ANY ADVICE???

[Guest guest]

I was wondering if anyone could give me some help on this one.

I went to a meeting at school the other day with a friend. She has been

having trouble with her son at school and last week requested in writing a

special Ed evaluation of her son. We met with the school this week. They

put in writing a teaching plan with lots of accommodations while refusing to

test the child at this time.

Can they refuse to test the child after mom requests eval?

Has anyone heard of special accommodations being made for regular Ed kids?

Such as: giving less homework

more time for assignments

teacher repeating instructions privately to child

more time for tests

provide written, clearly defined rules and expectations "

review with student regularly (this one is on there twice)

parent should spend time regularly to make sure she/he is

organized at home and school

These are only some of the accommodations.

The plan is to try this for six weeks and then if no improvement is seen

they will " talk about testing "

I sat there and listened to this child being described and felt that my ADHD

son's name could have been substituted for this child's.

Three teachers sat there and described this child as lazy, unmotivated,

bright, smart, creative, disorganized, daydreamer, awful handwriting etc.

He does poorly on tests and when having to put answers down on paper. But

orally does wonderfully.

The problem has been going on for years. The last years teacher attended

and told about working with the mom and the unsuccessful outcome. Yet the

principal said since this was the first time the child had been brought to

her attention there would be no testing at this time.

The SLP said she wasn't an expert but it sounded like there was a problem

somewhere in the brain and getting the knowledge out in a format required by

the school. I asked for at least an OT screen but they replied that was

impossible without a full special Ed eval.

I did not push anything as this was mom's first meeting, she had asked me

not to, and she was feeling totally overwhelmed. She is writing letters

saying she disagreed with the outcome of the meeting and she wants the

testing.

Is there way to force the testing be done? It seems that all of this is

delaying tactics by the school.

One of the amazing things to me was that when the " team " decided the meeting

was over everyone got up and left except the classroom teacher who filled

out a form. Then asked the mom to sign it. The only signatures on it were

the mom's and the teacher's. There was no written record of anyone else

being at this meeting. The teacher also wrote on the form for reason for

the meeting " NONE " . I told the mom to write down the names of all other

participants, write a letter stating this and also that the reason for the

meeting was parental concern.

After the meeting the teacher started showing the mom some math papers in a

response to the mom wondering if the child had any math problems. The

teacher pulled out tests showing the mom A's and saying no problems in math.

I picked up one math test that had an F and said it looked like he had a

problem with sequencing and patterns. The teacher grabbed it back and said

this wasn't a proper topic for discussion unless the whole team was present.

(Guess it wasn't any of the mom's business.)

Barb