Teach Effectively!

A blogger who identifies herself as Stasha posted a note about her recent experiences with her son’s school. She reported that after she suspected problems when the boy was in first grade, she approached the school but got no help. She pursued private testing and the school then completed its own testing, but refused to declare him eligible for services. Then she thought she got help from the principal: A 504 plan was developed and implemented.

Fast forward 3 years of fighting with the teachers and the resource faculty. This year we have a new principal and a new resource teacher and my son only reads on a 1st grade level. The school psychologist doesn’t think he has any psychological issues beyond the coping mechanisms he’s developed to hide his learning disability. I’ve now hired a private tutor who wanted to come to the school and do one of his sessions during the time that he was in school. We tried it once. The principal and new resource teacher had an absolute hissy fit. We started going over files. All the stuff Barb gave me, all the copies of the independent testing, the 504 that we wrote up with the former principal - - NONE OF IT IS IN THE FILES. The only thing in the file is the testing the school did that showed he was on grade level and the 504 that we refused because I was not going to medicate him for a condition he doesn’t have.

So the principal and the resource teacher are jumping all over me for not having him tested when he first started falling behind. I just sat there dumbfounded. For FOUR YEARS I have been begging for help. Now they’re saying that I’m the problem because the previous resource teacher is claiming that we refused to allow her to work with him. EXCUSE ME???

Stasha goes on to explain that she has provided documentation, but will continue to secure private tutoring for her son. I don’t blame her for making the effort. I hope it’s very powerful tutoring. It is really too bad so much time was lost. The boy’s getting older; the peer group is about to take over for his parents as the most potent force in his life.

To the extent that objective assessments reveal deficits, this sure looks like one of those cases where the push not to identify students trumped a child’s needs. Apparently, the general education environment wasn’t supple enough to adapt to his needs, didn’t make the necessary adjustments, didn’t monitor progress, etc. Given today’s climate, there will probably be 90 days of weak interventions under the guise of “response-to-intervention,” and even more valuable time will be lost.

Link to Stasha’s posting.