The Student Evaluation Clinic, which is part of the college's Dyslexia Initiative, offers comprehensive testing
EWING -- A new center at The College of New Jersey aims to help parents test for learning disabilities in their children and get their schools to provide them with appropriate services -- at a much cheaper price.
The Student Evaluation Clinic, which is part of the college's Dyslexia Initiative, offers comprehensive testing including psychological, educational, speech and language evaluations and a social history.
The information gathered can then give parents a leg up when they approach their child's school about what the best interventions and accommodations would be, clinic director Heather Tellier said.
Elsewhere, a speech evaluation could cost $1,500, but TCNJ is charging $600, she said.
"We try to price it less so parents have more access to this kind of information," she said.
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Tellier said that awareness of learning disabilities is growing and that parents are increasingly seeking services for their children.
"Some parents have come to me because they haven't seen any improvement with the help the school has been giving the student and so they say, 'This isn't working. We don't know what's wrong. Can you help?'" she said.
She pointed to one example where the school wasn't giving a child extra help in reading even though he was clearly dyslexic.
Tellier said catching learning disabilities at an early age is key.
"It's so important to get intervention when they're younger rather than waiting for them to fail and helping them when they're older," she said. "The earlier you treat, the better success rate you're going to have."
As part of the Dyslexic Initiative, some education majors go to area school districts to tutor dyslexic students and in a couple months' time, the clinic will open a tutoring center of its own.
The clinic is located in the Education Building. For more information, email Tellier2@tcnj.edu.
Cristina Rojas may be reached at crojas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaRojasTT. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.