retention, spec. ed article from nytimes

Any chance you could post the article? Unfortunately, you have to be a registered user to access their articles.

Kathy G.

Unfortunitely the article is very long, six pages.

Its worth the hassel of registrating though.

Its about an 11 year old who’s having a difficult time in school. The state reguires (I think? I just skimmed the article) students to pass high stakes tests in 3rd, 8th before moving on to the next grade. This child failed and failed and failed the third grade test so had to repete third grade three times. As she failed again, the school asked the mother for permission to test her for special ed. The school classified the girl as SLD and moved her from 3rd to 6th grade. It sounds like she spends all day in pullout in a large mixed (MMR, EBD, SLD etc) special ed room where she gets no special help. Per the artricle, she doesn’t even sound SLD, the school just had no idea where to place her. The mother is trying to pull her from special ed but has no idea what to do with her once she gets her out. The article discusses the turnover in the special ed room. Teacher turn over, that is. Appreantnly its so bad in there that they can’t get any good teachers to stay…

Great article. Sad though.

Barb

Reading this article with a critical eye:
The author is trying to make the high-stakes tests and the repetition policy look bad, using this poor girl’s case to win sympathy.
Well, the question arises how well she would have done without this new policy. Would she have actually learned to read if they had kept social promotion? Unlikely, the test results in that system were very low and dropping. Under the new system more kids are learning — true, this unfortunate child got caught in the middle of the transition and some terrible decisions were made in her case, but does that mean that the changes are wrong?
Why is the special ed class so bad? Well, they had substitutes for a long time. Then they finally got a qualified teacher who tried to do something responsible; the teacher did not do a lot of homework and testing right off, but tried to take some time to get to know the students and their abilities and what they knew. So how did the mother react? She went in to the principal and made a major complaint because the teacher was not sending out a lot of homework and how could she dare give a C- grade to this girl when there had not been a large number of tests. That teacher left — gee, I wonder why, maybe being called on the carpet for trying to spend her time analyzing and teaching, and having her performance rated on the mass of paper sent out with a kid who has already been determined not to be able to read? So having gotten rid of the one qualified and responsible teacher they had, the class went back to substitutes.
Obviously this is a bad situation, should not have happened, and the girl should be given some good remedial teaching to correct the past errors. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the efforts to raise standards are bad and harmful to children as the article implies.

the horrible part was it could have been the story of whole lot of us. I shudder to think where my daughter would be now if I hadn’t educated myself on what to ask, what to do. And thank goodness, I could afford tutors. Thank goodness I found help (and this site, too!).

I actually am not against the standardized testing as a method of measuring how the school is doing its job or as an indicator that further actions including individualized testing needs to be done. In addition, it is useful to compare against actual grades for grade inflation (we call it ‘happy talk’ in our house). But who with an MA in Educational Administration thought that 3 years in 3rd grade was a worthy idea? What were they thinking?

Makes me want to pick up a sign saying “Wakeup” and picket the district office.
It goes back to the easy fix,zero tolerance approach -” if we stop promoting socially everyone will just have to learn”. Nope, there are no easy fixes.
I think that universal, free education has been the key to the success of the American republic but it has certainly failed the family in this article and I hate to think where the whole thing is headed.

To me, any child not passing the third grade test is at-risk and should be tested for LD or other learning disorders. Three retentions is child neglect at minimum.

Janis

yes, I was shocked that a retention would happen without testing. 3 retentions with no testing is outrageous. My overwhelming response to the whole article was that if the parent does not know the buttons and levers - things won’t work. The parent in the article clearly didn’t take on the system.
I regard the information to parents on this board as priceless.