Barriers and Challenges to Getting Diagnostic Testing

Submitted by Aaron Kohring on Wed, 03/05/2014 - 11:54
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I was recently reading this article from the LINCS Collection- Screening for Learning Disabilities in Adult Basic Education Students: http://lincs.ed.gov/professional-development/resource-collections/profile-532

And what especially struck me is the continuing difficulties for finding affordable testing.  In some cases, I have been able to refer people to Vocational Rehab when adults are seeking employment.  Sometimes graduate level psychology programs programs will offer free or reduce price testing.  But, I have also had adults and parents say they were refused testing because the agency felt they could NOT clearly show the learner needed the testing.

Are others find these challenges also?  Or other barriers and challenges to help people get tested?

 

Comments

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for sharing information from that LINCS Disabilities Collection resource.  The authors who wrote that article had a discussion about it within our Disabilities group last year.  In my opinion, when working with students in adult education who don't progress for unknown reasons, having an LD screening process in place is important for the teacher and the student.

Rochelle Kenyon

 

This is something our organization is starting to address right now, so that students can get accommodations on assessments like the GED and get disability services in employment and higher education. It's a big challenge. The school districts are legally obliged to provide special education services, including assessment, to people ages 16-22, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily easy to get those services, and there don't seem to be other options besides VocRehab for older students. Full evaluations are very expensive, and in rural areas it can be difficult even to find someone who can do them. I am curious what other organizations are doing. We'd love to develop a relationship with professionals who could donate this kind of assessments to our students with financial barriers, or even eventually to have someone in-house who could do it. It seems like a Catch-22 in a lot of cases: well, we could help you get a job or remove barriers to employment if you had a documented disability, and these free screening tools indicate that you should be assessed for a disability, but that assessment costs thousands of dollars, which you don't have because you can't get a job.

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for joining in to our discussion,  Although "school districts are legally obliged to provide special education services, including assessment to people ages 16-22," once a special education student registers for an adult education program, he is no longer entitled for any free special education services offered through K-12.

Your comments about the difficulty of getting diagnostic assessments at a reasonable cost are so true.  Catch-22 is a great way to explain this difficulty.

The Vocational Rehabilitation agency is always one of the best options, but in some states, working with people that have learning disabilities is not at the top of their list.

Finding diagnostic professionals who are willing to do pro bono work is an excellent option.  

This is a topic that affects so many of our group members.  If anyone has had success finding free or reasonably priced diagnostic services for at-risk students, please start a new discussion thread on the topic of "Diagnostic Assessment."  I would appreciate hearing about your successes.

Thanks~

Rochelle Kenyon, SME

 

 

Hi all, .

Some states now require transitional assessments. If parents do not request formal testing for that requirement, many districts seem to provide a very limited assessment. I am not clear if all post-secondary institutions accept the limited assessment results as a document appropriate for accommodations. 

I  agree with the observation "that puts our students in a catch 22". Years ago the Congressional  Budget Office (I think that is the office) produced a report stating persons with LD had the greatest  wage gain potential of all "disability groups" at that time. Access to accommodations both on the job and in adult vocational  training programs were noted as possible pathways for closing the gap. I believe the report also noted that the cost of closing that wage gap was the lowest amongst disability groups. Although the report was conducted some time ago, I do not think much has changed in terms of the LD community. I would be interested to know if the report on lack of employment  of individual with intellectual disabilities, noted in other discussions in this group,  distinguishes LD from other intellectual disabilities?

We have a bit of a grey area here in Vermont with students age 16-22 who are participating in the state's Flexible Pathways program to get their high school diplomas. This program is administered by the AEL organizations (Adult Education and Literacy) in partnership with the local high schools, and students can be either enrolled in high school or not enrolled. So in some cases these students basically have dual enrollment with the high school and our organization, and we have been able to maintain special education services in that way. I'm not aware that we've tried enrolling previously unenrolled students at their local high school before enrolling them in Flexible Pathways with us so that students could then access assessment and special education services, but it seems like with a good working relationship with the school staff that could be possible.