Tutor Provided by School

First, he shouldn’t be receiving services unless he is identified and has an IEP. This is illegal. Second, request testing through the local school district. Request a comprehensive evaluation. You will need to be the legal guardian to do this. If he needs 75% of his day in services, then he will qualify for something. Why she doesn’t think he will have a descrepancy is way over my head. Many schools don’t do formalized testing on very young children because for obvious reasons the results are not as accurate. Good luck

Thanks Ashley,
He did have what they called a comprehensive evaluation done in 00 which was mostly subjective with a few smaller tests.They then put him on an IEP at that time for speech. They later expanded the IEP the following year (prior to his placement with me) to include academic concerns.
Your comment about the young children sparked a thought in my mind. I don’t think I was taking that thought into consideration before.
Thanks for your help,
MO

This subject really gets to me. My daughter is ADHD and a remediated moderate dyslexic who just completed third grade and is really starting to flourish/hit her stride now. Her success is due to we, her parents researching this stuff and advocating for her, fabulous teachers at her school, cooperation from the school and private tutoring. It has not always been easy, but the results have been worth it.

If I were you, this would be my action plan to get started:

1) Continue securing the testing you already have in place. You need to identify specifically what that child needs - whether the school does it, you go to a developmental pediatrician, etc. Somehow, I suspect you’ll find a way. Ultimately, a full battery of tests should be done and others here may be able to suggest the types of tests (I can recall motor skills, IQ, and academics like reading and math performance only). Something is going on with him and “more of the same” help that he is getting now at school isn’t making a positive difference so comprehensive testing and counsel should give you that. Keep all these test results filed in a book and get a notebook for yourself so that you can take notes throughout your “journey” with him. You may have a conversation with a professional this month, but not entirely absorb/process it for a while and the notes helped me tremendously to eventually understand it all.

2) If he is still not reading in 3rd grade, there is a problem. Is there a university-based reading clinic near you? They can do the tests to identify why he is not reading and can tutor him. Fees are generally based on a sliding scale, but there is sometimes a waiting list, so research it an secure an appointment sooner versus later. I firmly believe that the correct help is the key, not just what is available from the school.

3) Check out the International Dyslexia web site. You can get a list of tutor contacts in your area. You might find one that is inexpensive. These tutors are often experienced special ed professionals who will also be able to give you opinions on test results, other contacts, suggestions, etc. and it is invaluable to get an opinion outside of your school district. While I’ve heard that Reading Reflex is great, you are right in that it is a delicate balance - what is mom’s role versus what is best left to the school, tutor, etc. and that varies with each parent/child relationship.

Welcome to the wild wacky frustrating world of special ed. I’m a paranoid parent who knows that it took a community of people to help my daughter be as successful as she is now. But, I felt that we, her parents were her “case managers” seeking and sorting thru sometimes conflicting opinions from the professionals/schools and then advocating for what we thought was right for her. So, yup, again you are right on track about advocates, expertise of special ed professionals, etc. Not all of them are bad, but not all of them are good or great either. You will find some gems of people and their expertise along the way. But start researching this stuff, getting professional opinions outside the school and continue advocating for him. Sorry so long. Good luck.

Except - going into 3rd grade, he is 7 or 8. Many times, kids struggle before 3rd grade, but sometimes the school can’t do anything until late 2nd or 3rd grade until that statistical discrepency appears depending on which state you live in. So the timing is right to act on this stuff now.

I wish the schools had more funding, training and personnel to act on the fact that blasting kids with the correctly identified early intervention can help them so much versus waiting for them to fail enough to do something marginal about it. The amount/quality of available help varies by school district to complicate things.

OK, enough cynicism from me for the day. Apologies to all the hard-working, caring and talented special ed professionals I might have offended.

It is not illegal for the school to provide remediation for students who are not in special ed. Regular Education is also responsible for providing a continuum of services for students- this is partly what Title 1/Chapter 1 money is for. The protocol for and level of intensity of these services varies considerably from district to district but there is nothing illegal about it.

Other than that I agree with your thoughts:)

Robin

Each child in this country is guaranteed a ‘free and appropriate education’ in the least restrictive environment that is in the best interest of the child. If your child is not reading or learning as you would expect then the school MUST provide whatever it is that he needs (including a one on one tutor!) You may also (at the school’s expense) have an outside independent educational evaluation done to compare with the one that they may do and you may also have an independent psychological eval done, again at the school’s expense. They are not allowed to mention money at an IEP meeting and your job is to advocate for your child and not to be concerned with the source of the funds—this is the purpose of the guarantee of a ‘free and appropriate education’. My daughter suffered greatly and wound up in a deep depression by the time she was in high school because she was not being taught in a way that worked with her learning style. There is only so long that you can try to jam a square peg in a round hole before damage occurs. It took me years and years and digging and researching to find out what I now know. Sadly, my daughter’s education was a cause of great pain to her. What took me years to compile, to be able to help her was too late and the damage was done. I learned, too late, what she was entitled to but I would love to share it with anyone who has a young child and is beginning this journey in education. Very sadly after 13 years of such great struggle she was killed by a drunk driver 7 weeks before her high school graduation. Her school time was so painful that, had she lived, she did not even want to attend the event. Ironically, I was invited to accept her diploma, truly knowing what this piece of paper had cost her. I have a website in her memory to help others to advocate for their young children. http://www.karasway.org/ For a long time I believed that the Special Ed. dept. knew better than I what she needed. Now I know that they don’t have all of the answers and that I knew my child and what she needed better than they did. I hope you have success on your journey and that your son’s spirit and hopes can be protected.

The heck with tutoring AFTER school. Insist that it be done during school. Either they find the right way to help him with the staff they have, otherwise they need to bring someone in who can do the job. Why should that child have to put in extra hours while all of his friends are outside playing after school just because he did not get what he needed on the school’s clock. Please don’t put that child through that punishment if you don’t have to. It’s worth a shot asking, right? What am I thinking, asking won’t work, you’ll have to demand it.

Great advise, D, sounds like you been ithrough the university of experiencial knowledge.

Kara’s Mom- I am so sorry for your loss, my heart is with you.I have experienced death among family and friends of all different ages..and the death of a 19 year old that I knew was the hardest for me to deal with.. and still is.
I also know the hurt and emotions that come from a child being damaged emotionally by the school. I have a 9th grade son whom I have advocated for for quite some time…. and we are finally making progress.
I get so tired of fighting and I guess I needed the pep talk… as well as confirmation that I am on the right path for my nephew.
This board and your help is a Godsend for me.
MO.

part of the problem is the accuracy of the tests for very young children. Caution must be made in interpreting a learning disability, it isn’t that services aren’t warranted or needed or do we want kids to fail first. We, like many professions, have guidelines of operation. No offense taken!

Of course regular education provides remediation in many forms, but my understanding was that the child was receiving SPED services, and that would be illegal without an IEP, in any state.

I find your response very interesting and something that we in the SPED field confront on a daily basis. Here is the scenario - SPED kid whose parents want him educated with his peers, skill far below peers, remediation without direct instruction is difficult. Result: if child is to remain with peers then he/she will have to put in extra time to grasp concepts. It takes most LD students much more attempts to acquire information especially when prerequisite skills are not present. End product - child suffers, parents mad due to lack of progress, teacher bald from pulling hair out trying to make everyone happy. Welcome to my world!

I agree. I often tell my daughter you have to work harder than everyone else to achieve the same (or less). It stinks, it’s not fair, but it’s Reality - get over it and get on w/it.

I don’t understand this part of the whole thing. All the advice that you read from professional sources stress intervening and diagnosing as early as possible.

Warning signs show up as early as Kindergarten and 1st grade yet they tell us its too early. My son who just finished 1st grade who struggled thorugh K and 1st, had Title 1 for reading and does not grasp math concepts does not want to go back to school in the fall because he says its to hard.

I know he is following in his brothers footsteps (dyslexia and CAPD), I learned from living through it with the older one. But, in order to have the school test him, I have to wait until he struggles and fails in 2nd grade. Tears, frustration and another child who needs private counselling in order to make it through the school day because no one wants to take his issues seriously until he is at the breaking point.

Oh, and I forgot that patronizing statement of reassurance we get from the school, “Mom, you know your child best and we value parental input and suggestions” when in reality the attitude behind closed doors is Mom is a hysterical nut and expects us to do the impossible while she does nothing.

I guess I should have prefaced my comment with my situation and why I feel this way.

We cannot get our son out of the general education classroom for the specialized instruction that he needs. Our school follows the full-inclusion model and our brilliant school board believes in grouping children of all abilities within each classroom.

Oh, except for the gifted in math, who will receive their supplemental instruction, during the school, day because the gen. curriculum does not meet their accellerated needs (this was the final memo of the last school year that came home).

So, I do live in your world, everyday.

n/t

When I said get over it - I meant I tell my daughter that she has to “get over” the fact that she has to work harder than everyone else, that it will take her 2x as long to do the same report, etc. I also use it to encourage her use of technology so she can see the difference between 2-3 hours writing (and fatigue) v. 1 hr typing.

Even though the tests are normed as low as preschool it does not mean that a discrepency between capacity and performance can be found- which is the definition of LD under the law.

In addition, young children develop cognitively with such speed and variability that the range of “average” is huge- and if you test an individual child three months later their profile may be completely different. Cognitive (IQ) testing is just not accurate with very young children over the long haul- though some instruments are better than others. The snapshot that you get of a child will change rapidly just because of normal developmental changes. Evaluators know this- the law is not up to speed with it. The definition of LD under IDEA is not responsive to what we know about assessing young children. Schools- regardless of where they are and how effective they are at serving their K-3 students- have to follow the law. The odds of finding LD under the law with this population are very small. All the expert opinions in the world in independant evals don’t change this.

Robin

Ah yes, the fact that our kids have to work harder and at times when other kids don’t have to. We have to contend with that too. I have told him that life isn’t fair. I hear him telling his younger brother that too!!!

I also think there is a limit to what you can expect—so I modify things if the time/frustration demands are too great. For example, I found pictures on the web to illustrate his time line of a famous African American last year. He cut them out and pasted them. Afterall, the assignment said illustrated…..it didn’t say by who.

But the truth of the matter is no school based program could remediate my son completely—I am having a hard enough time using private tutors!!!

Beth

How do educators deal with a young child that is already at risk? At risk meaning late speech development, siblings/family members with LD issues. The child may have already recieved intevention such as a special day class or speech therapy. What about putting in goals into the IEP such as phonemic awareness, sound symbol association. Would this speed the process without waiting for failure?

>SPED kid whose parents want him educated with his peers, skill far below peers, remediation without direct instruction is difficult. Result: if child is to remain with peers then he/she will have to put in extra time to grasp concepts. <

This is true if you expect them to learn with in the traditional group setting, not as true with 1:1 learning. The real aswer is to bring in specialized tutors to work 1:1 during the day and then let them do repeated attempts (also known as practice) for homework. My childs RSP group had 9-13 kids. He learned nothing during that hour of “specialized instruction” during the day, how would he learn with an additional hour of the same?

Well, I suppose we are one of the “lucky ones”. My daughter was found to have a significant discrepancy between her superior IQ and her academic achievements at the age of almost 6 to 6yrs old. It is evident if you spend a few minutes with her, and ask this bright little girl things like her age and her last name, the names of the numbers and letters. Kids absolutely develope at different rates, but the signs of learning difficulties can be there early. I firs saw something at the age of 4, when my daughter could not provide the word for thinks she knew, for example. We are fortunate in a big way, that we have worked with the school and they have come into the light, and are providing services for her. Her diagnosis is dyslexia, and she will begin with Oton in the resource room in the fall, when she enters first grade. Hopefully, interventions at this young age will make all the difference for her.
Maybe because this age group presents with specific concerns, special allowances should be made, the “discrepancy formula” should not hold to this age group, some other standard would be better. This is the time frame when appropriate interventions are vital and can alter the course of a childs learning, or learning difficulties as it may be. Catch them at this age and there will be less kids in the special ed system over time, less battered self esteem.
Ask these mom’s of LD kids, most will say they saw the red flags early. There must be some sort of reliable way to come up with criteria to catch these kids.
Maybe someday………..

I guess this is the question—are schools obligated to provide one on one tutoring? And what should be the standard be which they judge when it is necessary? All kids learn better this way–one of the big arguments homeschoolers make. Even specialized schools for LD kids don’t provide this. I have talked to several—one was 1-6 and another was 1-12.

Beth

Beth , we got one to one, daily for 45 minutes for our son using Wilson. Still, it took almost two months before it was really happening daily and one to one (he will go some days alone, some days with another boy). It was never really daily since they were always some distractions. And, the Wilson was not really implemented fully, but still it was the best year in terms of remediation. Unfortunately, all this came too late….

It was a lot of service to get from public school, but I would say- we got this when our son was in 4th grade, reading ~ at the 2nd grade level with fluency at 1.8 grade level. I suppose, if we when the due process route we would get any placement we had wished for. We decided to give the school one more chance (although I hardly believe it would fly), but our son was so depressed that I doubt he could survive a school change. He will go to private LD school starting this year and I certainly hope he will get some appropriate help. I still have a lot of concerns (he will need to commute 1 hour each way) but I am positive this is better than his previous placement. Unfortunately, I had learned over the last year, that the places that might really be good for him would require him to be a boarding student; I know this is not for him.

Ashley,

what would you think the solution is? Why do we all have to be pulling our hairs out? I think in my school’s case, we don’t have enough SPED resources. Our poor SPED teacher is the only one in a school of 800 kids, grades K-3. There are some para’s, 1 SLP and a resource teacher for what they call the mentally challenged. (and we live in one of the wealthiest districts in the state).

Needless to say, we don’t get hardly any services. I think my child needs more than what the school would have been able to provide in the best of worlds, but I’m upset because what they do provide is absolutely worthless- it’s actually more detrimental than help.

Therefore, we end up paying over $5K a year on various private remediation. I work a good 10hr stressful day and then am faced with dinner, homework and 1hr of MTC or whatever is the program de jour. Heaven forbid if we have an activity that night. I am just flat our tired.

This is my world - can I trade with you?

You can suspect things, but you often can’t be sure, at an age when kids are developing very fast. This is especially true when the difficulties are subtle. So kids with really bad disabilities get help early, while kids with minor probelms, who would respond best to help and could be remediated most easily at an early age, are the ones who are left out.
If you set the screen too fine you end up with half the school being considered LD, which cannot possibly be true (if 50% of the general population fits a category, that category is *normal*) But if you set the screen too wide open, you catch nobody and are left with all the parents fighting for new testing and services and all the rest of it.
The discrepancy formula is a very poor definition and a political formula; it should have been replaced with something more effective over a decade ago. But it is written in law which makes it hard to move. And what confuses me the most is that many parents support this formula and are fighting to keep it — I suppose if you’ve won under the old formula you fear either losing or having to start over under another system, reasonable fears considering many people’s experiences.

Educational/psychological testing is like medical testing; unfortunately there is no single easy test and there are no simple 1-2-3 results. People want to have a nice simple connection, a rash on your arm means you have this disease and that medicine will cure you, or a score of 25 on this test means you have that LD and this program will cure you. But it doesn’t work that way; it’s a detective story with hundreds of clues, half of them misleading, and you have to work through a forest of misdirection to know what is going on; and then you have to be an experimental scientist and try a number of different approaches until one of them hits on what is needed. This is why you need intelligent and experienced human teachers and can’t just plunk kids in front of a computer and have them educated robotically.

Some kids are very hard to understand and to reach, and on the other hand some teachers and school personnel are ignorant and incompetent; it’s not always easy to tell what is going on.

I prefer to start with a clean slate and just do the best I can to teach the kid. Find out what he knows and can do, and the easiest way to do that is to ask him to do it; and then find what he needs to know; and try to find a way to get it across to him. This takes time, effort, creativity, patience, and continual reading and experimenting to find what will work this time.
Unfortunately this is not cheap, and school boards are generally not willing to pay for the kind of individual evaluation and tutoring some kids need. So you get compromises that may or may not do any good.

In an ideal system, first of all elementary teachers would be well-educated in the effective methods of teaching reading and math (unfortunately now this is definitely not the case; most teachers are taught to use the worst and most ineffective reading programs in existence, and most new teachers have a poor general education). If the standards for teacher education and certification were changed — not raised to even more years of wasted time, but *changed* to be more effective and less focused on unproven theories and game-playing — then more children could learn in the general classroom and there would be far less demand on special education — and then special ed teachers could actually do their jobs with the kids who really need extra help.

In an ideal system, kids would be sent for help when they showed a need for help, not when they fit into a legislative pigeonhole.
There is one special ed teacher who posts here whose school apparently follows this common-sense and radical policy.

As parents, you can pressure your school boards and state boards of education to make changes, to adopt real reading programs instead of hope-and-guess, to allow teachers and special-ed teachers to make referrals without long legal battles, and to focus on teaching something instead of spending time and effort and money on lawyers and testing.

We all have some things that are hard for us and some easy. I read well but writing was extremely difficult until I was in high school. I’m good at school but my left eye is non-functional due to deliberately untreated amblyopia, and I’m a dud at all team sports and was a social isolate, still a loner. Being good at school doesn’t make life easy or fair for you, either.
The social stress on not only school, but high grades, all A’s, and the perfect child, is just too much for anyone. I hope you are coming down hard on the school when they put impossible stresses on kids, not just yours, but all kids. The rates of childhood depression and teen trouble tell us that something is very wrong.
And do encourage your child not just to work harder than others on weak areas, but to notice their skills and abilities where they are faster and better than other people who have to work harder out of the classroom.

The answer -I think- is to focus on good teaching with young children rather than more and more testing to capture that elusive eligibility label- as Victoria points out. We know so much more about what constitutes effective instruction in the early grades.

That isn’t to say that assessment isn’t valuable- there is a lot to learn about young children in the eval process that can be hugely important and helpful to teachers, especially with at risk kiddoes. But good teaching should not be dependant on special education eligibility or an IEP. Robin- that is the real answer to the at risk question. Those things- sound symbol awareness and phonemic awareness amoung other things- should just be systematically taught.

“Other one” Robin:)

As a parent it is very frustrating that you have to push for testing for a diagnosis, that’s nec. for services, and then of course schools are quite vague about progress. Not everyone can afford private tutoring and therapies. One of my pet peeves is how schools like our suburban elementary have expanded their services to include social skills training, anger management, lunch groups, behavior consultation while leaving the school with one reading teacher and one special ed. teacher to consult for all the kids who are having trouble learning to read. The regular ed. teachers now have to spread themselves even thinner; I for one would have given up conflict management in 3rd grade to have my son learn to read at school instead of in private tutoring.

We DON’T have any areas where we are faster and better than others outside of academics. She’s a child who, “in her own mind” is on her way to being an Olympic soccer player, who is probably a little below average when compared to her peers She is CONVINCED she is going to be a star some day.

My concern is that my daughter is the one pushing for the A’s all the time (she scores extremely high in perserverance) and I’m the one saying, “well you know, honey, sooner or later you going to hit something and you might make a bad grade…” and she looks at me like I’m from another planet. Usually, her response is “You just don’t get it do you, Mom”.

My tutor tells me she has the personality that is “at risk” for an eating disorder. Oh great, not that I don’t have enough on my plate…

I guess I should be grateful that she’s doing well, but I keep waiting for the bottom to drop out, like say, when she gets to middle school.

We have one sp. ed teacher and 1600 students!!!!

Beth

See, I think that is a real problem. I’ve come down hard on our school in my posts (venting my frustrations), but I think our SPED teacher is fairly knowledgeable and really wants to help. She doesn’t really understand my dd’s issues - but only because she doesn’t work with her day to day and only has limited time and resources to be able to provide anything. So we get the generic cookie cutter IEP and plan of attack.

I do have issue with our principle - I have trouble even being in the same room with her. Our IEP mtgs go much better when she is not there. I’m really surprised she hasn’t had a law suit slapped on her.

I’ll tell you, I couldn’t agree more. My daughter has learning difficulties, but I can say withou any hesitation that none of the kids in her regular kindergarten class were prepared for first grade or to begin to read. My son, who is older, had a different K teacher. The difference in the teaching and learning experience was amazing, from teacher to teacher. I think that there will be many kids stuggling to read next year, simply because of instrucion, not because of learning difficulties. I think we see more kids classified for services directly because of ineffective teaching methods.
My neice in currenlty in college for teaching, all I can say is that if many colleges are like hers, change is NOT on the horizon. I believe that change should start at the college level, when teachers are being taught how to teach reading ect. What went so wrong here?????

I’m sorry- I think this is insane. When I was doing Resource Room in elementary I was responsible for 2 grade levels- 5/6- and had a caseload of 12-25. When I had 12-15 we provided part of that mainstream continuum of service that I keep harping about. When I had 20- we did what we could after scheduling the IEP services. I cannot conceive of working in a situation like this- and would likely have left SPED a lot sooner than I did if I had to. You folks south of the Mason Dixon line need to know that by and large when families move north- SPED folks are astonished by both the level of bureaucracy(sp?) that your districts create as well as the reams of meaningless paperwork that is generated- checklist upon checklist… As a parent I would be advocating at a far different level than individual schools for changes… Your bureaucracy creates many of the problems you face.

Sorry Beth- this isn’t personal- but 1/1600 is a sin- and makes me angry. That poor teacher- and those poor kids.

Robin

I am in an upper-middle class suburb of Massachusetts and our elementary school (400+) has one special ed. teacher and one reading teacher…they use full inclusion. Many families use private tutors.

How can they POSSIBLY even pay lip service to meeting the needs of the children with that kind of ratio?

Karen

But what is her case load? I don’t know how many children there are per SPED teacher in our (also west of Boston suburban) school system. But I know that there are several self contained classrooms throughout the system, and there is at LEAST one SPED teacher per grade, depending on the children on IEP’s.

Reading specialists are a whole different group. There are a number of them, and they work with MANY children who are not on IEP’s. In fact, the remedial reading program is specifically for children who are NOT on ed plans.

I believe there were 5 or 6 children on IEP’s in my son’s 5th grade inclusion classroom. There was a SPED teacher with the class through all academic subjects. She used “specials” periods for pull outs in the resource room. There was one other 5th grade class with a full day SPED teacher, and another with a half day SPED teacher. All of these inclusion classrooms also have an aide for at least part of the day.

The SPED staff seems pretty fluid. (as it should be) how many SPED teachers there are per grade is very much dependent on the case load for that year. My son was take off his IEP at the end of 2nd grade, which turned out to be a big mistake. After testing during the summer between 3rd & 4th, we learned about his NLD, and he was placed back on an IEP right after the school year started. They actually pulled in an excellent SPED teacher who does long-term SPED sub work for the school system. She worked half days in his class room for the full year. Since she was there, and she had a very light case load, she worked with many other children in the class as needed.

We had one bad SPED teacher in second grade, (funnily enough, his contract was not renewed the following year) but for the most part our SPED teachers have been really excellent.

Karen

It is insane. And I do not take it personally. I have only lived in Florida for three years. We started in a surburban Buffalo school district and it is light years from what we’ve experienced here.

We have a good teacher for resource now but she has told me that she had much more support when she worked in another district in the state. She has hinted, as much as she can, that things need to change for her to be effective.

I must say I don’t have any sense of how to make change here. It is a huge bureaucracy. There are over 200,000 students in the school district and people pouring in, from other countries mainly, all the time. We have a county based system school system.

I lived in NY prior to moving here and I have never seen bureaucracy like there is in Florida. And it is not only the school district–try getting a driver’s license.

Any ideas?

Beth

Our system is total inclusion, no resource rooms in K-5, so yes the sped. teacher has a big careload and does all the testing, too, including the kids in our town who are in private school who want public school evals.

My older son went to a NW FL elementary school for 5 mos back in ‘96, it was such a joke. He had included in his classroom a hearing impaired former crack baby who very obviously needed more assistance than he was given (not a behavior problem, he just sat) as well as another kid who my own son dxed as adhd, he ran circles around the room ( his mom said the teacher gave her kid adhd), there was no reading teacher (the school couldn’t afford one).

On top of which I was told my son was ‘on grade level’. This was Jan. to May of 96, my son was a first grader. We had just moved from TX where he had been dxed add/inattentive and mild/mod capd. (by the mil. hospital Oct/Nov ‘95) and was in reading class during the first semester, he was pretty close to failing. Honestly, my son probably should have been retained in first grade and he might have been if we had stayed in TX.

We then moved to VA where his real education began. A year and a half in TX and 5 mos in FL did nothing for him. It’s no wonder that in 4th grade he was 2 yrs behind. I won’t go back to either Fl or Tx.

We are in the process of extending to a 4th year in Germany in order to get a good assignment in VA. My son has done so well in the DODDS environment I absolutely dread the idea of bringing him back to a stateside high school.

Although Tampa is offered as an assignment and it would be so nice to live near the beach and relatives and all (my husband and I call the Gulf Coast home) I refuse to agree because of the FL schools. Obviously they haven’t improved in the last 6 years.

Amy,

You might check into private schools there, if Tampa is good in other ways. I know Socks has found a great school in FL for her boys. She might even live in Tampa—not positive.

You don’t have to convince me! The only thing I can say is that I have found some very skilled people privately.

Beth

The trouble with a school system deciding that they “don’t use” resource rooms or self-contained classrooms, or “only” use one specific model is that that’s not what IDEA is all about, and it takes the “individual” out of IEP.

By law, an IEP must be developed based on the child’s NEEDS. Then the team looks at how those needs can be met. It is impossible to meet the needs of ALL children with any one model. IMO, a school district that says they don’t offer this that or the other is setting themselves up for law suits and out of district placements when parents wise up and realized how far out of compliance the school district is. In the long run, if parents are educated, it’s less expensive to do the job right in-district, than to pay for all these kids to be in private LD schools.

Karen

How can they get away with this; 1 Spec. Ed. teacher to 1600? If the state and Feds who are suppose to be watching over would look at the statistics you would think they would realize that there must be at least 100 students with disabilites at the schoo1. If a school can get away with that they can get away with anything.

Helen

My son was getting better services (actual reading remeditation) before we went through all of the testing and identfication.

When he was struggling in 1st and the beginning of 2nd, he had 1:1 AND small group (Title I) with an actual reading specialist.

After special ed took over (after I.D. in mid-2nd grade) it all went to hell (pardon my language).

My youngest (going into 2nd) is struggling with reading and math as well. He is getting this Title I service that I describe with the reading specialist. Dare I go and have him tested and blow all of the help he is actually receiving by not being identified. I’m just about positive that he is dyslexic and has CAPD, but getting the I.D. at school actually means he loses out.

So, how goofey is this situation? (although I’m sure many of you have experienced the same thing).

Our entire system only has a very few students in out-of-district placements and they are VERY multiply handicapped students, not LD. I think most parents like inclusion, since most elementary classes are small(under20).

I think you are addressing my post regarding 1 sp. ed teacher to 1600 students. I think LD is grossly underdiagnosed at this school plus the teacher and her one aide have way too many students the rest of the time. When my son started in resource room in first grade, there were only 8 kids and two teachers. I was surprised to find out she was the only teacher. The load got much higher last year (I heard 18 in one group)—which I suspect is due to more accurate diagnosis. The new resource teacher is much better and may be bringing more kids into it, but as a result noone gets enough attention.

I was trying to figure out what was legally allowable but didn’t get very far. It certainly is far from ideal.

Beth

Very often medicine is a detective story as well. I think in medicine there is more emphasis on objective data. Doctors go to school for so long so that they can learn numerous algorithims to diagnose various diseases x + z + y = either a or b more tests are done to differentiate a from b. There is a some art to it but from what I have seen the with the best doctors it is mostly science. If the tests you have done so far do not yield an answer you don’t guess. You do more tests and more tests until the answer is there before you. Guesses and assumptions can lead to misdiagnosis, mistreatment and even death. This why there is so much specialization the amount of knowledge to undertake a diagnosis is beyond the knowledge base of just one person.

I think the guessing that goes on can lead to misdiagnosis and severe consequences for the child who is misdiagnosed. I wonder sometimes if this is why you see so few diagnoticians willing to prescribe an action plan or treatment option. They take the consevative course lest a child receive the wrong intervention which could lead to malpractice.
More objective diagnosis should lead to more objective intervention options. I just think very few are equipped (some who are equipped are on this board) to make an adequate diagnosis that leads to appropriate intervention.

I just don’t see how you (or any one person) could possibly be really meeting the needs of many LD, NLD, ASD kids under such circumstances. Even with under 20 kids in a class, how does a non-reader get the individual attention they need to learn to read? How does the clssroom teacher teach the class, and still keep a child like my NLD son, who needs repeated prompting to move from one task to another, as well as regular help organizing his materials and re-teaching of whatever gets lost between the cracks?

Our classes are not that big either… the goal is under 20 in lower elementary, and no class in the school system has more than 25 students. But the integrated classrooms also have at least a 1/2 day aide, and the SPED teacher in the classroom for the other half of the day. It seems to me, that it wouldn’t be possible to do justice to the NT children in a class like this, if the teachers were also meeting the needs of the kids on IEP’s.

Karen

I’m just a parent and taxpayer; it’s what we have to work with. We are dedicated to helping both our kids, and it definitely takes more that the minimum they get at school. But I wouldn’t expect the school to make my kids great at soccer or violin either just from gym class or music class.

No, but I DO expect them to teach them to grade level standards (if that is considered by the team to be a reasonable goal, as it is in my son’s case) and I do expect them to accomplish it while also keeping his emotional well-being in mind. I know that can be done in the setting he’s in now. I know it wouldn’t be possible in a classroom where a SPED teacher with a huge case load popped in every now and then.

He doesn’t need help every minute, and there is certainly time for the SPED teacher and aide to spend with other children in the class. But it would not be possible for the classroom teacher alone to meet his needs, no matter how dedicated she was or how hard she tried.

I’m glad it’s working for your child, but I wonder how many others are struggling much more than they should need too.

Karen