Need advice about meeting with school board

Take a look at the article “Math Learning Disabilities” by Kate Garnett,Ph.D. it might be helpful.

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/math_skills/garnett.html

If they comment on how he has been doing better state that it appears that he does not have a weakness in Visual-Spatial area which is why he is doing better in geometry. From the article see if you can pin-point his area of weakness.

Hopefully, you put your request for assessment in writing and if you haven’t do so and take it to the meeting. If they refuse to test ask them to provide you with Prior Written Notice in writing explaining why they are refusing to test. Most districts will back down when asked for PWN because their refusal could be used in court against them in a Due Process Hearing. Read up on PWN at:

http://www.reedmartin.com/priorwrittennotice.htm

Helen gave you good advice.

If you request the testing in writing, they pretty much *have* to do it. And within a certain amount of time, I might add.

Barb

Yes, basically, if the request is in writing, then it is more paperwork for them to justify not doing it htan it is to do it… except that when it’s an older student, the testing process infrastructure may not be there. THe folks who do the testing may have to be pulled from other buildings & that sort of thing. So they may be motivated to put it off ‘til the summer, at least :-(

I would also want to know — are those C’s really an estimate of what he knows? Why aren’t those grades higher? There are students who get C’s and haven’t learned much of *anything* for any of a number of reasons (internal and external), and there are students who get C’s who are really getting a good foundation.

You know, I really can’t answer that question. Sounds terrible, I know. He has never had any formal testing and I just can’t afford it. I do not even have the means to borrow the money. But I believe he can do better in language and english.
He is an excellent reader if he can concentrate long enough, but he has a hard time remembering 5 min later what he read. He has a terrible memory and attention span. He can’t remember a phone number long enough to dial it. He is an excellent speller until he gets into the ie and ei and difficult letter groupings. He is very good at remembering facts that he learns in a fun way or something that was discussed in class, but if he has to read it or work silently, he cannot and I repeat cannot get his work finished. I have tried every incentive I know and he is on medication.

But for the most part, he gets his work done in his other classes, but math just rolls off him like water off a duck. He tells me he does not do his work b/c he does not understand and he is tired of telling the teacher he does not understand cause she will just tell him he needs to listen better next time. So he just sits there. I feel like he is in a hopeless situation. He is going to fail this year. i told him if he can just wait out the rest of the year, I am putting him in a different school next year.

I do not know if that answered your question, but, No, I do not believe the C’s are an indication of his true ability, but I honestly don’t know what to do about it. He says he is dumb. He has tried for so long in math and has listened to teachers tell him he just isn’t applying himself. Now he believes this is all he can and ever will be capable of doing. When I try to encourage him or talk about college, he talks about dropping out when he is old enough and working 2 or 3 jobs. He says he can make plenty of money that way. Ha!
I am not down on schools. I believe there are wonderful schools out there, but I am in a really bad district. I have heard several people, even a lady in Social Services say it was a bad district. But my husbands job is not relocatable. We are thinking about just commuting to work.

Off my soapbox!
Thanks

Welp, the good news is that somebody (mom, I bet) has him believing in himself enough to say if school fails him (a more honest perspective than him failing school) that he will work harder to make good. I’d tell him that the decision will be his but that you know that school grades or not, with the right place & the right teachers he could do college.
And you did answer my question — he’s got those learning ups and downs across the board. He’s not just a consistent little plugger who can learn about 75% of it, as long as it’s concrete… sometimes it sticks really well, and sometimes the ol’ brain is Teflon. That’s pretty much the definition of a specific learning disability. He should get the testing done — though if the system is a lousy one, you’ll have to hope the tester is competent (though even in some of the lousy districts I’ve taught in, most of the testers were pretty good).
You definitely want the information from the testing, but I gotta tell ya, the options for getting help from the schools in fifth grade, even in good systems, are not that good. I would be trying to figure out who the gems among the thorns are — who in that building can be an ally for him? In any district, there are winners & weiners. If there’s one teacher there (or the librarian, or even the school secretary) who believes in him — or, if he can build himself a halo effect so that they think he’s a Hard Working Kid, but it sounds like he may have tarnsihed the halo… but fifth grade he may not be too old to convince that he can still be a Good Kid (even if he doesn’t get good grades).
If I could just make a clone of myself, I’d make a nice little online math course (let’s see, I need a couple of graphic artists and a secretary, that’s about all) and you could tell ‘em to let him go to wherever there’s a computer and do math his way… in the meantime, figure out one thing in math that he is willing to / would like to learn well between now and the end of the year. I would suggest being able to add simple fractions with same or different denominators — then, honestly, he would be ahead of most of the college students I work with. (Really. Have I mentioned that math instruction is in really horrible shape everywhere?) Either Victoria or I could get him/you to a mastery level with it. Another good thing would be those times tables — but he needs something that he can feel proud of & good about, and that’s an awful lot of straight memory, and that’s his weak point. (However, I’ve got a whole mess of quizzes from the ground up already on my site, as well as some ideas for remembering them when you can’t remember things.) That way he & you would be taking ownership of learning away from the poor beleaguered school. Might make it easier to behave in there.
You’ve caught this at the right time… fifth graders can often still be salvaged :-) I’m afraid I watched more than one really nice seventh grader who was still trying turn into a bitter, “I’m gonna try to fit in with the bad kids” kiddo — and unfortunately, sometimes they did too well, and other times they were played along for a lark by those kids — by ninth grade. I wish I could be more reassuring — but I just can’t. (On the other hand, as I said, one ally for a kid could make all the difference even if its Mom.)