Our next step

We have been trying to persuade our school to provide services for well over a year now.  Our first request for evaluation was in February of this year-- they refused to evaluate.  We took him to KU Medical Center where they confirmed the diagnosis and laid out recommendations for the school to follow up on.  We contacted the school and requested an evaluation again.  They began in April, but were unable to finish before the end of the school year.  In the meantime, there was a great deal of turnover in staff, and the evaluation was continued from where they left off when school resumed in August.

We got the results this week.  We expected they wouldn't say yes to services in every area, but the denied services completely.  In reading through their reasoning, their entire reasoning is based on how he compares to other students in his class.  Have you all had this experience where they don't look at the child as an individual, but the child in comparison to all other children?

I also attended an Autism Society meeting some months back on IEPs (even though we were nowhere close to getting one at that point- we still aren't it would appear).  During that meeting, I recall talk of how important knowing your child's IQ is, because they need to look at how  your child is performing based on what his IQ says rather than based on what others in the class are doing.  Can anyone tell me how to find out where my son should be performing based on his IQ?  They say he doesn't test high enough to be in the gifted class, but that seems to be where he is most engaged (they've had him in while they evaluate). 

We have not signed the evaluation and don't intend to until we have a rebuttal.  We want to be reasonable, and are doing our research.  Knowing your experiences would help greatly in navigating this next step.  Any advice you can give would be welcome.

Jenn