Evaluating public school systems in NY

First, I would ask that he be evaluated by the NY public school system; you do not know whether he would qualify for special ed.in NY. The quality of special ed.it varies by classroom, not just by town or school district. What type of services are you looking for? You will not find intensive, one-to-one reading/writing instruction under special ed. in most public schools, regardless of the affluence of the suburb.What you may find is inclusion and help with behavior, attention to task, social skills training and homework assistance. How do you anticipate he will be classified under the Federal def.? Dev. delay? LD is tough to come by in the early grades.

All of those things would be great, but isn’t there pullout for reading? I’m pretty sure we can demonstrate the necessary discrepancy for reading based on the testing we’ve had done.

Read the NYS definitions for special ed. and LD classification; in Mass. our son really didn’t qualify for reading help because of high IQ and low-average(90’s ) achievement in broad reading scores; in many systems including ours, up through 4th grade, remedial reading group pull-out is reg. ed. support(like counselling for diferent issues, etc.). You may well love a suburban system and it may be much better for your son, but DON’T move just for the special ed. help. It is budget dependent, varies from teacher to teacher and may well change with the reissuing of funding of the IDEA. Good Luck.

I don’t have any experience with it, but have heard good things through others about The Mary McDowell Center for Learning in Brooklyn, NY (718-625-3939). It is a private elementary school for children with learning disabilities.

There’s even another reason to have him evaluated and classified by the NYS board of ed: apparently the special ed. private schools are funded for qualified students. So its possible we could get some or all of the tuition funded by the state, which for us, coming from private school anyway, is a big savings. That would be a silver lining!

Thanks for that referral. We actually decided not to persue it because its location relative to where we live right now and where our other child goes to school.

Karen,
If you do consider public schools, you might want to ask them particular questions about what materials Resource uses for intervention (some schools do have teachers trained in LMB. I know our resource teacher is). Another thing you might want to ask about is how often they “pull out” for reading and how many kids are in the group. At our previous school my son was pulled out daily, while at the school he goes to now it’s only twice a week. I’m not sure why it’s different. This school seems to think my son is a much better reader than his previous school.

and this is quite a shock to me! I’ll admit his fluency is getting better, but I need to seriously focus on comprehension. At least with respect to these monthly book reports. Although, get this, my son has a book report due each month- it has to be a chapter book - most are at least close to 100 pages. While my daughter in Jr. High only has 3 due for the year and the minimal requirement is reading 100 pages. Tell me that’s not weird!!!! Also, the last report she was required to do was a 2 page “fill out a form!!!” My daughter is not LD. In fact her SAT 9 reading scores were in the 99%ile and this is all that’s being required!!!! My son did a MUCH longer report….sorry for going off-topic here…but this gives you our experience with public schools and how uneven education can be).

What it all boils down to is you can start out researching through data on websites or educational departments, etc…but
after making some choises this way, you really should visit the schools and ask specific questions. Get to know the principal and the curriculum.

Good luck with your decision!

We used to live in NY but on the other end of the state so can’t be much help in that regard. But I will comment generally on public schools.

New York schools had far greater resources than the ones we have in Florida. Smaller classes, less kids for speech, ect. Those are objective numbers you can collect. My son was in an inclusion K there and would have been in an inclusion first grade had we not moved. The model was the sp. ed teacher came into the classroom and worked with the kids who qualified and all others who might benefit. There was a lot of coordination between the regular teacher and sp. ed teacher.

In Florida, my son has been in a resource pull out model. So the first question is what model is used and how is it implemented. (I know there isn’t supposed to be one model but in my experience there really is.) I would say for a fourth grader you want specialized instruction beyond what a typical fourth grade elementary school teacher knows. So the inclusion model which does not provide specialized reading instruction but more assistance wouldn’t be enough for your son.

Second, I think the principal, exceptional services director (if the school has one—ours in FL does) and teacher make as much difference as the resources available. We had a principal change here in Florida and it made a tremendous difference, even within the context of the same resources. The next year the teacher changed and someone much better than the previous teacher was hired. (and I think that had to do with the principal and the spot light we shone on the teacher—had district people telling us she was implementing programs incorrectly). The present resource teacher knows a number of programs and is interested in working with parents (the previous teacher just wanted you to drop off your kid and pick him up in fifth grade).

Third, I think resources available to teachers for training make a difference too. Even a motivated teacher isn’t likely to go for LIPS training on his or her pocketbook. I know that training/material dollars are an issue here. My son’s resource teacher wrote a grant to cover some of this but there was a year delay.

Fourth, I think the district makes a difference in terms of attitude and what are the programs supported. Are there pilot programs that might be good for your son? One difficulty my son’s resource teacher has had is that the district doesn’t support the better programs she knows (LIPS,PG). This is part of the reaason why she has had to write grants. At the district level, I have been totally unimpressed with the quality of personnel. I had to meet these people when I was fighting with the school district a couple years ago.

So I think there def. are district differences but also huge differences between schools within districts as well (which makes it all more difficult).

Beth

I lived in NYC for a number of years and was trained as a psychologist there, so I came to know the educational system a bit. Churchill and Gateway are two sped private schools that serve LD kids. They are both in Manhattan and have good reputations. They have very strict criteria and are known to screen out kids with more emotionally/behavioral issues or other developmental problems. You can contact either one and ask for what they would need for an application. Obviously you will need a complete evaluation that indicates specialized instruction is necessary. You can arrange for the public system to conduct this evaluation- or have it completed privately if you- or your insurance- is willing to pay for it. The only problem with the district evaluation is that it might not go into the level of detail you- or the potential school- might want. I’d feel the private schools out on this issue. It is very difficult to get funding by the state to pay for tuition to a private school- they insist that you “prove” that they cannot serve your child’s needs, which of course requires time and your child’s failure! Lawyers can help sometimes in that process, but it really is still quite difficult especially if your child is “simply dyslexic”- they are more apt to fund education for a more unusual or disruptive disability. Some neighborhoods in NYC have quite good public schools and you should look into them if you haven’t already. Often the reading/math scores can tell you what schools are high performing in general. Then you can contact them and visit to see if they have the resources your child will need. Again, the evaluation is important here as it should indicate what type of instruction would be helpful for your child. Good luck- NYC’s educational system is quite a maze to navigate!

Thanks for your response. We are well on our way, having had him privately evaluated last year. We are visiting churchhill tomorrow, gateway next month, and have already applied to another school in westchester. Even though these schools do screen, our psychiatrist thinks they may be serving kids with more severe disabilities. My son seems to fall into the crack between the special schools, and the regular private schools . I don’t think we’d consider public in NYC, it just doesn’ t seem like we’d be able to get him the level of remediation he’d need here , what with budgets being so tight. But we are looking into public in the suburbs, the assumption being that their system isn’t quite as strained. If you are familiar with any of the suburban school systems I’d be interested in your views. Thanks!

Having your son attend a school with children who have more severe disabilities should not be a deterrence to having your son attend -especially at age 8 - as long as there is a mix of disabilities among the kids. If the school 1) has the services and teachers with skills he needs; 2) has good classroom behavior management skills, and 3)will not prevent him from moving as fast as he can even if he ends up way out ahead of the other kids, then it does not matter what disabilities the other kids have. He may develop empathy for the needs of others - an extremely important life skill - and learn to enjoy being one of the highest achieving kids in the class without becoming arrogant about his own abilities (the latter being a phenomenon that is prevalent and disturbing about schools that serve only the gifted).

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