No Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind. It is not simply a system of measuring a school’s effectiveness is dealing with the education of children. It is also an anchor that gets tied around the ankles of kids. I do not need statistics or evidence from outside sources, I can draw my own two little boys to tell this story.

Both of my boys have a communication development disorder. They have serious issues with oral and written communications. When they were both ready for school, they were both tested by Mid-Del School District for placement. Now I will just focus on my older boy as his case of the disorder is a little more severe. After testing my boy was placed into an assisted learning program where we went to a different school from his home school and attended pre-K. This special class was designed to help him overcome his disorder and learn the social and communications skills he would need to be successful in school.

When they placed him they created what is called an Individual Education Profile (IEP). It is this IEP that is the issue. See once a child has one, the parent cannot ask for the child to be removed from it. It takes the consent of the school administrators. Let me say that again. The administrators, not the teacher who is teaching my son or his parents.

So after his pre-K year we had to have a yearly meeting to go over my son’s progress and determine what the next year would entail for him. This was less of a meeting and more like the school district telling me that they did not want to place my son in a normal class because there was the chance he would not succeed.

My wife and I were adamant that my son had progressed well enough to enter normal Kindergarten, and that he should attend an out of class lab to address his remaining problems instead of being forced by the school to remain in 100% assisted learning. What ensued was a 3 month battle of legal banter between myself and the school about parents rights and obtaining clinical opinions. Eventually the school backed down and let my boy go into school the way the parents intended. We are good, attentive, responsible parents and for three months the school district tried to tell me that our opinion didn’t mean anything. The only thing that meant anything to the administrators was this IEP. The administrators had never sat in a class or observed my child, yet they wanted to plan out his education future based on a year old piece of paper.

So we made sure the IEP was updated, which was a battle unto itself. However it cannot be removed at the request of the parents. Now each year in June, it is another sit down battle between parents and school administrators about the future of my son. The school reading a year old piece of paper, and the parents reading from their own interactions with thier child.

By the way, he just scored an 86% in the normal 1st grade classroom on his spelling/reading test. He is coming along, but because No Child Left Behind threatens penalties on schools for children who fail, my son was going to be misplaced because there was a chance of failure instead of being placed properly on the chance of success.

IEPs were around long before NCLB, it's really a seperate issue.
You're mistaken in saying parents can't request a change in an IEP. You certainly can...you can't FORCE a change, but you can call a meeting that has to be attended by school administration and at least one of the teachers any time to discuss the issues. It's very hard to know where to come down on these when parents and the school have different ideas, some parents will never accept that their kids have a disability or problem, others will want more specialized help for their kids than might be needed. I don't envy the teachers or schools one bit in dealing with this. But, that doesn't also mean they don't make mistakes at times or that you shouldn't be fighting for what you think is best for your kids.
One thing I'd suggest is finding an outside person to help you figure out what YOU think is best for your kids, and then to work with the school. We have a "Group Homes" here, a county agency that advocates for disabled people. We meet with them ahead of time, they've helped us do a lot of testing outside the school to determine the extent of the disability, told us what options were available and what we could and couldn't ask for. They can also attend the IEP meetings (most parents DON'T know that, you CAN have an outside advocate attend the meetings and give you advice, sort of like having a lawyer with you in court)
I'd encourage you to look into that sort of help. I'd also encourage ANY parent whose child has a disability of this sort, whether it's autism or an autism spectrum disorder or a reading disability like dyslexia or anything of the sort to do a google search on IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. The act itself is long and unweildy, find a website with a good summation to put it in real people language. Learn what your rights and responsibilities are in dealing with the school. An awful lot of kids don't get help to which they're entitled because parents don't know their rights and don't understand their kids' disabilities. Even if you're asking for something that may not be the best idea for the kids (and I don't know that you are) you're still doing a GREAT thing for the kids in that at least you're there fighting for them, working for them. A lot of disabled kids have parents that don't care, just sign the IEP every year and send it back to school in the backpack and forget about it.

Everyone concerned about education should at least have a basic understanding of IDEA. I hear people railing about the costs of education, and this is the number one factor in those increases. I saw someone on C-SPAN this weekend who has written an absolutely hideous book about what he calls "myths" in education...the radical right is REALLY out there with some of this slop. He claims that class size doesn't affect education, which is of course nonsense, and several others. One is that there's no corrolation between funding and good education. This is absolute lying. Of course there is. Is there ANYTHING else our government or private business does in which people are saying it won't be done better if properly funded? Can you IMAGINE the highway department going to your state house and getting told they can build better roads with LESS money? Anyway, the argument these guys build for this fantastic fable is that we've increased dramatically the investment in schools, and test scores aren't going up. So, therefor, money doesn't matter.

OK. Right.

Well, first off, test scores are a rotten way to judge this, and comparing test scores over a set of years, especially lots of years, is idiotic. The tests adjust their scoring mechanisms over the years, a 75 now is NOT the same as a 75 5 years ago. So saying "test scores have remained the same or gone down a little over a 7 year span" is MEANINGLESS. A kid could be far, far, FAR better educated now than one 15 years ago and still get exactly the same score on an ACT or some other test. The scores matter (a little) only in comparison to other kids taking the same test at the SAME TIME. Scores being compared from one year to the next are meaningless.

But that's a secondary issue.

The main issue is money. Yes, the cost of education HAS increased. A lot.

Why?

Because of IDEA. Because of the needs of disabled kids. A kid with even a relatively mild form of autism, for instance, may need "class within a class" meaning one other teacher in the classroom, plus "pull out" classes for speech or social skills, something like that. It costs far more than it does for a typical kid who just needs the regular classes and one teacher in each for 16 or 22 or whatever number of kids. We do this now because of IDEA, instead of just taking all the disabled kids, shuffling them off to the "LD Room" and forgetting about them. I have a friend here who is the head of the alumni group for his high school class. He's stayed in his hometown his whole life, and been very involved in alumni stuff, and at his reunion met a TOTAL STRANGER, a guy he'd NEVER met. "Oh, I was in your class at HHS." "You were?" Turns out the kid had been diagnosed LD and never was in a single class with any of those other kids. He spend 4 years in the LD Trailer and just knew the LD teacher and the other LD students. Never even ate lunch with the "normal" kids.

The people griping about the costs of education need to have their feet held to the fire. Either they can agree to the need for this expense, or they have to explain WHY they think it's OK for disabled kids to be warehoused, not taught in the best, least-restrictive environment. Some really WILL think that's where those kids belong. Those of us who are parents of disabled kids have the right to know who DOES think that, and we can say THANK GOD for IDEA which protects our children from that kind of monsterous treatment.

I am qute aware that IEPs existed before NCLB. However the two programs in combination make school administrators leary of letting a child who has the possibility of not succeeding in a normal classroom inot that classrom because if a school demonstrates a repeated history of failing to educate children, they are penalized.

That was my point.

I also agree that it is important to understand the IDEA law(s).

I know that I can request a meeting, however I cannot request a change to the IEP. I can put in my inputs, but it comes down to a majority decision. My main point was that thr IEP is the main tool administrators are using in my case to judge my child and in each instance that IEP is a year old. As I said it requires a majority of the parties involved to make a change to the IEP, and the school will not consent to one in my case until June or later.

Originally Posted by Winterhawk

I am qute aware that IEPs existed before NCLB. However the two programs in combination make school administrators leary of letting a child who has the possibility of not succeeding in a normal classroom inot that classrom because if a school demonstrates a repeated history of failing to educate children, they are penalized.

Bingo.
And that's exactly my biggest beef with NCLB.
Example...I know of a child with pretty serious dyslexia, really was having major reading problems and was out of class about 2 hours a day for a very small group needing intense reading and language teaching. For TWO WEEKS, the child was in the regular class all day, no reading class at all. Why?
Getting ready for the MAP tests.
No, I see you on THAT one and you're absolutely right.

That was my point.

Sorry if I focused on a different issue, I see where you're going, you're generally right. I'd still not want the answer to simply be "if the parents say the kids' OK, we take them out of the specials and just treat them like a typical kid." Some parents just think there's a stigma with disability and refuse to accept it, some have really strange ideas about how their kid does things, or how learning should be. To me, it's like a parent who insists their child not be taught some aspects of history or some scientific facts. Eventually, you have say "I'm sorry, you're wrong," and the parent either lives with it or takes the kid out of school altogether. Now, I'm not saying or trying to imply that's your situation, just an example of how it CAN end up. That's another reason an outside voice, not the parent but not the school or a school employee can sometimes be a real good idea.

I also agree that it is important to understand the IDEA law(s).

I pulled a guy aside who was running for US Congress once, and mentioned IDEA, and he didn't know what I was talking about. Never heard of it. So, let's hope more people get out there and learn a little. I've yet to meet a serious advocate for disabled kids who did NOT start off as a parent of a disabled kid themselves. Nobody seems to notice this at all until it affects them personally. Sad.

I know that I can request a meeting, however I cannot request a change to the IEP.

No, you can request it. You can't demand it, but you certainly can request it. I'm almost certain of this. You may misunderstand what they're saying...or, you may have a school whose administration doesn't understand what YOU'RE saying, or doesn't "get" IDEA, or just is jacking around with you.
I really know my stuff here. I've studied the law a lot, education a lot. I ran for school board a few years back, so everyone in town knows I know this stuff a lot, and I've been a really active volunteer so every teacher and every administrator knows me very well. And my wife's not quite at that level, but she's there a lot, knows quite a bit about the subject, and has a real reputation as being a "bulldog" who will fight for what her kids need, to the death if neccessary. They're all a bit scared of my wife, which is fine. BUT...I have often thought about the struggles we still have occassionally to get our kids what they need, and that most of the disabled kids don't have anywhere close to the parental involvement ours do. What happens to them?
I wouldn't assume that just because the school says "you can't do this" it means you can't. Again, an outside advocate working for you can be useful there. If nothing else, it can be an intimidation thing that can help prevent them from trying to pull a fast one on you.

I can put in my inputs, but it comes down to a majority decision.

OK, we're together there, then...you can request a change, but you can't just automatically get it.
And I'm sorry, but I'm not sure a parent should just automatically get any change they request, on EITHER end of it. You may want no specials at all, just a regular classroom all day. Another parent may want every special available and three specialists assigned just to her child. Eventually the desires of the parent run into the realities of the school, and some compromise has to result. It doesn't mean you don't fight for your kids, but sometimes you don't get everything you ask. I certainly don't, and as I described we're pretty darn tough to disagree with when we put our minds to it, and we can get our way fairly often there.
But not always.

My main point was that thr IEP is the main tool administrators are using in my case to judge my child and in each instance that IEP is a year old.

What's it based on? I mean, is there a specific diagnosis, and a medical basis or some independent testing? For example, if they're saying your child can't have regular class all day because we have her catagorized as having an Autism-Spectrum Disorder PDD AS all the different lables? Where did this come from? If you think they simply have your child labled wrong, you can either get another test done (our insurance paid for ours, but we have the "prime rib" insurance plan at my work, for which we pay dearly every month) outside the school or at least request that they re-test, if it's been a while since the dx was made. That's one possible solution for you. It's always one option to just say maybe the whole darn diagnosis is wrong.
And maybe there's some specific behavior they're basing their judgement on that one teacher's really worked up about that another might not think is so significant.

The biggest problem we've had is we work our tails off to get the IEP and all the programs in place, then a kid goes to another school! They do just two years at middle school, two years at jr high then off to high school. We've had to "train" staffs at different schools every year, just about. My son, for instance, had a horrible time at middle school, got an F in EVERY SINGLE CLASS his last year and was on the verge of being held back were it not for a Godsend of a principal who was a lot more progressive than a lot of the teachers and passed him, KNOWING that he knew the material and that because of his disability homework just wasn't getting done as the teachers wanted.
This same kid was honor roll at the junior high the next year.
Sometimes, sadly, the answer is to tough it out for a year or two with people that don't really "Get" it and hope the next school is better. If you have one in 1st grade and have 4 more years with that school though fighting it out is best...get it settled NOW instead of dragging it out.

As I said it requires a majority of the parties involved to make a change to the IEP, and the school will not consent to one in my case until June or later.

They've said they'll make the change in June? Or that they'll look at it again in June? You may be in a place where just waiting it out may be the best solution for the kid, and for your own sanity, and for the sake of the relationship. My wife wanted at times to just go up and kick some ass, figuratively speaking, and I had to remind her that however strongly we might disagree with something that was happening we NEVER really said negative things about a teacher in front of thier "boss," the principal...because our kid had to face that teacher every day. We did a nifty little "good cop bad cop" thing, my wife and I, it was well-rehearsed and planned out. If someone was giving us trouble, I went and calmly discussed it, and if it became a big problem, we'd "sic" my wife on them! Again, though, most people didn't have it as well as we did, just got lucky, I guess, to have two parents whose personality differences compliment one another this way. Funny.

Originally Posted by ColumbiaCowboy

What's it based on? I mean, is there a specific diagnosis, and a medical basis or some independent testing? For example, if they're saying your child can't have regular class all day because we have her catagorized as having an Autism-Spectrum Disorder PDD AS all the different lables? Where did this come from? If you think they simply have your child labled wrong, you can either get another test done (our insurance paid for ours, but we have the "prime rib" insurance plan at my work, for which we pay dearly every month) outside the school or at least request that they re-test, if it's been a while since the dx was made. That's one possible solution for you. It's always one option to just say maybe the whole darn diagnosis is wrong.
And maybe there's some specific behavior they're basing their judgement on that one teacher's really worked up about that another might not think is so significant.

The determination is based off of internal school testing (which is then interpreted by the school), opinion of his speech therapist, primary teacher, school amdinistrators, and one parent. It is very easy for them to stack the deck against us if they wanted to. That is in fact what they do at the end of each school year with us. Four of the five panel members with a "vote" walk into the classroom with their agenda in hand against one parent.

Originally Posted by ColumbiaCowboy

They've said they'll make the change in June? Or that they'll look at it again in June? You may be in a place where just waiting it out may be the best solution for the kid, and for your own sanity, and for the sake of the relationship. My wife wanted at times to just go up and kick some ass, figuratively speaking, and I had to remind her that however strongly we might disagree with something that was happening we NEVER really said negative things about a teacher in front of thier "boss," the principal...because our kid had to face that teacher every day. We did a nifty little "good cop bad cop" thing, my wife and I, it was well-rehearsed and planned out. If someone was giving us trouble, I went and calmly discussed it, and if it became a big problem, we'd "sic" my wife on them! Again, though, most people didn't have it as well as we did, just got lucky, I guess, to have two parents whose personality differences compliment one another this way. Funny.

No we will review it in June as we do every year no promise of change or even that our inputs will be factored into anything. It is Ironic, but we also do the good cop bad cop thing. I'm the bad cop.

I am more upset because the school always come in with its hard line stance, and then when I start throwing the law back in their face that requires the school to pay for docotrs to evaluate my son in the case of a dispute, they normally back down. It seems to be more about money than children.

[Karried]

I applaud both of you for being so diligent and involved in the education of your children.

In California, my husband and I were therapeutic foster parents for abused children. A few of them had learning disabilities. I attended more IEP meetings that I care to remember. It was always an uphill battle but I remember distinctly that the social workers were adamant about going to bat for these children and prepared me for the 'fight' before going in. We were prepared and generally got what we needed for the kids... but it wasn't easy.

The thing to remember (and I know you do) is that no one in the school system will ever care about your child the way you do and you have to fight constantly for your child which it sounds like you both are. They are lucky to have you on their sides.