5th grader on an iep, and still got a D, and an F! UGG

Hi Heidi,

I can’t really help you. I can only agree with your frustration. I have a 2nd grader who got a D in reading. Yes, he is LD and is in “special reading pull out classes” per his IEP. I’m sure he earned a D, but give me a freaking break.. he’s 7 years old. Of course he says “D is for dummy, I’ll never learn to read.”

I had a meeting with the principal last week because after 1 semester, my son received only 47% of his reading pull out classes. That is an F I told him. I got the speech on funding, not enough teachers, too much paper work, too many meetings, etc… He tried to tell me that if I read to my son at home, he would be a better reader. ????? HELLO don’t you think I’ve been reading to him since birth? DUH? He’s a year behind with a LD. I left that meeting in tears as I felt I failed my son. We are now sending him to a reading clinic over spring break and then twice a week tutor sessions at our expense. His reading is too important to wait for the school to do what they should have been doing since November.

I have no ideas to help you. I just wanted you to know that you are not alone.

Kelly, I hear your frustration and have been there. You are right, his reading (and self-esteem) is too important to wait around for the school to do their job. With my 20/20 hindsight, I would write a “letter of understanding” to the principal and copies to the director of special ed. and maybe to someone at the state office of special education. Something along the lines of “I want to clarify what was discussed in our meeting…. that my child received only X% of the services indicated on his IEP during ___ period of time and that this was because the school does not have enough teachers (or whatever). Since the district is unable to provide the services that the IEP team agreed my son requires to learn to read, I am requesting that he (attends X clinic, or receives tutoring…) at district expense. Check out wrightslaw.com. Surely he is not making the progress he should be if he is getting half the services on his IEP.

You can do as Rover suggested but you can also check out to see if your insurance will pay for speech therapy if the distirct just drags their heels. IWhen my daughter was failing in 5th grade is when I finally stepped up to the plate and changed careers and homeschooled. I wasn’t a teacher either. I was just a parent of a child that had been lost in the system. I can understand your feeling helpless too. However,there are things you can do as a parent such as reading to her, discussing things with her, cutting down on her exposure to TV. Turn every day experiences into vocabulary enriching activities. Learning vocabulary is a lifelong pursuit and just because she is struggling to read doesn’t mean you can’t expand her vocabulary by reading and discussing what you have read with her.

It turns out there are definite discrepancies between her ability and her performance so she does qualify for resources. She has really been struggling with Science, Social Studies and Reading……..vocab is a big problem for her.

Reading it? Memorizing it? How is vocab a problem? that would help to know to give you advice.

That left me feeling dumbfounded! After much thought and many emotions over that conversation……..”I have no idea how to teach teach a child that doesn’t even learn in the traditional manner! I’m NOT a teacher!”

She was speaking from her heart clearly but in doing so you got to the heart of the matter. IEPS can be written but that doesn’t mean they produce results. And often IEPS are written in such a way that they become ‘pie in the sky’ - they can’t be implemented in the current reality that is a school.

And now this past report card comes out and she dropped from a C to an F in the very class that this para helps her with. And from a C to a D in another class that she also gets help in. My question is this…….how can a child on an iep getting resource help get a D and an F?

Cause the help she’s getting isn’t any. So the question becomes - what can you do for her when the school can’t do for her. In the beginning, many parents of LD children believe in the school but many of us lose our faith over time. Sounds sadly like that’s the journey you’re on too. With my own children, I burned the midnight oil and sat down with them at night and figured out a way to keep their self-esteems fairly intact and their grades up but it wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t avoidable either as the only real ‘help’ they were getting in school wasn’t any either.

Good luck. If you’d want suggestions on how to make that D and F go away, post back with what her issues are and you’ll get lots of suggestions.

I need advice, I am so frustrated!
Heidi O.[/quote]

Heidi and Kelly. In the middle of 4th grade, after two different schools, an inadequate IEP, and no progress, I pulled my son out and homeschooled him for just 20 weeks. I found a reading program suited for kids with dyslexia that also had great vocabulary, an excellent teacher’s manual, and lots of science and social studies passages. So we got three classes in one while we were technically working on reading. The program is SPIRE and it is sold by EPS. (I don’t work for them or get any money from them—I just found the program referenced in an article in the International Dyslexia Association journal.) Anyway, I want you to know that you can teach your child and you might have to. You’d be amazed the progress that can be made in 20 weeks working as little as 15 hours per week. Good luck to you both.

Hi,

I’m a spec ed teacher, currently teaching SLD in Southside VA, who is determined that all my students learn to read well. I have been using a concrete, multisensory, pencil-and-paper decoding program with my students. It is applied phonics, and it works with any text, any level.

Email me at [email protected] if you would like to know more. Anita

Her biggest issues are with her short term memory. Since she doesn’t retain things from short term memory its hard to put into her long term memory. And Vocab is basically memorizing…………and thats a killer for her. We ‘ll sit at the table and I have her read through those words 5 times and then we go back through and I try and test her, and out of 5 words she got half of one definition right………the rest went out the window somewhere………but she actually seems to do better if I give her the words and definitions in a scramble and she just has to match them up, then she does just fine. It just seems to me that she can’t pick words out of thin air to describe another word. I’ve asked for testing to be done multiple choice, and it is in her iep but it seems like they only do that when it suits them.

I just don’t want her to get so frustrated with school that she gives up and quits trying………..it just seems like kids who don’t do well in school tend to be the ones who get into trouble later in their teen years and I’d hate to see that for her. She is such a bright, and imaginitive girl! These tests and grades just bring her down. Anyone that hears that she’s got a LD is just surprised.

And then I read about and hear about the schools not helping so the parents need to pick up the slack and teach the kids at home. But she’s so sick of school work by the time she gets home………neither one of us are jumping up and down with excitement about me having to go back through everything and re-teach her. I finally asked if they could just send home all the text books so I would have a copy here, and now they send home her math with her so I can go through all the problems before she hands them in so that she can correct them before she turns them in and gets the grade. But guess how long that in itself takes me every night……..Lucky me, I get to do 25 math problems everynight, because I don’t have an answer sheet.

Anyway, thanks for reading!
Heid O.