More on "Catching Kids Up"

Anitya wrote:

> However, based on some things I read on the net, some parents
> would be grumbling at why he is not closing the gap, 1.5
> years per year until he catches up? Why not?
>

Anitya,

good to hear that your pupils are making nice progress.

And following up on your comment about parents- I am one of these parents who was not happy with my son not closing the gap.

I think that one needs to look at a child as a whole and not to separate the reading skill acquisition from the learning process. The lack of reading skills might have different impact on a child and there might be children who are not that upset that they are not reading well (my son has a friend in his new school who is reading at a far lower level and the boy is perfectly happy with that). There are some however- like my son, who are just getting more and more depressed because they are just lost in their school experience. With very poor auditory perception and even worse reading skill the child is left with very little working for him in terms of acquiring new information during a school day. If the child is learning through listening in the class- fine with me- you can have more time to gain reading skills- my son was coming home having no clue what they were talking about in the class. There were 75 children being taught by three teachers in a single room with partitions so sometimes he commented on the other teacher yelling at her class not on what his teacher was saying….no wonder he had little clue how to handle his HW.

My son is also severely dyslexic and in fourth grade. You helped give me some perspective with your post. My son was about where your student was in second grade. He is now reading at a 3.5 level and does reading in both the regular classroom (in the lowest of three reading groups) and in resource room. He reads two syllable words easily but is still inconsistent with longer multisyllable words. He also still miscalls words though (when you ask him again, he’ll get it right). We are currently reading There is a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom, using buddy reading. He can handle the reading but wears out and needs the break.

Your student has had a consistently better resource environment than my son. We have a good teacher now (but not as skilled as you) but the program (and teacher) was so lousy earlier that I pulled him out partially and homeschooled him in second grade. The difference is obsessive mom.

Beth

However, your son is ahead of this student at this time. Sped. demands IEPs. WE know that students are individuals. I think I have done pretty much all I can do with this boy in the past two years and am reasonably happy with him. I always wonder if I could have done more, but I’ll never know. I have 45 minutes a day I can reasonably well invest in him. I have 6 other grade levels and I cannot work longer with him.

I did neglect to mention that this boy has the most negative affect of any child I have ever taught. He is downright sourHe is negative about everything everywhere all the time. His mother is concerned and knows this, too. He is also in counseling. It does effect his progress. After a year plus a little in resource, I was able to start to turn the attitude around to more positive more of the time. HOwever, it is still an issue that compounds his already severe processing issues and probably does slow progress.

These temperment and personality factors deeply influence progress and are very hard to measure and to control. We can work on improving them along with the academics.

This thread is timely. Beth, your son once again sounds like mine. Mine has finally broken the code, and can decode ms words on an increasing basis. He can read 3rd grade material but its work for him, and he doesn’t read for pleasure.

I’ve had some heartbreaking conversations with him recently (last night) because he knows we are looking at a special school for him for 4th grade. He asks ” you say I am making progress, so what’ s the problem” I had to try to explain that he IS making big progress, but the other kids have been reading for fun for 2 years now. The bar is raised substantially between 3rd and 4th grade. He’s angry and sad that for all his hard work and improvement it isn’t enough.

Our decision to put him in an LD school is based on the idea that intensive remediation will get him there sooner, instead of having him struggle forever.

I know my son is ahead of your student. Too often it is easier to think that you aren’t there yet rather than how far you’ve come. Obsessive parents like me get tired. Your post reminded me that my son is doing well for a kid with his profile.

I too think you probably have done all that can be done within the constraints you work. I attribute my son’s progress both to the relentless work we have done on reading and the therapy which has diminished his processing difficulties. While my son has never been as sour as you describe, there has been a marked change in him as his processing difficulties have decreased. Both his resource teacher and his babysitter (after school) comment on how much happier he is this year. His regular classroom teacher tells me that she would never know he was an ESE student from the way he performs and acts in class if she didn’t know. This is momumental progress from first grade when his teacher told me that he has a hard type learning anything and he can’t generalize the little he does learn.

Beth

This is a really hard decision. When my son was going into third grade, we looked at having him repeat second grade in the parochial school his siblings attended. The public school at that point had a worthless resource program and the parochial school was willing to work with us. They felt though that he would be better off repeating second grade. We talked to our son, who very badly wanted to be at the school his siblings were at. He abs. refused to go there, if it meant repeating a grade. Like your son, he saw it as evidence that his hard work wasn’t enough. We left him in the public school.

Many, many times during third grade I wished he had repeated a grade, for all the reasons you cite. It would have been so much easier to not to have to keep struggling. Third grade was a bad year for us. Now in fourth grade, he is holding his own. Our situation is different than yours but your son’s attitude is no small thing, if staying were he is at is an option at all.

Beth

I can see both sides re the concern of catching kids up. As a parent you want what is best for your child. You know that in order to get by in life one must be able to read. You hear horror stories and I have even seen it on this board that if a child does not learn to read by a certain age you mind as well give it up. If you give it up what becomes of your child? You hear horror stories of kids making it to high school or worse graduating with a second grade reading level or lower. With those skills the child is left unable to fill out an application. Also our society is one of instant gratification we have little patience for anything we want so bad. To confound things even more you then have companies who offer a quick fix. Or things are said like if the child only tried, if only the school were better, ect. What a bloody nightmare. On the other hand some teachers are poorly trained to deal with students who don’t fit neatly into the education box. They buy into packaged programs that are hyped up ect. The teacher gets into the profession with good intentions only to be drowned. Curriculm being shoved further and further down, high stakes testing, ect. To top things off no one wants to fund school appropriately. In a classroom full of 30 students each parent see’s their child as the most important. All this makes it very difficult to do what is right and to even see what needs to be done. Sometimes this causes parents to point fingers at the school, the school to point fingers at the parents, and society as a whole not knowing what is really going on. I admit I as a parent want my child to do well and expect the shcool to do their part. Unfortunately though they are not able to do it all on their own with todays present system. For parents fortunate enough to be able to help, ie tutoring themselves, able to afford tutors, able to try other therapies ect some progress might be made. In todays society however for the most part both parents work, not all schools are the same, all therapy is not available universaly, ect. It has become a society torn. Our children must do well in order to have a life. There are very few jobs any more you can get without a college degree, where does this leave the individual who just cant do it? This is a very complicated world in which we live.

Antiya sounds like you do very well by your students and your talents could be used in schools across the nation. I am very pleased that my boys have also run into teachers like you, victoria, Susan Long, Janis, Sue, Shay, Ken and others on this board. I had the biggest grin on my face last night when my 4th grader was able to read his assignment on his own. Yes LD students can and do make progress, it just takes teachers like you, support at home, and in the community to make it so. Thanks for being such a caring individual.

The following advice doesn’t sit well with bureaucrats, but it has saved a few people some problems with bad choices: don’t tell the present public school that you plan to take him out. Let them assume he is going to be with them next year, and let them assign him a place. Then try the private school for a period of time. Either take him out of class for a few weeks at the end of the year, or don’t put him in school for a few weeks at the beginning of next year. Make an excuse to the public school, illness or travel or private testing or whatever. Try the private school for a couple of weeks. If it helps and he is making progress, fine, pull him out of the public school officialy. If it turns out to be more of the same or even worse, send him back to his place in the public school. Keep your options as open as you can.

My LD 6th grade son has “caught up” enough to function in reg. ed.(“A”student ) with no help other than his own tremendous drive, sense of organization and millions of hours of tutoring, reading at home etc. We have come to expect NOTHING from the school who told us he was just a little slow(FS IQ is in the superior range), and to not push him. He was a total nonreader in 2nd grade. We push, he pushes and does very well, but what bothered us was the school’s low expectations for kids in special ed. We have not requested accomodations thru a 504, although that may be needed at some point. No, I don’t think he’ll function as a kid without LD, but I do expect him to continue to make progress.

Yes„ it is monumental progress and he is very lucky to have parents who will take the initiative to tackle the situation. This fellow’s parents don’t really do much with the educational side of things.

I feel he should read at grade level-as someone mentionned, it affects their entire day. He cannot read the fifth grade science text;he cannot read the 5th grade social studies text. EVERYTHING is hard for him, not just the reading class minutes of his day

I would be thrilled if a teacher was straight with me and said “He will read at grade level but its not going to happen this year; from my experience with other kids, I feel he will be caught up by 8th grade(add all appropriate disclaimers).”
But all I ever get is how wonderful he is doing because he is progressing; it makes me feel as if they are not seeing what I am seeing and that makes me feel obligated to show them so I focus on the negatives and then THEY feel more obligated to focus on the positives. Vicious circle time.

I think ‘keeping positive’ with parents has its limitations. Many of us have been through enough to read through the lines and ‘proper’ terminology and just want someone to ‘tell it like it is’ even if its painful

I like your reading inventory data best.

Due to the lower reliability of individual subtests, it is difficult to give statistical evidence based on each subtest. Even with a fine reliability of .93 (eight-year-olds on the test-retest for WJ Letter-Word ID), there will still be a +/- 5 or 6 points for a 90% confidence band (estimate). So, from the 78 to the 87, you’ve got 9 points over two years which one could say is a small improvement. Pretty risky to state that he’s made progress in one year with only 3-4 points increase. You really cannot prove that point with just this one subtest. One could also question the validity of this subtest to demonstrate his reading growth.

Sometimes using normed tests like the Gates-MacGinite or the GORT have more validity in showing true reading growth, even if the student is a context reader. Other options are to also test Word Attack and use the cluster score on the WRMT-R. Some also test phonemic awareness (such as on WJIII and others) when lots of time is spent on sounds/phonics.

I enjoy reading your “data” posts. Interesting to see what others are doing.

I find it a lot easier to focus on the data — the areas of progress, and what works in teachign, and what is hard for the kiddo. “Making progress” is just peachy but it ain’t black & white.

And I felt pretty good about his progress! Thanks for the vote of confidence. I do think 72-98 in word attack does mean something. I also think 78-87 is respectable. There is progress. The first year there was little progress, the real progress came the second year. I would expect his scores to top 90 next year and start moving into the average range. Considering that an SD is only 15 points, just how much growth do you think we need to show in a year to show progress? 9 points is better than halfway to a whole standard deviation.

As I read articles and posts, I think we would also do well to compare data on the children who are placed in our programs. I receive children who move-in with IEPs that we would never have placed. Students assigned to me have already been through strong phonemic awareness training in K, explicit phonics with segmenting and blending in K and 1. Students who are like the one I posted about have real and deep deficits in that they did not learn or progress, virtually not at all, in the strong K-1 program.

My point in the post was that students are all different. I am not as strong a teacher as you are, clearly you know a great deal more than I do. However, I am proud that my students do achieve at or close to grade level minimum expectations (I cannot lie, the classroom teachers do take data and when my students pass at grade level, they are closer to the basic or minimum than not) by the time they are upper graders. Some kids come to me with fewer issues than this particular boy. His older sister is in my program too, 6th grade, and nearly grade level, reading chapter books and loving it. She is not as disabled re. processing and certainly not as attitude disabled. So, some students do make larger gains in a year than this child has.

I don’t think I can always predict to parents what I can achieve with their child. Too much depends on too many variables. I can do my best and keep shooting to do better. Interactions on this board over the years has furthered my education as a teacher. I finished my M.Ed. in 1976, so my graduate courses are dated, though I have taken some here and there, by and large the really good stuff has been provided here and places like this.

And, I take the WJ data annually just to chart trends. I believe that across three or so years we can see if changes have taken place. Usually they do.

The informal reading inventories, etc. are the data I use for IEP writing and that I place the most stock in. Sometimes I don’t get much change in SS on W-J, but get good growth on the informal inventories. I think multiple sources of data is very important in the assessment process. We should never pin our conclusions on one test score. Frankly, I do think it is a stretch to assume that the child scored in the bottom of the confidence interval one year and the top of it the next, producing the “illusion” of gain. Generally, they can read the words or they cannot.

Another factor, sometimes during year 1 they cannot even attempt “particularly” or “tremendous.” Then this year the child pronounces “particularly” as “particlary” or something similar. Both are wrong. However, the “particlary” response indicates that the child is developing the skills to decode multi-syllable words like this one and has made, perhaps, more growth than this test indicates, since it is not a diagnostic test. I think parents need to know when this is occuring and it is very typical that my students will attack a multi-syllable word pretty well, they lose a syllable when they blend it back together. Overcoming this deficit takes time and practice and it is part of the LD.

I agree with this. I am so glad I took my son out of sped. He is doing well but has to work very very hard. He is proud of his achievement and it encourages him to work even harder. He feels good about himself and his teacher. His regular ed teacher sees his strengths his 2 former sped teachers never did.

I think some people think my son is less disabled than he is because I really try to focus on his strengths. He has worked very hard to overcome an extreme visual/motor deficit, but he has a ways to go.

I really found sped to be a pretty useless place. If I left him there he would not have progressed as much as he has. He is growing by leaps and bounds.

The principal told me about her daughter with LD who is receiving accomodations going into college. I wanted to say, “My son will never need accomodations because he will lick this thing.” but of course I didn’t. She really wanted him to stay in sped and couldn’t see my view that he needed to be out of there. I am sure she sees stronger kids than him who are still in sped.

I have alot of friends whose children are LD and when I tell them all I do they give me a blank stare. Most truely do believe it is up to the school. They have no idea what can be done with the right interventions.

Your student is lucky to have you! I know my son is fortunate, compared to many other kids, but honestly it was seeing the difficulties in some of my friend’s lives with their LD kids as teenagers that made me act. These were college educated moms who had to call the school to see if their kids would graduate!! I thought that it was pay the piper now or later!!! And, of course, I didn’t think it would be so difficult…….

Does the Test of Word Finding measure RAN? Just curious because we have seen major gains there.

Beth

Ah there’s the rub. I think Victoria, your post was to me, as we face a school placement decision. Unfortunately, my son is in a private school right now. We are “lucky” they are willing to work with us, many of ther private schools in our area just ask LD kids to leave. But if we take him out, that’s it. We’ve given up our spot and there is no return. (The only way to play both sides I guess would be to pay double tuition … not an option!)

I think we’ve sorted out our options with some recent additional feedback from our team of professionals and an evaluation from Lindamood of his reading. He’s only about 1 year below grade level in reading. If we can get him into this one really good LD school in our area we’ll go for it because the quality of the remediation would mean he really might go to High School w/out accomodations. But we won’t pull him from his beloved present school just to stick him in an LD school that doesn’t meet his needs. Not worth the trauma.

You son sounds alot like my daughter. The school had very low expectations for her. Like you, b/c of hard work, private remediation, and sheer DETERMINATION on her part, she has “sailed” through 3rd and now 4th grade. Maybe “sailed” isn’t the right word. She has exceeded my expectations. Now, she DOES get accommodations. Extended time for long written assignments and use of computer for long written assignments. Oftentimes she will do only odd or even math problems (she makes A’s in math). I don’t have a problem as long as they are represenative of the whole and she is making above average grades. B/c of motor planning, VPD, etc., writing is her biggest deficit, though she CAN write. It just takes 10 forevers. We usually ask for a couple of weeks advance notice more than gen ed kids for our book reports, and she does do them using a graphic organizer/writing software at home. Gets extended time on state assessments. (I often wonder if that will come back to haunt me in HS - does anyone know about this?). I feel like b/c of her grades etc., that I am going to be able to get these same accommodations in Middle school and HS. Does anyone think I’m dreaming?

that our children will be one of those who falls further and further behind. I have a dear friend whose son was never “properly” remediated. Yes, they spent thousands and thousands of dollars, but only with a regular tutor and not Wilson, OG or LMB. He is now in 9th grade, reading and doing math at a 4th grade level. The worst part? This is a child that had a 122 verbal IQ, 145 PIQ and a 137 Full scale IQ in 3rd grade. He now measures 103 - 109.

So, I think we are afraid for our children and WE are the only ones who care and CAN really do something about our children’s deficits, i.e., seek out the best remediation for our children. Disclaimor: I KNOW Susan Long, Anita, Sue, Janis, (the list goes on CARE, but I think, knowing them, they will not be offended by the above)

Like I recently told my principal, You don’t care if she graduates from HS, You don’t care if she gets a regular/spec ed diploma, YOU don’t care if she attends college, YOU don’t care if she goes off to Middle school and fails. I am the only one who really cares! ALL you care is that your school achieves those good “grades” while she’s here. You will NOT coddle my daughter and send her off to middle school to fail.

Needless to say, they do NOT like me. However, my daughter is doing well and that’s ALL I care about.

I can’t speak to changes in IQ over time but think that kids tend to perform closer to their verbal IQ, school is very demanding of the skills measured by verbal IQ measures. There are many, many reasons why kids don’t perform up to their potential, and this board tends to only discuss reading and LD; resilence, persistence, organization, attention to detail, and lots of emotional factors influence how well kids to in middle and high school. Half the kids statistically have IQs between 90-110(average range), and most do just fine. I worry a great deal about my son too, but work to promote these other factors which I feel will influence his achievement as much as reading level.

I don’t know that test. It may be one speech pathologists usually give.

Yes, the other factors are really where it is at. A great book is emotional intelligence. I think I work harder on my son’s emotional intelligence than anything else.

I was talking to a friend in sales last night. I was telling him about my boy’s natural sales ability.When my son sells candy he won’t leave until he has made the sale. At a picnic this summer one person he was trying to sell to said, “I don’t have any money on me.” My son replied, “Thats ok I’ll take a check.” The person replied I don’t have a check” My son said, “Thats ok I will drop by your house later, how many boxes can I put you down for.” This person he was selling to was floored. She thought it was amazing and bought 5 boxes. My friend called him a closer. Which I guess in sales speak is a person who can close a deal.

Teachers don’t care if you can close a deal in the third grade.

Gee, can I tutor your kid? When I worked in schools, and half the time with tutoring students, I get in trouble because I am honest. I say that a student is reading at a Grade 1 level and that with hard work we can get up to a 2.5 level in a year or less (1.5 years progress in less than a year with a kid who has made near zero progress in the previous four years would be a GOOD thing, wouldn’t it?) — and schools come down on me like a ton of bricks, and a lot of parents get mad at me for being negative. I think that one of the reasons I often succeed with kids that everyone else has given up on is that I am honest both with myself and the kid. But a lot of parents can’t take it, and forget school administrators.