are your child's/student's needs being met?

It may be helpful to name the state in which you are doing your research project; many of the answers to your questions will be very different depending upon the state in which children are classified for special education and depending upon the funding for services in that state.

1) Do you feel that IEP’s and 504’s are effective in your situation? Explain why you feel the way you do. No. I continue to see children with learning differences struggle and do poorly.
2) Do you feel that special needs children are getting their needs met in the inclusive classroom? Explain your yes or no answer.
No. How could they be? How could any teacher do all that is asked for all the many different children in the room?
3) Are your special needs students consistently getting low or failing grades? Do you see failure patterns? Absolutely.
4) Do you think teachers, in general, get the training they need to accomodate special needs students? Explain why you feel the way you do.
No. Most of my colleagues aren’t even sure what ‘learning difference’ means. They’ve never heard of the many different of learning differences that are now known to exist. They know no strategies with which to address these children’s needs.

5) What are the skills that your special needs child/student lacks the most? (organization, how to learn, notetaking, etc.) Give some detail about your answer.

I have many students with learning differences. Most are reading/writing based.

Thanks, Sara, for your input. It is helpful to me. If you know of anybody else who uses this system, I’d appreciate if you would gear them towards my questions. I will be using your input.

Thanks for the input. The state I am researching in is Arizona. Going from this, do you have some feedback for me? Thanks again.

Hi Lynette,

As a parent, I am grateful for the opportunity to share my experience and opinion with you in hopes of making things better.

1) I do not believe that my son’s IEP is effective in our situation for several reasons. a) The same 4 goals continue to appear on the IEP with no progress and no accountablity. b) The method that our district uses to report progress is ineffective. We use teacher observation (subjective data) as the means for reporting my son’s progress. I have stated that I found this to be inappropriate and asked the team to also look at scores from achievement tests (objective data, which is the law) I was dismissed. He remains in the teen to 20 percentiles in his areas where he is supposedly receiving remediation. Locally he is in the 1 thru 4 percentiles. We were also told in the last IEP meeting (planning for next year) that the expectations for learning disabled kids are not the same for the “normal” child. (I am having GREAT difficulty with this mentality).

2) I do not believe that my son’s needs are being met in the inclusive classroom. He continues to be pulled out for resources at the SPED teachers convenience (no consistent schedule) and occassional help at his desk. His gen. ed. teacher is highly irritated with the amount of attention that my son needs to complete work with the class. She has told us this. As you can gather by his local percentile scores (1-4th percentile) he is swimming with sharks in the inclusive classroom.

3) My son’s grades are consistently inconsistent. When I look through his weekly folder, I can tell when the SPED teacher was in the room assisting him and when he was left on his own. He consistenly ranges from A’s to F’s yet no one sees this as a problem except for his parents.

4) Here is my area. I REALLY want to believe that teachers are doing the best they can. I understand that there are so many different kinds of children in their classroom and realistically all of their needs will not be met. But here is an expample of why I question the teacher’s ability to handle special needs kids: Two months into the school year, my son’s teacher had a list of complaints for us; constantly has to have things repeated, does not listen to me, cannot memorize his muliplication tables, very anxious and nervous, etc……….. When she finished, I asked her if she had read his profile (2 pages written by the school pyschologist after his full case study was done) she had no idea what I was talking about. I told her that on the page she would find listed all of the things she had just told us, all pieces of my son’s learning disabilities. She has 2 children in her class with IEP’s and I was told that she does not have time to read everyone’s file. I have posted here on this very board asking the same question, do you read your disabled student’s records to get a picture of what you are dealing with? All of the responses I got to that post said the same thing, “I do not have time to read through every child’s folder.” Some said they wouldn’t read it because they do not want to taint their impression of the child, they would like to see for themselves. WHAT????? Like a physician, how could you possibly help a child without having any concrete information on them, without even opening their folder? I am completely stunned by this. This is unacceptable. I have also found out that many teachers do not know how to read the reports, what all of the testing actually means, etc. I have asked for information, help, strategies, etc about my son’s disabilites and have been told, each time, that I would have to seek help from the outside (pediatrician, private psychologist, tutoring) I went into this under the false impression that the school, as the professionals, would guide me through what needed to be done to help my son, but I was surely wrong. No one is accountable, the IEP is framework but does not promise anything and parents are on their own; good luck! I have also asked gen ed teachers how much training (including continuing education) that they receive for special needs kids. These answers shock me as well, they are truly not trained to appropriately educate special needs kids. I do not understand how educators believe that inclusion is successful under these circumstances. I pray for many changes in the future.

5) The skills that we have encountered that my son lacks is organization (can’t remember to bring things home for homework, then gets a deficiency) learning style is different and cannot follow fast language such a multi-step instructions, notetaking (since he cannot write a complete sentence yet, especially one dictated to him), cannot use resource material (dictionary, find info in a textbook, etc) and he definitely needs visual cues along with auditory in order to understand instructions.

Thank you for bearing with me. You, in turn, have helped me to organize my concerns and I appreciate that. Best of luck to you on your research project and I commend you on your interest and efforts to make things better for the most important piece of this puzzle, the kids.

My son now has neither an IEP nor a 504; when he was on an IEP, being pulled out a couple of times a week for reading was totally inadequate, and he missed important classwork that was not repeated for him. He is being privately tutored instead. Some children with special needs may be getting their needs met; the range of needs is huge…my son does not get low grades, but some do, but I think some regular ed. students also get failing grades No, teachers do not get training in accomodating students with LDs, nor do they(above gr.2-3) know how to teach reading. My son needs help learning how to write essays, etc. Our elementary school uses total inclusion, there is no resource room, and that places a huge burden on the teachers to be flexible, which most are not.

No, the student’s needs are not being met in an inclusion setting. I am a second-grade teacher with 2 IEP students this year. The resource room teacher is basically a schedule maker who directs several, untrained, young (18yrs. old) aides who come to my room chewing gum and buying lollipops for their students! The aides refuse to take my suggestions and are frequently absent. One of my IEP students is very young for his grade level and I feel was misdiagnosed when placed in first grade. Now I am told that I must not retain him since he is on an IEP. Is this true?

Lisa,

You should plot via graph your son’s scores over time and look for progress or lack of progress. Please read Pete Wright’s “Understanding Tests and Measurments” article. If your son has not progressed after the school multiple years you have a case to try to get them to pay for an outside program.

Helen

Lisa,
Your information sounds so familar!!! I totally understand what you are going through. It is so frustrating, isn’t it? I will meeting with the Director of Special Education next week regarding my sons 8th gr. year. Thanks for putting my thoughts in order too!!!!

Hi Helen,

Thank you for your response. I did just that. I have the book From Emotions to Advocacy and I love it! For our annual review I made the charts (I’m a graphic designer) and brought them in to prove the regression that my son’s pyschologist pointed out the previous week as we planned for the meeting. At first there was absolute silence. Everyone was shocked. But the SPED director jumped in with the same ol’ line of “these tests are not an accurate measure of him, blah, blah, blah and that the expectations for learning disabled children are not the same as for the average child” I called LDA (Learning Disablities Association) for their reaction to her comments. They said as long as the testing environments were the same for all test (accomodations, etc were met) then it is an accurate picture of him but they had no advice as to how to get the school to accept them as objective data. Our school likes to use the teacher observation as their data which is truly subjective, the law requires objective to prove regression. I don’t know where to go from here. As I have said in other posts on this subject it just baffles me how the school can use these tests scores to boast how wonderful their schools are, but try to use it as a measure of your individual child’s progress (or lack of) and its a whole nother story. My child needs more than what they have given him and there’s proof in the pudding. Any advice on how to get them to take these scores seriously? If they don’t hold weight, like school says when the results are poor, then why bother with them at all?

A have just stumbled onto this website while surfing the area of special needs. I am currently a student teacher struggling with an assignment designed to assist me in teaching children with learning difficulties in an inclusive classroom. I cannot emphasise enough the value of this site has been for me. Keep up the great flow of information so that people like me can learn to cater for learning difficulites in the classroom

Thanks for your input, Lisa. From reading the message board several times, I thought I might get a response from you, as you are actively involved. I really appreciate your help and I wish I could do something to make things easier for you and your son. Remember, he is lucky he has you, his FIRST and FOREVER teacher.

Lynette

I think the argument against retention of kids on an IEP is that they learn differently and thus would not necessarily benefit from repeating the same material. However, if you feel the child is young for his age that is a different sort of issue.

Beth

1. I have 2 special needs boys and have experience in 2 different states. In the ND school we were in I would say the answer is no. The reason for this is the IEP goals were alway vague with no real way to see if the goals were met. Neither son progressed at an acceptable rate. The school here in illinois has been better in that the goals are measurable and achievable. If they have difficulty meeting anyone goal it is discussed with me and options looked at.

2. The answer to this one depends on the teacher. In the ND schools all children were included at least 80 percent of the day. Some of the teachers were great at accomodating, accepting, and reaching the child, others were horrible. 1 so bad my son still has terrible memories of the class and cringes at the mention of the teachers name or even the grade it happened. Here in Il they do have individual classes available for the LD students, I feel this has been a better fit. In middle school my son took a combination of LD classes and regular. The regular teachers have a 50/50 split some were good and some just let him go. My youngest son is in a self contained LD class that is included for Science, Social Studies, and specials. The teachers this year have been great with accomodating, accepting, and helping facilitate learning.

3. My oldest son always seems to do very poorly in the 2nd and 4th grading periods. He also consitintly does poor in reading and spelling. It is a pattern I can trace back to 1st grade. My youngest son who falls on the autism spectrum is very good at being inconsitant so there is no pattern.

4. I feel that most general education teacher do not get the training they need to deal with special needs students. I have had some of them tell this directly to me. My oldest sons 6th grade teacher was convinced if you could read a childs writing that child did NOT have a disability and was just lazy. I attributed her opinion to lack of training.

5. Both of my boys have poor organizational skills, poor language skills, and are poor readers.

Lynette,
Bless you and your kind a million times for caring and taking action on your teaching strategies for our children. Oh how I wish?

1) Do you feel that IEP’s and 504’s are effective in your situation? Explain why you feel the way you do.
1. It seems where my 11 yr. old son is concerned, just because it is written in the IEP does not mean it always gets followed. It appears that the modifications have to be made very plain in order to be followed. My child is to be supplied notes for studying for test in social studies. He does not get notes from the teacher. I work on his poorly written notes as best I can (sometimes over an hour) to type up a practice test for him. Sometimes children have several teachers, so teachers have several children, do they have time to read the modifications? Who knows?

2) Do you feel that special needs children are getting their needs met in the inclusive classroom? Explain your yes or no answer.
In the school he attends now no one comes to assist him in the room?My son will leave the room and go to sp. Ed. for language and spelling only. He has options to go to CMC. His modifications in any class is more time to answer questions, more time on test, limited note taking, and reduced (some what) questions or problems. When he is in groups his peers do not give him time to answer questions. They say things they should not and this leads to angry tears for my son. He says he hates history, although there are some hands on teaching, the dates and other information are hard to remember because it is not taught with pictures and other hands on methods. Most of the hands on stuff is with a poster project from time to time and a tobacco field projects and plantations. In history there is usually no homework until the notes for the test.He does have reading and math homework from time to time.

3) Are your special needs students consistently getting low or failing grades? Do you see failure patterns?
If I did not help him with social studies, he would get bad grades. I do not like the notes being sent home one day before the test. I would appreciate them at least three days to study a small quantity at a time instead of cramming the night before. My son is an honor roll student, but misunderstands directions quite often and worries a lot because of this, sometimes he is reduced to to tears.

4) Do you think teachers, in general, get the training they need to accomodate special needs students? Explain why you feel the way you do.
I know for a fact teachers do not get the training they need for teaching or recognizing a student that show characteristics of children with learning differences. They are not taught anything in college because it is not required… I have asked?I have some friends who are teachers. In addition, I put out a teacher questionnaire and collected information for a proposal essay I just completed. It wasn?t until a couple of years ago did I become aware of the magnitude of this problem. I?ve always known of the destructiveness of LD toward self-esteem because I?m dyslexic and ADHD and received help from one teacher that I can remember who used my kind of learning in her strategies and I made straight A?s in her class. The only time I made and ?A?. Imagine where I might have gone with my life (I?m 45 yrs. old now) if I?d had more teachers like her and you, teaching me.
5) What are the skills that your special needs child/student lacks the most? (organization, how to learn, notetaking, etc.) Give some detail about your answer.
My child has a High order written and expressive disorder. He misunderstands directions and does not know how to organize the words to ask for help. Although this is worse at the beginning of the school year when everything is new, he is better at the end of a school year. He can not put words on paper, but if given time he can think up ideas, especially if he thinks its for fun, kind of a no pressure situation. He has made math recognition on the state required TAAS test when he was in 3rd and 4th grade. Even his math is better when no timed pressure is on. He takes a long time to copy notes from overhead. Most dyslexics have trouble finding their place every time they have to look down to write and look up to read this takes a long time. This repetitiveness is tiring, and as a result their hand-writing gets more unreadable. He cannot follow multitask directions.

Thanks for asking, hope this wasn?t too long. Bless you again.

Thank you Shannon for your input. It was so honest and heartfelt and it will help me a great deal. Good luck to you and your son!!

Lynette

Thank you for your input. It is helpful to me for my own performance in the classroom. I appreciate your candidness.

Lynette