Can any of you offer guidance vs. the NCLB

I’m sorry, but what is NCLB?

Is homeschooling a possibility? I know several families who homeschool in part because their children became too anxious in public school.

Nancy

NCLB=No child left behind

We’ll be glad to try and help you if you can explain this a little further.

What is her current placement and services? What are her academic achievement levels? What grade is she in? What is she upset about in school?

This is not a NCLB problem. This is an inappropriate placement problem. NCLB has actually caused schools to think about starting to teach children in special ed. now that someone is looking at their test scores.

That said, remediation rarely happens in a school. You probably need to consider homeschooling or at least get her a qualified private tutor. But I’d like to hear what her placement is now. I have a client who is being homeschooled this year for the first time in 8th grade because the reality set in that she simply was too far behind to do the regular curriculum work even with accommodations. She also has anxiety issues and there was no special class that would have been better for her. There are stigmas with that kind of placement, too.

[b]What is her current placement and services?
*6th grade Reg. Ed. Classroom / Itinerant LS
*Mandated 2 days after school for “assistance”
~~ missing Clubs for Remedial Math. We had to do remedial math the way we did due to lack of staffing. (LS teacher is GREAT„but District budget “screw up” caused cuts and of course support staff took the first hit!)
*Last period of the day she goes to “Study Group” for homework assistance and/or classwork assistance.

[b]What are her academic achievement levels?
This is a hard question to explain.
*Basically„,State testing has placed our daughter as Failing/Below Basic in Math and LA/Reading & Comprehension
*Currently work is done in “Study Group” and Mandated 2 days after school, at the level she is at, then turned in to the teacher to be put on the Regular report card.

[b]What is she upset about in school?
* Since entrance into the public school system our daughter has a growing Anxiety “disorder”.
* IBS has also developed. Specialist states this is brought on my stress as all other testing had ruled out bacterial growth in the bowels and lactose intolerance.
* Psychologist we saw yesterday spoke with our daughter in private. She felt I should be made aware of the high levels of anxiety our daughter is experiencing. I asked the same question you did. What exactly is causing the stress/anxiety.
Our daughter did not point to one specific thing but rather a list of situations as examples of stressfull/anxiety producing things.
The examples were a mixture of academic and social.

Our daughter is also very delayed socially. Teachers continously verbalize concerns with her inabilities socially…BUT…when I bring this up to help our daughter recieve services to address this…the teachers say she is now “ok” or she is getting better.
This happens every year.

LAN

Ok, this helps a little. But does she have an IEP? Is she in special education? If she has an IEP, it will have a present level of performance for the academic areas in which she has goals. We have to know her reading and math levels to have any idea of what she might need. The state testing does give us an idea that she is low in reading and math. But that does not clarify whether she is capable of doing any work in the regular classroom.

The social delays could be a symptom of a broader disorder, or it could be related to social anxiety disorder. Did the psychologist have any opinion on this? Are they considering any medication for the anxiety?

I want to hear your answers to the above questions, but I will tell you now that I think children with significant anxiety in school should be taken out of school. She is suffering and it may get worse before it gets better.

*But does she have an IEP? YES

*Is she in special education? YES

*If she has an IEP, it will have a present level of performance for the academic areas in which she has goals.

~Reading: (according to DIBELS) 5th grade reading probe; 137 wcpm
and retell 42wpm. Struggles to demonstrate higher level thinking skills.

~Math: 3.5 grade level. Needs continued practice on her basic facts

*The social delays could be a symptom of a broader disorder, or it could be related to social anxiety disorder. Did the psychologist have any opinion on this?

YES, She felt that our DD anxiety stems from her lack of higher language abilities vs. her peers and being with them all the time and knowing she has difficulties holding up her end of a conversation. Understand?

*Are they considering any medication for the anxiety?
It was “talked about”…I will stand firm that our daughter will not DOPE UP MY CHILD for the school!!!!
Then we discussed how our daughter is NOT like this over the summer!
All IBS symptoms and Anxieties disappear.
Yes our daughter plays more with 8-10yros even though she is 12.5…but she has thier language abilities!
Pills are not going to give her the higher language skills to communicate with her peers she is placed with.
No?

Although, I will say„,just for our daughter we are considering “treatment” to address social situations and being able to “read” social cues.

My personal thoughts knowing my child and all her short commings:
She is not placed properly.
Therefore„,my end goal with all these specialist and what not is to give the school the “legal reasons” to place our daughter more appropriately …Make sense?

I think if our daughters placement was more appropriate..the anxieties would ease up.

After our meeting with the Physcologist yesterday…this physcologist we met with felt the need to contact our Ped. Nuero Phsych. ASAP…he called me and explained that I need to make it very clear to the SD that our daughters difficulties are not a “delay”..they are nuero based and effect her short and long term memory. This explains her inabilities to retain info in math and difficulties with comprehension of reading material as well as higher language skills.

I have other things scheduled..but I believe our daughter may have a broader disorder….I need to get all the testing done that I have scheduled. Our daughter “looks” normal…but exhibits alot of autistic traites….or Aspergers. She has a list of Dx’s but not one general one…all the dx’s are nuero related, not delays.

Hope this makes some sense Janis…Thanks for your time,
LAN

This is the point where you may have to take some clues from passive-aggressive behavior.

The school is mandated to make her do things that really aren’t appropriate and, in the name of making some very specific skills (or at least their test scores) improve, compromising her whole mental health (and of course sabotaging exactly what they’re trying to do).

Actively work with regrouping the IEP team and changing that placement. You’ve got documentation to support you, and other voices supporting the idea that no, you’re not just being an overprotective parent. I would stick to “my child does not have these problems over the summer” as opposed to “I will not dope up my child,” because the latter sounds like you are simply anti-medication. The first argument says that this is a condition caused by the environment and therefore you should change the environment.

In the meantime, they’re mandated to do stuff… but you can feel just as mandated to do whatever it takes to ease off her stress. I would urge them to let her take the clubs instead of remedial math if that would help (but not if the social stresses would be as bad as the math stress)… and how flexible is your schedule? Can you pick her up early some times? (Check the truancy laws - sometimes they only apply to all-day absences so she can go to school for the last hour and it counts as attending.) Can you get them to let her be a “library assistant” ro “teacher assistant” for a period with somebody she gets along with so that at least once a day she’s got something she can look forward to?

Or… I would have to agree… find a way to get her out of that poisonous environment.

Hi, I’ve been to my state dyslexia conference so I’m just now getting back to this.

Regarding the anxiety, you have two choices, remove her from the environment causing the problem or give her medication. I certainly wasn’t suggesting that medicating her would be for the benefit of the school. I meant that it could help keep her from suffering temporarily until other arrangements are made. Anxiety medication is most certainly NOT doping a child up. It is to keep the child from feeling unbearable pain in a situation that is cannot immediately be changed. The other solution is to pull her out of school immediately and then see about other placements.

Regarding the inappropriate placement, have you visited the school system’s special classes to determine if a better placement even exists? Very rarely are there nice self-contained classes with homogenously grouped children. Our self-contained middle school classes would have a combination of cognitively delayed, autistic, miold behavioral disorders, etc. Almost all LD kids are in regular classes with inclusion or resource support. Since her social language issues may be stemming from a broader disorder, the reality is that there may not be a class in which she would be happy. Or the class might expose her to worse language and behavioral disorders which might not be to her benefit.

I guess my point is, there is no ideal placement once a child hits middle school age unless they are pretty much holding their own in regular classes with some support. Like it or not, there is a stigma to special classes at that age, if the child is socially aware. You can certainly fight for a more restrictive placement and I’d encourage you to do so if an appropriate one exists. You need to be sure of this before you begin to fight for it. However, your daughter reminds me so much of one of my clients, and that child suffered from the time she entered school until 8th grade when her mother finally took her out of school. They were seeing a psychologist due to the anxiety the child was under at school. There was no placement that would have allowed that child to be socially and academically comfortable in a school due to her particular disabilities. Once her mother quit her job and brought the child home for school, she has been a different child.

I am sorry if I seem straight to the point or overly dramatic on this, but I see kids who start out with anxiety progress to depression, and end up in very dangerous situations including drug abuse or suicide. I hope you find a solution very soon for your daughter’s sake.

I like people that get straight to the point…saves alot of guess work, LOL.

Your last paragraph about what these anxieties may cause?…Exactly our concern!

I may have been over dramatic as well in stating every area of her placement causes problems.

What I mean by this is„„classes that are more visual such as Science (they are doing handon stuff alot), Art…basically classes that are not all books and language all the time, our daughter enjoys, looks forward too and does pretty well with little supports.

I’m trying to look at this from different angles to help our daughter & her teachers.
It’s kind of a “catch 22” here. What I mean by that is,
The same laws that were put in place to help her are now limiting her.
Especially the part of having all the kids at the same point by a certain date!
Call me negative or what you will„„but who ever made that part of the law up didn’t research all the conditions that some of these kiddos have!
I feel with some children this is impossible!
This is putting stess on the teachers teaching the kids and on the kids themselves!
Personally„„I would rather have a child that is Secure in what she learned instead of being retaught basics to get material that is way higher then she can comprehend. Does that make sense?
Definitely checking out options with our daughter.
LAN

LAN, I do completely agree with you regarding getting her into some electives that she would enjoy, like art. And if you could arrange private tutoring for the math, then she could go to clubs.

No one in their right mind thinks all kids will achieve at the same level at the same pace, regardless of what NCLB says. It is a lofty goal which hopefully will result in much higher achievement for children with learning disabilities, however. But the school cannot just keep a child there for social reasons. They are obligated to teach academics, and remedial work is essential if a child is ever going to graduate. I happen to think little remediation happens in schools, unfortunately.

Your daughter has the classic profile for Lindamood-Bell’s Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and On Cloud Nine Math. I’m sorry to say that you don’t usually see that level of remediation done in schools. It certainly couldn’t hurt to request it and see what happens, though. It would be worth doing if you live near a LMB clinic or know of a private tutor who could do it for you. Or you could take the training yourself and teach her. A similar program to Visualizing and Verbalizing is called IdeaChain (http://www.understandmore.com/index.html). I understand that the lessons are scripted and easy to use, but it is just not quite as extensive as the Visualizing and Verbalizing.

I hope things go well regarding the schedule changes, and please let us know what happens!

You may wish to go to the web site www.wrightslaw.com. It is very informative from a legal point of view. It can perhaps give you guidance on how to proceed to best protect your daughters rights and her entitlement to a free and appropriate education.