Again, I am unable to respond to your thread—just getting a blank page. Hmm. So, I’ll respond with another thread :) .
There are many, many reasons why your son may have had difficulty with that IQ test, and for the psychologist to come back and say that s/he couldn’t give the same test, so the score was the score, is, simply, ridiculous. S/he has other IQ tests at his/her disposal and should have used another one to add some clarification. No, you cannot give the WISC, again, but you can give the WJIII, the UNIT, the Kaufmann, the Stanford-Binet, etc. The fact that this was not done is totally unacceptable, and I would go for an IEE at the school’s expense because of it. You can get an IEE, anyway, but the school does not have to pay for it, if they can prove their tests were legitimate and thorough. With this kind of IQ drop, I don’t see how they are going to prove that. I would advise talking to an advocate or an attorney about this. I [b]definitely [/b]think you need to have your child privately evaluated, but I’d like to see the school pay for this one.
Don’t stress over this IQ test, until you have the private eval. If your child is very difficult to test, and it sounds like he is, I would take him to a true expert, who has a great reputation for dxing children who are difficult to test. Neuropsychologists can be your best bet, here. Also, you can call parent support groups in your area or state and ask for recommendations. These parents have been through exactly what you are going through, and they often have certain diags/doctors/psychologists they use and highly respect. Call around to a lot of places and ask, ask, ask.
Picking your private evaluator will be one of the most important things you will ever do for your child. The private diagnostician doesn’t use the same criteria for locating disabilities that schools use. S/he is not looking for 16 point discrepancies, or anything like that. S/he is looking for the root cause of the difficulties, and as a parent, the piece of mind this brings is worth every penny you spend, no matter what kind of help you get from the school in the end. Still, talking about money, I think the school should pay for your child’s evaluation.