Posted by Elaine Austin

Pam:

I cant' tell where youare from. Here in Oregon we have special
education advoctes that are parnt educators on this system. Their
involvement is free.

One thing I have learned in the Special ed system is to choose your
battles. You get alot more flies with honey than viniegar and sometimes
it is a matter of choosing to let them be right, whether youagree or
disagree.

She will need to be retested on the third yr anyway, because it is the
law. At that time, you can have your list of tests that you want
reviewed, and the interpreation of these tests can be reviewed more
thoroughly.

What is her overall IQ?

And what do you consider 'doing well"? here, I found that Special Ed
seems to sometimes be synonomous with mediocre. If a child is tagged
special ed, no matter what the full scale IQ is, they allow the child to
perform substandardly, with an excuse. In otherwords, the expectations
go down. Be careful with this, as I beleive it is this apathetic
attitude that trains special ed kids to be less than competitive in
their education. I finally, after 5 yrs, insisted on an IEP detail that
dictated they would assist him until he reached 80% competency on tests
and work. We'll see how the tests come out at the spring session.

My point is, if she IS doing well, it will make you look very
cooperative and understanding of their resource limitations to wait for
the 3rd yr to be retested. If the plan is NOT working and the IEP is
not being adaquately implemented, then it is time to make them
accountable tot he IEP, or re-write it with more failsafe
interventions. Give them achoice and document document document!

That is the part I hate.

Elaine

Follow Ups:

Post a Followup