Can I ask my son's school to prove he's made reading progres

Is he in special ed.? When was he last tested? Under spec. ed. you could request the Gray Oral Reading Test, but many reg. ed.. classroom teachers do informal reading inventories at report card times(our school does them before parent conf. nights). Does your state do standardized testing? That would be another measure of progress in the curriculum.

All I can add is to listen critically to what you are told by the school.

I’m stealing this example from Peter Wrights’ book “From Emotions to Advocacy.”

Suppose your 3rd grader was tested for upper body strength at the start of the school year. He could do seven chin ups while the “average” 3rd grader tested out at 10. Suppose this put him at the 25th percentile (75% of the kids did better than him) so the school pulled him out for remedial gym classes. At the end of the year you asked for an evaluation and found out that he could now do nine chin ups. NINE. How wonderful, no? It sounds like he has almost caught up with his class! You leave happy to know that whatever the school was doing seems to be working. You agree to continue with the same remedial program the next year.

You are not so happy when you find out that the average 3rd grader can do 15 chin ups by the end of the year. Your son has not gained on this class. He has fallen to the 8 percentile. The remedial work you agreed to continue isn’t doing it for him.

Listen with a critical ear!

Barb

Hi SAR,
He’s not in Special Ed (or even “Resource”). He had some academic testing earlier in the year. I doubt his teacher does any type of reading inventory (She’s a very “nice” teacher, but not too organized. i.e. new baby, new home, etc… ).

We’re doing state testing this week! I believe it’s the Star and some other tests. Might these be too general to indicate deterioration of reading skills? My son’s a great compensator and at recent testing (outside the school) I was told his comprehension is very good in spite of his reading ability.

Even more than proving my son hasn’t gained anything with the materials they are using, I wish there were a way I could get the school to incorporate a more effective, research based, reading remediation program.

Also, it seems to me that there should be a simple way to guage and track measureable progress (or lack ot it!).

Hi Barb,
You have a very good point.

Thanks for sharing that!!! :-)

You can always ask, and possibly even force the issue, but consider that in the time it may take you to get the school to use productive research based reading programs your son will likely fall even further behind. My bottom line suggestion is that you accept the reality that getting your kid reading is ultimately your responsibility (as in _moral_ responsibility) as his mom and your energy may be better spent teaching him yourself or hiring a private tutor rather than fighting with the schools about their legal responsibility.

Reading Reflex has an excellent and user friendly assessment and teaching system and is fairly inexpensive. I, personbally, found it less helpful with kids who don’t get blending, but if that’s not your child’s issue, it’s a great, research-based program.

Elizabeth

The simple way to track progress is through use of an informal reading inventory, often done in the lower grades in reg. ed. Ask about this specifically…I assume you are worried or you wouldn’t have had testing earlier, so push for the reading inventory(reading passages of vaious levels of difficulty), or push hard(ie request in writing) for an formal eval. Without prior testing it will be hard to prove regression, but you can start formal documentation with these evals.

Peter Wright also suggests that parents learn how hand draw the bell curve, charting/graphing performance 1 year ago, and currently. In his seminars he shows how to do this, then make bar graphs, etc., and tells parents to MAKE SURE schools are using the exact same tests, b/c they have a tendency to change tests and then show improvement (“via smoke and mirrors” - my paraphase NOT HIS.

He’ll be in Jax, FL May 16 - 17, 2003, if anyone’s interested.

IF at all possible, provide private remediation and HOLD the line on accommodations, etc., until the remediation kicks in. Keep them accountable. I fear where my daughter would be today if I had let her school handle her remediation.

If not, learn the law, the graphs, the tests, etc., and prove their reading problem is not providing :some education benefit”. (which is basically ALL they have to provide). The only way to do this is keeping track of test measurements, etc.

Great post, Elizabeth. I think parents sometimes forget this. I am a special ed. teacher and am trying to help my child’s charter school learn to remediate her deficits which will benefit many children, hopefully. But the minute the negatives outweigh the positives (and it IS a careful balancing act) ultimately it is our problem whether she is successful in learning or not. If the school cannot give her what she needs, I will have to take over the remediation entirely or else find someone who can. You are very correct that fighting a school and then expecting them to quickly become trained and proficient in research-based reading methods is very unrealistic.

Janis

One of my objectives in this is to try and convince the school to use a better intervention curriculum for the 1st-3rd grade students. Even with extra work through home, it seems like remediation would be much more effective if they too used a good program.

I would urge to take teacher assesments,report cards with a grain of salt- my kiddo who was doing just DANDY on report cards (A’s, B’s)- but those stanardized tests showing really poor reading scores really opened our eyes. Report cards include alot of stuff, like attitude, attendance and personality, in addition to actually skills..

There are two issues here, to get a more effective curriculum(?what state you’re in), try gathering a group of parents, talking to the school board, school improvement comm., PTO, etc. You mentioned private testing which I assume included reading eval.; if it’s not at grade level despite average intelligence, then you have a cause for worry, and it’s up to you whether to do private tutoring(which we did for years), or go thru the special ed. process. Just the presence of an effective curriculum will not allow all kids to read at grade level, some will require extra services, and tutoring.

We’ve had two years of intervention with a good teacher who uses sound research method based programs. We have continued to work with him and home and privately. The biggest difference it made was that we were on the same page–working together. Unfort., he didn’t suddenly become “average.”

It still is a worthy goal, however.

Beth

a fantastic post, i am printing this one up and handing it to some of my parents who complain that their kids in LD are getting farther and farther behind

please post again, libby

The thing that has gotten me thinking about this is I happened to talk with another parent. Her son is in the reading intervention as well and she was saying that the class was not helping in any way. She told me she bought some materials and has been working with him at home, and this is making the biggest difference.

I’ve been working with my son too and I have to say, I think the intervention has been a hinderance instead of a help. Prior to starting at this school he’d decode words quite well (also the previous school had a more comprehensive intervention program). Since being at this school he has been encouraged to guess and it seems like his decoding skills have deteriorated a little. We’ve been concentrating more on fluency, error correction and only a little decoding…but it looks like we’ll have to backtrack and concentrate heavily on decoding…again!!!

But in the meantime I feel a little exasperated that the school’s program isn’t helping support the work we do at home. I know next year they use Rewards which I’ve read is a great program. I just think it’s a shame they don’t use a good program for the lower grades. It seems like a simple request…doesn’t it make sense that schools would want to use good research based effective materials? And it’s a total waste of tax dollars.

One more thing. The reading intervention teacher was new this year and has absolutely no background whatsoever with reading disabilities. I probably should have just pulled my son out of it.

That is what I did when I realized the resource teacher was completely incompent. You are right—bad instruction can be more than no help—it can actually be a hinderance. If he gets rewards with a good teacher next year, I’d keep him in it. Otherwise, take him out. At least the school won’t make what has become your job, harder.

And write the principal a nice letter suggesting research based intervention for early grades.

Beth

An add-on to Beth’s post:

Copy this article on research-based reading programs and give to him:

http://www.schwablearning.org/Articles.asp?r=318&g=2&d=5

Janis