For those parents who are seeking special education services for the first time, you will have the most work to do.

You should have a 3 ring binder with every form and piece of data that your school gives you. Put your material in chronological order. (your hearing officer is not going to appreciate your looking for documents to show him/her) Write your questions out prior to any meeting. Finally have respect for everyone’s time. Everyone is busy! You will do the best if you learn the lingo, organize yourself, and write out your questions prior to your meeting. Never give your only copy of anything to anybody. Photocopy it first. Your school has an uncanny way of misplacing your documents.

PPT I is very anti-climactic. The only thing decided at this meeting is generating a list of tests recommended for your child based on their strengths and weaknesses. It is very easy to get bamboozled at this PPT! For example, there is one language test that your school tries to give your child when asked to assess language which allows the child to get the question right by randomly pointing to one of four pictures and does not test for syntax or grammar. I instead would request a more comprehensive test such as the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals. Everything is a negotiation. You need someone to help you who knows all about these tricks, and will intervene on your behalf! As a parent you have no reason to know about the various tests available and what they measure. Do not just say ok to their proposed testing!

After agreeing on the testing, your school then has 45 school days to complete the assessments and reconvene PPT II. This is the meeting where your child’s testing is reviewed, and a determination is made whether or not your child qualifies for special education services. This is where your advocate should shine! Are you familiar with the saying that “statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics”? Your school will highlight the positive and gloss over your concerns. Tricks schools use are to only give the child a (easier) portion of a particular test; they may also use composite scores to show that your child scores within an average range. HOWEVER, when there is a lot of scatter in those numbers (showing that your child does OK on some portions of a test but badly on others), they will only focus on the positive. You need an advocate to speak up and say, “Hey this child is over two years behind in math”

Anything you ask your school for (eligibility, Out of District Placement, pencil griper) that is denied, have the school mark it on page 3 of your IEP document under “Actions Refused.” This is how you lay a paper trail if you feel your case may go to due process. Another tip: be sure to read any minutes the school provides to make sure it is an accurate reflection of what occurred during your meeting. I started doing this because I would get my page 2 back from the school, read it, and wonder if we were at the same meeting!

What to do if you and the school disagree on the right plan for your child?

Ideally – with your advocate’s firm but polite presence – the school will agree to provide the special education services and Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that your child needs. If you do not come away from the PPT II satisfied, however, there are two approaches you can take: mediation or a due process hearing. I recommend mediation first.  Have your advocate help you fill out a “request for a mediation hearing.” You do not need an attorney.

Once you’ve turned in the mediation request, you will receive a call from a State Department of Education consultant or hearing officer. The actual mediation occurs at your home school. You are in one room with your spouse and advocate and the school staff is in another room. The hearing officer will listen to both sides, by going back and forth between the two parties at the meeting. At the end of your mediation, a hearing officer will decide who is in the right/wrong. Mediation is a legally binding agreement. Mediation is also free to parents. Do not attempt a mediation hearing if you are by yourself, as the schools all have top-notch lawyers! Your advocate can handle your mediation hearing.   If you choose to skip mediation or do not accept the mediator’s proposed resolution, you have a right to IEP due process under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, (IDEA). This is where you have to open your wallet and bring in a lawyer. You and the school district will present written and oral evidence about the disputed issue before a hearing officer. You can appeal all the way to state or federal court.

An example of when you’d want to hire a lawyer is if you believe the school is not able to serve your child properly (in legal jargon, “has not provided your child with a free and appropriate education”) and you are seeking an out of district placement. Your school will go to any length not to give you that out of district placement as it will cost the school system on average $150,000 dollars annually, not including transportation costs. Since your school will have to pay the tuition it is worth their while to try to fight you.

Some final tips as you seek help for your struggling child:

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]Dress for success — you are working with professionals![/list]

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]Assertive not aggressive[/list]

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]I over E:  intellect over emotion[/list]

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]Ask pointed questions[/list]

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]Learn the lingo so you understand everything that comes up at the meetings[/list]

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]If your question goes unanswered wait for a break in the conversation and repeat your question[/list]

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]Always be polite, but you can stand your ground while being polite[/list]

[list icon=”chevron-sign-right”]And did I mention, hire an advocate to represent you[/list]

Empower yourself with knowledge!

This article was written by Amy Eisner, MA.  Visit her website at www.help4specialeducation.com

The post “My child is not keeping up with her peers in school. What should I do?” appeared first on HomeworkCoach.

Once a parent realizes their child may have special needs and seeks support through their school system, they will soon be engulfed by a tidal wave of Special Ed jargon and acronyms.  It’s not that the counselors and school officials are trying to intimidate or confuse you (well, sometimes it is!) but these are simply terms that will come up again and again as you navigate the system to obtain the right services for your child.  Let us help you with the alphabet soup. 
Here is a list of some of the more common abbreviations, provided by our tutor Amy Eisner, who runs New Beginnings, a successful advocacy service for Connecticut parents.

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If you need an explanation for any of these terms or have run into any other jargon you’d like explained, please make a note in the comments section and we will elaborate. 

The post Learn the Special Ed Jargon appeared first on HomeworkCoach.

The day you learn your child has been diagnosed with ADHD or a learning disability is the day you become an advocate for your child to ensure he or she has the best school experience possible. But it can be difficult if you aren’t certain about what your options are or who can offer assistance. The following is a brief guide to laws and resources for ensuring your ADHD child receives the accommodations that he needs at school.

The IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act) is a law that was passed to allow for additional services and improvement of services for students with disabilities. Learning disabilities such as executive function issues, dyslexia, handwriting problems, issues with short or long-term memory, and metacognitive disorders are all covered under this law. Congress reauthorized the IDEA in 2004 and most recently amended the IDEA through Public Law 114-95, the Every Student Succeeds Act, in December 2015.

Students covered under the IDEA are required to have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) where school counselors, teachers, and other school administrators meet with parents regularly to help your child with his educational career. If your child has a diagnosed learning disability, you should speak with the school counselor to determine what services and accommodations your child is entitled to under the IDEA.

Children diagnosed with ADHD are covered under the IDEA if their ADHD significantly impairs academic performance. Schools will sometime push back if an ADHD child does not have a clear learning disability. Rather than an IEP, they may recommend that the student receive a 504 Plan, named after Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.  The Rehabilitation Act, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, guarantees children with physical or mental impairments that majorly affect their lives receive “reasonable and appropriate accommodations”. The ADA considers ADHD a disability and therefore, ADHD students are entitled to receive such accommodations under the law. What is considered “reasonable and appropriate accommodations” is determined by a team at the school and usually consists of such things as quiet spaces, extended or unlimited time for testing, and additional study assistance. Extended time on standardized tests can be particularly important when your ADHD-diagnosed child is preparing to take the ACT or SAT.

Note that while Section 504 does not apply to private schools that do not receive any federal funding, Section 504 does obligate private schools to enroll students with disabilities if the accommodations for the student cause only a “minor adjustment”. Typically, time accommodations on tests are considered a “minor adjustment”. The ADA applies to private schools with the exception of private schools that are directly operated by religious institutions. Between these two laws, it should be possible for your ADHD-diagnosed child to receive reasonable accommodations at most any school.

Often, your greatest asset in helping your child to receive the accommodations he needs is the school counselor. School counselors are often under-utilized by parents, but their job is to be an advocate for your child’s academic, personal/social, and career development and they are trained to assist parents with these issues. If for some reason the counselor is unable to help you, most private schools and public school districts have a student services office that can assist you infilling out the necessary paperwork to get your child the accommodations he needs. Additionally, speaking with your child’s teachers about his limitations can often result in the teacher working with your child to make his learning environment more accommodating to his needs.

There are a number of websites and organizations that help parents to advocate for and learn more about the rights of their ADHD-diagnosed or learning disabled student. Links to some of those can be found at the end of this blog post. My personal experience as a homework coach is that many ADHD-diagnosed students show marked improvement on tests when they are given time accommodations that allow them to fully process the information and take their time in answering rather than rushing through to answer as many questions as possible before time runs out. The steps to helping your child receive accommodations are simple, but often do require that you proactively seek out those resources within the school that can help you to advocate for your child’s educational success.

Free Download: Accommodations List for IEP and 504 Plan

For more information:

About the ADA: http://www.pacer.org/publications/adaqa/school.asp

About Section 504: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/504faq.html

Comparison of IDEA and Section 504: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/schools/feds.html

CHADD-An organization with information about ADHD and ADHD advocacy: http://www.chadd.org/

HealthyPlace-Parent Advocacy-This site has a number of articles to help you advocate for your child: http://www.healthyplace.com/adhd/articles/parent-advocate-advocating-for-your-adhd-child/

ADDitude Magazine article on advocating for classroom accommodations: http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/711.html

The post Ensuring Your ADHD Child Receives Accommodations at School appeared first on HomeworkCoach.