Well, my son got into the LD school we were hoping for...

>start worrying about how he’ll make the transition socially, and about whether taking a bus an hour each way is too much.<

Don’t worry about it at all. Kids tend to do well in all areas when they are in a supportive environment were they are understood by teachers AND peers. The one hour bus ride is nothing compared to the satisfaction he will feel. My bother took 3 busses to get to his LD school when he was in 6th grade. he was so relieved to be in an understanding environment! My son takes about an hour ride each way and he is so happy to be in that school that he does not care at all.

Hey Karen,

It has been a while….. I am so happy for you and your son. I think you are doing the very best thing for him.

Margo

Congratulations! I’m so happy for you. We got the call this week too. We got into The Shelton School. I’m so relieved too. Son is okay with it, looking forward to it, really. He loved his 3 day visit. Just worried about missing his current school friends. I told him they could come over on the weekends and that satisfies him. No transportation issue though. Shelton is very close to us.

I am happy for you! We don’t have any such school where we live and we’re struggling (again) about what to do next year.

Beth

Karen,
congratulations.

You have much more going for your son than what we had when our son started in Spetember… My son did not want to go to a new school and now - he is just as happy as I remember him before the school years…

It is amazing how well do children cope with such long commute when the school is right for them….

What a nice V-tine present :-))

I also go through this every spring. I have finally found a school that sounds like the right place for my son but, it is for grades 6 -12. My son is finishing 4th. So we again are also contemplating what to do about 5th grade. He has had a fairly happy school year socially but has had high’s and low’s when it comes to academics. It is so frustrating to watch the emotions take their toll on him. The school year always begins with excitement and anticipation, then that begins slowly draining out of him through October;… November through January are horrible months for him;- then, during February, it’s almost like he sees the end of the school year approaching, and he pulls himself up by the boot straps and excitement builds for the end of the school year and he copes. But at the end of every school year, he is wiped out. For next year, I am seriously contemplating “homeschooling” but getting the therapies of what I think will make a positive impact on his learning. IM, LMB— I had thought we would take care of this during the summer, which we did with FFW. To much to do and to little time when you are trying to juggle vacations and siblings. It just takes to much out of my kid to go to school all day and then to therapies after school. We have been doing that since K. Hence, the homeschooling idea.

We are contemplating moving closer to my son’s new school and have been visiting neighborhoods. (We live in NYC, ds will be going to school 1 hour north and given the state of world affairs not to mention normal traffic we are concerned about the distance….)

The 2 school districts we are interested in are both well regarded as far as state wide testing etc etc. and will be fine for my daughter who is not LD. The idea is that when ds mainstreams in a few years he’d go into the middle or high school depending on how long he stays at his new school. I’m assuming by then his reading/writing should be in good shape, but I bet he’ll need help with organization and other things I can’t anticipate at this point. All things being equal we want to choose a place that will be good for him too.

How can you tell if a district does a good job with LD kids? I have no experience with this, so I don’t know what I’ m looking for. For example, one of the middle schools offers self contained reading, has speech and OT, and a resource room. One of the school districts is much smaller than the other in terms of number of students, both seem to spend about the same per child on special ed. Are there any objective measure I should be looking at? any thoughts would be most appreciated!

Look for a school that has a gifted/LD program. Ask what they do with bright LD children?

The biggest problem that I have seen in sped is the absolute total focus on the disability without recognition of the gifts.

Ask them if they know who Mel Levine is?

Karen,

Try to find out if there is an LD parent group in those areas. That’s where you’ll find out the real truth.

Also, congratulations on getting your son into the school! I hope things go very well for him there!

Janis

Linda,

You know, as I read Mel Levine’s book, All Kinds of Minds, I realize how school barely skim the surface even of the child’s disability. Schools talk about delays in reading writing and math, but they rarely get into the root issues (which is probably why remediation is usually so ineffective). As I read Levine’s chapter on memory, I went in knowing a little about short-term, working, and long-term memory. What I found was a much more complex system, and I thought, no wonder schools do such a poor job with LD kids.

Janis

Don’t be put off the home-schooling idea. If you feel you have a good idea for what works and doesn’t work for your child, you are several months ahead of next year’s teacher! There are good materials around-start with this site and the homeschooling board to get information on which materials, products are geared toward your son. Have you considered your son doing the academics with you and the ‘extras’ -band, PE, whatever he enjoys -at school?

I think if you start researching you may not want to wait until September!!! Particularly true if you have outside therapies lined up.

Good luck

Karen,
Above in the section ‘finding help’, there is a section on finding help by state. If you click on the map of NY, there should be a list of parent training and information centers and their locations. Perhaps they also would be able to help you out.
Amy

I totally agree with Linda. Not real sure if there IS such a creature in Florida schools. I never found it.

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If your son would not qualify for special ed. now, chances are after several yrs in LD school he probably wouldn’t qualify for services, nor would you be happy with those services, which at a middle or high school level are for slow learners, ADHD students or are more like homework tutoring resource rooms. I’d just look for a place that fits your family and not worry about special ed. services which are so variable depending on town and state funding. Look at the size of the middle school and high school in each area, I think smaller is better esp. if your son has never been in a big system. However in our upper middle class suburb we have one 750 student middle school and a regional 1500 student high school and they work fairly well..but in Mass. the state funding for ed. is being cut because of the poor state economy. I would ask graduate parents of the LD school where they live and what the public school experience has been like. Goood Luck.

I think you are right, and I ‘ve been sorting out the variables and coming to the same conclusions. Certainly after 3-5 years (and more if necessary!) at the LD school he should not need a self contained classroom. I suspect with his ADD tendencies , slow processing speed, and organizational problems he may need some support services. Both districts offer this. Its more trying to assess if the district is tolerant of different learners and committed to this form of diversity. The one district is very homogeneous - high test scores, everyone college bound, but a small system with a jr/sr high school that houses only 750 kids. The other one is more diverse, said to be more laid back, but has a 6-8 middle school with 1000 kids. We are going to visit and see how they feel. Also talk to parents…

We are actually in the process of getting him classified so we can get BOE bussing to the school and possibly some tuition reimbursement.

In my school district you can get much better and more specific help if you are not classified.

I was talking to a friend last night who has two sons one LD the other not. The child who is not labeled did well until middle school where he did poorly on the state testing.
He is getting excellent help with a writers workshop and specific help with math. If you do poorly on these tests as an LD student you get resource room with children with all types of problems.
It seems to me LD is about placement but if you do poorly on high stakes testing and are not labeled the school works to get your child’s (or in reality their) test scores up.
Do they see it only as their problem if the child does not have a label?

Sure seems to be the case where I live.

My point is you will most likely get help without the labels if the school district is serious about their performance on state testing.

This is an incredible point, Linda! Before the state testing, there was no such thing as tutoring programs in reading and math for regular ed. students here. But lo and behold, now that “The Test” is almighty, we suddenly have tutoring for the test. So if your goal is to have your child pass “The Test”, it is probably to your benefit to have a regular educator who knows the content of the test well to tutor the child. Then, have all the real remediation (like OG, LB, PG, etc.) done privately since the resource rooms so rarely provide proper remediation.

As you know, I was deliberating about giving Anna the LD label (since she gets good S/L services), so I will have to think carefully about this aspect.

Janis

Janis,

I told my friend about the esp workbooks you told me about. I told here they have practice tests that might help him do better on those tests. She said, “I don’t want him to do better on the test, when he does poorly on the test he gets this great extra help. If he was to test better the help would disappear.”

She raves about the writing workshop. She said he has become such a good writer even better than alot of his friends.

Now you know my son could benefit from this type of intervention but since he is labeled it is the resource room for him. (Not that he is going.)Now I am not sure that this is even available in his current grade but I plan to poke around for next year to find out what the regular ed programs are like to see if I can get him into something specific for writing and or study skills. It really is the ultimate catch 22. He is remediated beyond the need for resource room but the label is there and it sticks. The only way he can get out of sped is to test out and they plan on testing his writing to see if it is below grade level. So, if he gets better at writing he will test out of sped and not need the extra help and if he needs the extra help he can only get resource room.

I may even get someone to call the school anonomously pretending to be interested in moving here. Somethink like, “My son has some trouble with writing do you have any specific help for that.” If they deny him access to these programs based on the fact that he is sped I will cry civil rights violation.

Why does it need to be like this?

When the ESE kids’ scores start being included in with general ed that’s when the ESE kids will get tutoring. SO…. if they don’t tutor and/or help my daughter I will say “I want NO accommodations on the test. Then watch those scores and their faces drop. As long as the ESE students’ scores are not included in the school’s grade there is no real accountability. We have a couple of very active advocacy groups here in Florida who keep on filing state complaints re: ESE students’ scores being included and discrimination. It is beautiful to behold.

Leah,

I don’t want to be discouraging, but special ed. scores do count in NC, but the kids with the IEP’s still are considered to be helped by the resource teacher and regular ed. kids who score a certain level have a different tutoring program. So I guess it doesn’t matter to me whether the scores count or not. It’s just that I worry many LD kids will never graduate with all the testing requirements.

Janis

I had no idea - gosh, shows my tunnel vision (I think how it is in my county is how it is everywhere) I assumed it was the same everywhere I know that the sp ed teachers at our school get “a little nervous” when you mention adding in the scores. They readily admit “we won’t be an “A” school anymore”.

The main problem adding in the scores presents is that some schools have more special ed. programs than others so comparing one school to another is not really fair.

Janis

So interesting, and so many nuances I have to learn. I don’t know what the future holds , but in theory after several years at a private LD school, ds should be remediated in reading and writing. Can you be classified just for being a slow processor? I could envision a situation where a child is reading at or above grade level, but still needs extended time on tests due to slow processing which is going tobe much harder to remediate.

At that point, even if your child doesn’t qualify for special ed, the processing deficits will qualify him for a 504 plan. A 504 plan would provide accomodations in a general education setting, including extended time, frequent breaks, etc. The processing deficits would meet the 504 requirements of a “substantial physical or mental impairment that substantially inhibits at least one major life activity. Major life activities include………learning, reading, writing…..”

You will, of course, be required to provide an evaluation that draws information from a variety of sources and displays the described deficit. However, once your child’s been identified with a (remediated) LD, it’s been relatively easy to get a 504 plan, in my experience.

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