'Bounty' Funding Pushes More Kids into Special Ed

I wish my sons school did have “Bounty Funding” because for 7 years I have fought for my child to get the help he has needed. He started having problems (noticable in 2nd grade) and now he is 16 years old and a sophemore in high school. Twice he was tested 5th grade and 9th grade but both times they came back and said he was lazy. Then I took the test result (which I did not know how to read) to my doctor and he recommened by son to be tested outside of the school. In three hours and using the schools evaluations my son was clinically diagnosed ADHD. The docotor called the head of the special ed. and the next day we had a PET meeting to set my son up with a program. I feel if they would have had the appropriate funding in my area my son would have not been put off for 7 years; now I also wonder how many other childeren are being passed over until they quit school. My docotor said that I am a strong mother to keep pursuing this and I have a wonderful child to still have a great self asteam and no clinical depression. My son now is looking at going to college.

Dad,
Have to agree with Patty on this one, I keep hearing of many parents who are fighting to get services of any kind for their kid. I also had to go through 2 evaluations for my son to get him qualified for sp.ed. The first one came up with ‘late bloomer’ in 2nd grade. The second one found that his adhd was hindering his ability to learn in class, this was 4th grade. He was dxed adhd/inattentive in 1st grade by a doc, no school input on the dx other than Conner’s rating.
Amy

I think that there should be more of an emphasis in helping all children rather than identifying certain ones. I think if scientifically proven teaching methods were employed with more overall flexibility for all children there would be less of a need for sped. So, schools using ineffective methods in the early grades get bounties because more of their children qualify.
Let me just also add that LD and ADD are real but so is dysteachia.

I also think sped should be a place children visit to get help compensating for and hopefully overcoming their deficits early on and then back into the mainstream asap.
This system encourages more children be placed in sped. It doesn’t encourage effective programs that would assure they be remediated and then removed.
If deficits were actually addressed the school would lose their funding. Where is the incentive to help children?

I would like to see bounties for remediated children. Placement does not equal remediation.

That was SO well said, Linda F, and I agree totally.

I see a problem in my local system that is more ‘mindset’ than ‘LD’, and of course is aggravated by not enough money and many other factors like curriculum change, standardized tests, etc. However, whatever the cause, the result is that in my local High School, only 30% of the ‘Applied Program’ students and 50% of the ‘Academic’ students are able to pass the Gr. 10 Literacy test. This was put in place because so many kids in my province (ONT) get to College and are UNABLE to manage without remedial English courses.

These are just the ‘NT’ kids, though there are probably many who are technically ‘LD’ who slipped through the cracks or are aimed for the trades instead of college-Uni. This system plops you into what we call ‘Exceptional Learner’ designation, and then stops expecting ANYTHING. Sad thing I’m seeing in business is that these kids come out of SPED and need 2-3 years remedial math if they are to make it in the (lucrative) trades — these are kids like my hubby, who will never write essays but is meant to do a job that requires what Mr. Davis calls the ‘Gift’, that often accompanies a dyslexic thinking/learning style. And he does it very well, and earns an above average income doing it. (not to say that all LD kids belong in the trades, of course!)

Amazingly, NOW that society is demanding change, the system is finally starting to respond — Gr. 1, 2, 3, are changing FAST since children must pass the tests, and HS has added an intensive literacy course to help those who get to HS and can’t graduate till they can pass the test. This has been a painful change for children like my son, who still got fully ‘whole language’ instruction and is therefore at high risk for school failure, ineffective SPED, and functional illiteracy.

The thing I saw is that, when the changes first came (begin in 1993) the first reaction of the schools was to begin labelling ALL strugglers LD — my principal said to me, ‘But Elizabeth, you HAVE to designate him — he’ll never pass the Gr. 10 Literacy test!’. This was in grade 2!!!!
Not ‘he might not’ — HE WON’T! What kind of burned-out attitude is that, anyway? This is a nice guy who cares about kids and is quite an effective educator — not a poison person, but someone who is misguided by his college, his school board, and the system that traps him just as it does our children.

Of course, we’re proving him wrong, but what about the children who don’t have obnoxious literacy activist misfit mothers who believe that ‘Lorenzo’s Oil’ presents the only model for effective parenting???? (in other words, will move heaven and earth to help their child, whatever the odds against success!)

Yes, SPED can work, and many on this board are proof of that — but I was not offered the services of an Anitya. All I was being offered was Reading Recovery, accomodations to make my son ‘happy’, and sympathy for the fact that I had ‘one of those kids who just can’t learn to read well’.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

My husband also has “the gift’ ” he is surely someone in todays world who would have been labled sped and put in a dumbed down curriculum.

He is a VP working alongside harvard MBAs making the same pay as they do although he didn’t finish college. He has many gifts and I have seen him hold the attention of a room when he speaks so that you could hear a pin drop.

In today’s world he would be encouraged to pursue a trade which would be a disaster because he can’t do anything with his hands. He can’t even hang a picture.

Sadly, you are right that in some places special ed does mean a dumbed down curriculum. Not everywhere, though, as I have personally experienced. Most people with LDs have above average intelligence. We know that, but lots of people don’t. Many people with LDs, like your husband, also have amazing strengths. I do think that a child with dyslexia who also has strong visual-spatial skills has a gift, but the dyslexia is not the gift. It is something that gets in the way of the gift and can prevent the child and those around him from recognizing it. The goal should be to respect children by encouraging gifts and helping and accomodating weaknesses. That is what really works, regardless of whether it happens in a special ed context or in the regular classroom.

Andrea

I found your post interesting because you are right—the first thing people think when a child is LD is the trades. Now I have great respect for good tradespeople but unfortunately my son has the same visual spatial skills as the most incompetent family members. With practice and patience, we learn to assemble things and fix things but it is not very natural and certainly not the way we could ever earn a living. This has worried me a lot about my son because he doesn’t have the natural ease of the academic world that the rest of us have.

Beth

Andrea

I agree that this is not a gift. I think that type of thinking is a little unfair because assumptions are made that all dylexics have a particular gift but some just don’t and some have different abilities. My dyslexic husband in not creative so it bothers me a little when people say dyslexics are creative as if being creative is a part of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a deficit that involves learning to read plain and simple.
Dyslexics have different strengths and weaknesses and many do not belong in the trades.

Beth

Ditto on my son. He would never make it in the trades. I think he would be a fine entreprenuer, sales person or maybe even an attorney.

I get a little irked when some say LD kids who don’t test well should pursue a trade. That would be a nightmare for him and me because I would have to support him forever.

I laugh when I think of my son as a plumber!! He would have to think about right and left!

My son is a plant lover. He knows all the names of cactuses and palm trees and can identify them. My husband has taken to visit a collector of rare plants and my son had a highly intelligent conversation with him about various plants. My son’s “prize” for finishing a typing program was a rare palm speciman from this nursery. Not sure how this might translate into a livihood but he sure has a hobby! You should see all the pots in our yard.

Beth

Landscaping is a good business I have several friends in the landscaping/nursury business. Christmas tree farms are a good business. If in your area there are large office buildings they may pay companies to do plant care in offices.

That is what is great about the working world. You only have to be really good at one thing.
Unlike school of course.

A landscaping business kept one of my ex’s relatives and several brothers and others in a very comfortable lifestyle, with a guaranteed job and choice of where they worked. A good deal.
Even better if he marries a girl who can keep the books.

I’m relieved to hear this from people who have been there and done that.

Not that I’m happy to hear somebody lacks gifts, but it’s good to know I haven’t been putting down all these wonderful invisible gifts all these years!

Plumbing is good for peope who are manually skilled; landscaping is excellent for those who love plants; sales is a good career for those with “people” skills; farming is good if you are willing to work very hard and want out of the crowds; plastering and housepainting is always in demand; there are lots of places to go other than office work.
As a young person I had a heck of a time myself because people couldn’t see any other career for a bright girl than office work, and I hate it.

Anyway, he doesn’t need a career until his late teens or twenties. Many skills and talents don’t even show up until then (or later); I discovered that I actually have mechanical and crafts aptitude in my twenties, after society changed enough to let women do these things and my hands developed more strength and my eyesight got corrected; this after being constantly told that I was clumsy for twenty years. Give it a bit of time.

And sure as heck will make the most money grafting a new type of palm tree,one resistent to disease.

Which is one of Mel Levine’s points that I love t pass on to other people.