dealing with public school nonsense

I think I can explain it but I certainly can’t justify it. I tell my students that history is a powerful explanatory school but that it justifies nothing.

The history of what you’re speaking to is a fairly recent one. Only a few decades ago, few people in our country went to high school. Even fewer went to college. During the Depression, most kids started to go to high school and in the 1940s we made high school mandatory. After World War II, our government offered free college educations to returning GIs and for the first time in our history, the average person could afford college.

All that was only 60 - 70 years ago. Prior to World War II, if you could afford it, you could go to college anywhere you wanted… so long as you could pay for it. There simply were not “entrance requirements” to most colleges as so few people went to them.

That had to change when, after World War II, more and more people wanted to go to college. Colleges were able for the first time in history to “pick and choose” from among many interested applicants.

The sad reality is that - especially for “name-brand” colleges - there are more people interested in attending them than there are spaces. So admission to college is now competitive.

The big problem is that colleges look to high schools to do the real “weeding out” for them. High schools must submit their total grade point average - ALL students’ grades averaged together to produce a giant GPA. The lower that GPA is, the better the top students in that high school look.

So those very schools we look to as taxpayers to support our children are really supporting our colleges. Our schools can not allow every child to be successful because if they did, the colleges would not hold that school in good regard. If all their students were successful, the colleges would, they think, have no way to tell what students to accept or reject.

The first students sadly to be “weeded out” are children with learning differences. I certainly agree that all children, especially those with any kind of learning difference, should be supplied with any support they need to be successful but that sadly doesn’t seem to be a part of our society or our schools.

Sara,

I never considered high schools not wanting kids to go to college. That is a very interesting point of view. Of course if they can keep our kids in sped classes their whole life and get them out of high school with the abilities of a 9th grader of course they can’t go any further.

I don’t think it’s quite that high schools don’t want kids to go to college. It’s rather that high schools first responsibility is to the colleges not to the students or to the community. It’s a high school’s first responsibility to “weed out” or sort students into catagories. Without high schools to sort the students, how would colleges know who to choose from among the many thousands of applicants they get? High schools really do the colleges dirty work.

High schools act as funnels for colleges. School is like a pyramid. It’s wide at the bottom when we put our children in preschools. Preschools have no tests or grades. After that, it gets narrower every year.

Every caring parent wants their child to be successful in school. Schools basically tell us that not every child can be successful in school. It puts parents and schools at odds with each other.

If we had the money, we would have my son on private placement.
It’s ridiculous how much they try to get away with!!
How come we parents should have to deal with special needs and the school’s ignorance as well? We live in a very nice town and I have been fighting to keep my son on the IEP since kindergarten!!

Q- Why shouldn’t every child have the opportunity to suceed with additional support and go to the college of their choice??

A1- “Because the Laws dont mandate additional support for non- disabled children”

A2- What a great IDEA!! Personally im all for it, if you want to put every child in this building on an IEP thats just fine with me- I would love to meet with you at a later date to discuss it further. But right now were here to talk about my child, and the law does mandate that we provide him with additional support to meet his needs, and his first need is________________”

Q- Why should only the VERY needy kids get support and not the others?

A1- because thats who the law mandates we serve.

A2- I think its very admerable of you to want to expand the laws to cover other children, but my childs IEP meeting isnt the place to do it, Im sure these people can help you though, they have been very helpfull to me (hand them the telephone number to the federal department of education and suggest they call). Now where were we? oh yes my childs second need is_________________.

At the end of the meeting be sure to set up a date to discuss putting all children on IEPS and ask the offending teacher if she would like you start a petition to send to the federal depatment of ed stateing HER NAME and HER concerns at the top- offer to take it all over town for her.

Anyone out there have any answers??

What’s just as frustrating is having a LD child with an IEP who is in a special ed class with children who are far worse off than he. It makes me feel really bad that he’s even in their because I know there are so many other children in our schools that are not being helped and again, are far worse off. Because I advocate for my child and “push” for his services - he gets them.