We have good interventions here too. I think the operative term on making the school accountable is "when it is possible". It all depends on so much - the school and how effectively you can work with them, or even against them if necessary, to make them accountable and functional; the child and how adaptable he/she is to the change and the difficulties; the degree of damage done already by the school as well as the social problems caused by the other kids. Of course if a child can be kept in a mainstream setting and it can be made to work, then you do it. Making the school accountable, if it can be done, also means that the next special needs kid to come along will get a better deal.
But sometimes you end up not only beating your own head against a brick wall, but your child's as well.
An example - we have a wonderful high school in our area, it was the one easy child went to. It is a special school for gifted & talented kids, entry by competitive examination. Very difficult to get into. But a kid we met through difficult child 3's autism social group got in. At various stages he has done a lot of schoolwork at home due to physical illness issues on top of his autism. In terms of severity and social issues, he is more severe than difficult child 3. But in subjects like Maths & Science, this kid did brilliantly. The English component of the testing was multiple choice and focussed a lot on grammar and spelling, something he could do well because it has strict rules.
However, this kid was having awful trouble in the school, his mother was often complaining to me about the difficulty she was having, making the school provide the accommodations her son needed. What she was wanting did make sense to me from my own experience, but I also was in a position to hear the school's side of it (I'm friends with a teacher from that school whose daughter was also in difficult child 3's class at the local school). If I only heard the mother's side of things, I would be angry with the school for their failure to make the changes needed. But the teacher was telling me that in this case, the accommodations this mother wanted, was to basically let her son off doing the schoolwork they felt he needed to do, to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. The mother would tell me how brilliant her son was, how he could discuss astrophysics with staff at the observatory, for example. But the teacher was telling me that while he could do that stuff, it was rote learning and he had no scaffolding of the necessary underlying knowledge; it was classic splinter skills without the accompanying reasoning ability. On top of this, the boy had been non-verbal until the age of 10, he had serious physical health problems and also needed transport to be provided. The interventions still needed were frankly too great. Yes, technically the mother could insist that the school put in place everything she was asking for; but at the end of the day, was her son really going to benefit as much as he would if she pulled him out of this school and put him into correspondence? I know both options and strongly believe that lad would have been far better off with the more intensive tuition options (also geared to his giftedness) available through the correspondence scheme. As far as social interaction - difficult child 3 doesn't miss out at all. Even if her were home-schooled, there would be ways of ensuring adequate and appropriate social interaction, but controlled to ensure the boy's safety as well as positive outcome from the interactions.
This boy's mother chose to keep her son in the gifted school and continue to require them to provide for his needs, and I think in his case it was the wrong decision for this boy. The thing is - for him to get in, was a great honour. For the mother to pull him out would seem like failure and admission of defeat. But what needed to be considered here - what was going to be best for the lad? The honour of earning a place in the gifted school was clearly not helping him get the education he needed; even with all the possible accommodations in place, the child himself still struggles simply because the distraction factor in the classroom environment is not conducive to the child learning, at that stage in his brain development.
difficult child 1 had similar problems in mainstream. We eventually pulled him out and put him into correspondence. He immediately improved his academic performance. We gave him longer to complete schooling (an option equally available in mainstream for us). When he finished his schooling, we enrolled him in a college course. This put him back in a classroom environment, the same environment he had previously done badly in. But with his brain now a few years more mature, he was finally coping. he actually did very well.
I'm not saying that all Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids should be pulled out and hoe-schooled completely, and until their schooling is finished. Only that sometimes, especially when school phobia or other school social issues are getting badly out of hand for the child, they need a break from the combined mental effort of having to fit in socially as well as cope academically. Focus on just one of those for a while, let the child's brain mature a bit more, give him some respite form the added stress and then he will be more able to go back into that environment at a later stage, and do much better.
You can leave the child in a bad placement and force it to become a good placement. But it takes a lot of effort, a lot of insistence and it's not always going to be a success. The process is not only difficult for the parent, it is also often hard on the child. And as with disciplining a difficult child, you MUST win this fight with the school or so much ground is lost.
Sometimes you need to take stock of an individual situation and make a choice. And always the choice should be based on - what will be the best option in this particular case, for the child?
MWM, your son is doing marvellously now, in his placement. it is, for him at this time, exactly right for him. difficult child 3 also is in the right placement for him, at this time. It's not perfect, but the school is making a great many accommodations for him. No other placement would work as well for him.
Every case is different, every child is different. But it is most important to know that socially, mainstream is not always the best place. And home is far from the worst. We were told (erroneously, as we have since discovered) that pulling an autistic child out of a mainstream setting is a disaster, socially. In fact we found it to be the opposite. Socially, difficult child 3 has improved vastly since we pulled him out of mainstream. We gave him back the control he needed, to walk away from bad interactions. In school he did not have that freedom and he would often find himself being bullied but unable to get the support and protection he should have had. His face blindness meant he could not identify the culprits and so the staff could not take action to support him. Ideally, he needed to be watched, eyes on him every minute of the school day, but this also would have been bad socially as it would have singled him out even more.
We each make our choices based on what will be best for the child in this case at tis time. But it needs to be an informed choice, not always easy when information is not always available, not always truthful. We were told a great many lies and propaganda, by people who really didn't know as much as they should have. If I had continued to stay and fight to re-educate these people, my son would have suffered even more. I did what I could, I brought about more change than was thought to be possible, but I had to finally let go of a lot so I could focus on my son's needs.
Marg
and had no problem addressing the issue with the State Dept.of Education who made sure the district did what it said it would do. I am not a good teacher and I did homeschool L. for a year, which I feel was wasted. He also wasted time in a private school that did not acknowledge his disability...I feel that for the most part religious private schools are not helpful for our kids here since they don't have to help kids who have learning differences., but we gave it a whirl. It was hit or miss and this public school turned out to be a big hit. In Wisconsin, we can choose to send our kids to schools that are not in our district. So I shopped around. I did not want my son in a class only for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) kids and he was in a class (only halt the day) for kids who had all sorts of learning issues and because he was smart he became a leader in the class and he was thrilled being able to have that role. It gave him lots of confidence. He had an aide if he needed it for the other classes. She sat in the far back of the class and nobody knew the aide was for L. and, in fact, she was there for several kids who may have needed her, but she taught Lucas a lot, such as how to see the big picture rather than focusing on every unimportant detail...and how to organize and takes notes. That helped for later on, when he was able to handle mainstreaming. And every step of the way, I hung around the school making sure they did what they said they were going to do. And they did. And I became good friends with L's teacher and aide too, which helped.
I'll be happy anyway as long as he's content and I think he will be. He has that sort of contented personality.
