School limits observation?? (evaluation, best, people, education)

[cohdane]

General question for parents out there:

We're due for the 3-year reevaluation and as part of that, are going to have a private psych eval. Since one of the issues is inconsistent performance across various school environments, the psychologist said she'd like to spend a good amount of time watching him over one day.

The school has a policy of only allowing 1 hour of observation per trimester. I didn't realize they also apply that to clinical observations.

Is this limitation common? I hadn't heard of it before and didn't know whether to challenge it if need be. Seems like if a psychologist wants more than one hour, they should be able to get one.

[goodmanm]

I don't know if this is common or not.

Did you ask the school or is this something out of a policy handbook? If you don't ask, you don't get as the saying goes. Give them an opportunity to work with you on it.

Perhaps a request, in writing, from the psychologist?

Best of luck.

[88txaggie]

I have only worked as a school employed psychologist, but have never had a limit like this. Is this just for outside people? Could the private psychologist ask the school psychologist to do some observations and provide data for the evaluation, or is your relationship with the school an adversarial one?

[photobuff42]

As a special education director, I haven't heard of a school psychologist having such a limit. If a psych came to me with such a request, I would want to discuss it and see what we needed to do.

[firefightermom]

I would contact the state department of education and ask them if this is something the school district is allowed to do...if not, you can let the school know that's you've discussed it with the state and demand your person be allowed in for a longer time period.