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learning to use my resources against school :)
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<blockquote data-quote="svengandhi" data-source="post: 240424" data-attributes="member: 3493"><p>You might want to post this in the Sped forum, but I'm in NY and have been dealing with Sped issues for 4 kids for almost 15 years so if you don't mind, I'll give you my two cents...</p><p></p><p>The ELA and math assessment are basically to test the school and not the child. In NYC, they are used to determine if kids pass or are held back and in some districts on the island (including mine) they are taken into consideration in deciding if a kid gets to be in accelerated or gifted classes. That said, unless your district uses the results to determine retention or passing up to the next grade, why don't you just keep her home sick? My school actually told me to keep my dyslexic child home one year. I didn't because he refused it. He got a 2 (for non- NY's, ELA is graded 1 -4 with 1 being failing, 2 being barely proficient, 3 being meeting standards and 4 being advanced and on target or usually above level) and I was told he needed to go to RR for more days (he already went 3 times a week) and to a weekend program. I refused and because he's on an IEP, I prevailed. I told them that the ELA was not designed to test children with Learning Disability (LD)'s and other issues and I was not going to have him punished for doing poorly because of his Learning Disability (LD), which everyone knew about.</p><p></p><p>That said, I will tell you that this particular child of mine thrived in RR. He made many friends (kids that weren't in his class) that he is still friends with even though he is now out of district at an Learning Disability (LD) school) and he learned that he was not alone with his issues. The fact that he was able to see for himself that other kids - who weren't dumb kids, but were in fact quite smart - struggled with reading and writing the way he did was very empowering to him. We tried one on one private tutoring before agreeing to RR and it didn't work. He would cry every time that he was stupid and dumb and why did HE need a tutor and none of his siblings did. It was awful for us and him!</p><p></p><p>My best advice to you is to use this as an opportunity to get her an IEP (skip the 504, they are unenforceable and the paper they are written on is only good for kindling). Once you have that, you can come up with a plan.</p><p></p><p>I have had all of my sons on IEPs at various times. One went from OHI to Asperger's, the next from speech impaired to ADHD to OHI to ED and was finally diagnosis'ed with a school based anxiety disorder (this is the one who reminds me most of your child), the next from speech impaired to Learning Disability (LD) (he's classic textbook dyslexic) and the last from speech impaired to Learning Disability (LD). The youngest is in grade 4 and refused to complete his ELA a couple of weeks; I am sure he failed it but all we have done is set up a new CSE to see how to handle his emotional issue as they are impacting his academics. My ED child blew a fit in grade 8 about taking the ELA in the RR and refused to do the entire first day of it - we signed a waiver and he took the second part with his class the next day. I am sure he failed as well, but the school sent me his math score and his social studies score (can a mommy kvell - he probably failed English, but he got a perfect score in SS). They never even sent me an English grade! Ironically, he is up at the HS now and is running a B+ in English. He is in RR once a week (was supposed to be twice but it conflicted with his foreign lang - apparently, classified kids in my SD don't take language?)</p><p></p><p>Anyway, my point about my ELA tales is that you need to check your SD's policy on the use of the ELA. For instance, in NYC it helps determine if a child is left back or not in certain grades. In my SD, it is used as part of the process of determining if a child gets into gifted classes. It is not used for retention purposes in my SD and I have not heard of ANY districts in Nassau or Suffolk that use it for that purpose.</p><p></p><p>If the policy is that a child who fails has to go into RR, where is it written? and if you think she is doing worse in math what is the cause? Is the work getting harder - some kids have issues with abstract math concepts and need to learn them over and over again. and RR can reinforce the lessons for her. Maybe if you tell her that RR NOW will help her do better on the math test and if she continues to do better that would be great, she'll be less opposed. Has she said why she won't go? Is it because other kids tease her, because she thinks it means she's stupid or because you have bad feelings about it? </p><p></p><p> On the other hand, I also tried private tutoring in foreign lang for my 9th grader. He was so humiliated by it that he resolved to work harder and he has been. They don't offer RR for foreign lang and besides I think he's the only RR kid in his grade taking a language!</p><p></p><p>I don't know how your daughter would react to a private tutor but before I spent a ton of money on it ($80/hr for the lang tutor, $100/hr for my daughter's math tutor because I couldn't get her classified and into RR), I would try RR. I admit I resorted to small bribes at first for going and cooperating. I'm not above buying them. I figure if I work extra hard at work, I'm supposed to get a bonus or at least a decent raise, so why shouldn't they?</p><p></p><p>The thing about your post that really has me confused is that I don't understand how on the one hand, they can say she is deteriorating academically and on the other hand, not want to classify her and give her an IEP. If you need an advocate or just want to speak to one, I can get you the name of someone I believe may be near you.</p><p></p><p>My best advice to you is get her on the IEP asap and try to figure out the services. Is her only academic issue math? It sounds like she has anxiety as well. We had in school counseling for that. Does she need to have the ability to leave the room and go to a safe place if she feels overwhelmed? You might want to ask them to do a functional behavioral analysis. I finally demanded one for my ED son in grade 6 and it was amazing what a difference it made. We were finally able to figure out that his acting out and work refusal had a clear pattern and once we had that down, were able to brainstorm responses designed to achieve the goals we wanted - not the goal HE wanted. An FBA can pinpoint what it is within the school environment that is causing her stress and anxiety and can work with you and the school in coming up with alternatives. With us, instead of sending my son to ISS every time he refused to write because he saw that as a victory and a reward, he was told that he would have to sit in class with the math teacher (they had a mutual hatred society) and do his writing assignments at lunch/recess. This removed the positive reinforcer of avoiding the work by getting sent to the office and gave him a different option if he chose not to work with his classmates. He is now in grade 9 and a B+ English student. If he chose not to do it at lunch/recess, he had to do it at home and lost his Scout meeting privilege for the week.</p><p></p><p>Sorry this is so long, but I really believe that kids with anxiety really suffer at school. I will say that once we had this diagnosis, things began to improve. The FBA also recommended he be transferred out of the math teacher's class and he improved so much that he is now in Honors math! Now when there's an issue, I simply tell the teacher that my son has a diagnosed anxiety disorder pertaining to school and that we need to come up with alternatives for some assignments and that because he is classified, I have that right. Most of the teachers have been very willing to work with us. As long as my son makes the effort and does what he can, they are very accommodating.</p><p></p><p>In sum, please pursue getting her an IEP, look into whether or not anxiety is the real culprit, read up on ED classification (be VERY careful here because some diagnoses disqualify you for services but anxiety does not, at least in NY) and think about putting a positive spin on RR (you can tell her to try it for a month or for the next quarter or whatever and then see what happens. My kids opted to stay in at that point.)</p><p></p><p>I hope you don't think I'm being too pushy. I just hate to see a child suffer internally and externally from the residual effects of anxiety.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="svengandhi, post: 240424, member: 3493"] You might want to post this in the Sped forum, but I'm in NY and have been dealing with Sped issues for 4 kids for almost 15 years so if you don't mind, I'll give you my two cents... The ELA and math assessment are basically to test the school and not the child. In NYC, they are used to determine if kids pass or are held back and in some districts on the island (including mine) they are taken into consideration in deciding if a kid gets to be in accelerated or gifted classes. That said, unless your district uses the results to determine retention or passing up to the next grade, why don't you just keep her home sick? My school actually told me to keep my dyslexic child home one year. I didn't because he refused it. He got a 2 (for non- NY's, ELA is graded 1 -4 with 1 being failing, 2 being barely proficient, 3 being meeting standards and 4 being advanced and on target or usually above level) and I was told he needed to go to RR for more days (he already went 3 times a week) and to a weekend program. I refused and because he's on an IEP, I prevailed. I told them that the ELA was not designed to test children with Learning Disability (LD)'s and other issues and I was not going to have him punished for doing poorly because of his Learning Disability (LD), which everyone knew about. That said, I will tell you that this particular child of mine thrived in RR. He made many friends (kids that weren't in his class) that he is still friends with even though he is now out of district at an Learning Disability (LD) school) and he learned that he was not alone with his issues. The fact that he was able to see for himself that other kids - who weren't dumb kids, but were in fact quite smart - struggled with reading and writing the way he did was very empowering to him. We tried one on one private tutoring before agreeing to RR and it didn't work. He would cry every time that he was stupid and dumb and why did HE need a tutor and none of his siblings did. It was awful for us and him! My best advice to you is to use this as an opportunity to get her an IEP (skip the 504, they are unenforceable and the paper they are written on is only good for kindling). Once you have that, you can come up with a plan. I have had all of my sons on IEPs at various times. One went from OHI to Asperger's, the next from speech impaired to ADHD to OHI to ED and was finally diagnosis'ed with a school based anxiety disorder (this is the one who reminds me most of your child), the next from speech impaired to Learning Disability (LD) (he's classic textbook dyslexic) and the last from speech impaired to Learning Disability (LD). The youngest is in grade 4 and refused to complete his ELA a couple of weeks; I am sure he failed it but all we have done is set up a new CSE to see how to handle his emotional issue as they are impacting his academics. My ED child blew a fit in grade 8 about taking the ELA in the RR and refused to do the entire first day of it - we signed a waiver and he took the second part with his class the next day. I am sure he failed as well, but the school sent me his math score and his social studies score (can a mommy kvell - he probably failed English, but he got a perfect score in SS). They never even sent me an English grade! Ironically, he is up at the HS now and is running a B+ in English. He is in RR once a week (was supposed to be twice but it conflicted with his foreign lang - apparently, classified kids in my SD don't take language?) Anyway, my point about my ELA tales is that you need to check your SD's policy on the use of the ELA. For instance, in NYC it helps determine if a child is left back or not in certain grades. In my SD, it is used as part of the process of determining if a child gets into gifted classes. It is not used for retention purposes in my SD and I have not heard of ANY districts in Nassau or Suffolk that use it for that purpose. If the policy is that a child who fails has to go into RR, where is it written? and if you think she is doing worse in math what is the cause? Is the work getting harder - some kids have issues with abstract math concepts and need to learn them over and over again. and RR can reinforce the lessons for her. Maybe if you tell her that RR NOW will help her do better on the math test and if she continues to do better that would be great, she'll be less opposed. Has she said why she won't go? Is it because other kids tease her, because she thinks it means she's stupid or because you have bad feelings about it? On the other hand, I also tried private tutoring in foreign lang for my 9th grader. He was so humiliated by it that he resolved to work harder and he has been. They don't offer RR for foreign lang and besides I think he's the only RR kid in his grade taking a language! I don't know how your daughter would react to a private tutor but before I spent a ton of money on it ($80/hr for the lang tutor, $100/hr for my daughter's math tutor because I couldn't get her classified and into RR), I would try RR. I admit I resorted to small bribes at first for going and cooperating. I'm not above buying them. I figure if I work extra hard at work, I'm supposed to get a bonus or at least a decent raise, so why shouldn't they? The thing about your post that really has me confused is that I don't understand how on the one hand, they can say she is deteriorating academically and on the other hand, not want to classify her and give her an IEP. If you need an advocate or just want to speak to one, I can get you the name of someone I believe may be near you. My best advice to you is get her on the IEP asap and try to figure out the services. Is her only academic issue math? It sounds like she has anxiety as well. We had in school counseling for that. Does she need to have the ability to leave the room and go to a safe place if she feels overwhelmed? You might want to ask them to do a functional behavioral analysis. I finally demanded one for my ED son in grade 6 and it was amazing what a difference it made. We were finally able to figure out that his acting out and work refusal had a clear pattern and once we had that down, were able to brainstorm responses designed to achieve the goals we wanted - not the goal HE wanted. An FBA can pinpoint what it is within the school environment that is causing her stress and anxiety and can work with you and the school in coming up with alternatives. With us, instead of sending my son to ISS every time he refused to write because he saw that as a victory and a reward, he was told that he would have to sit in class with the math teacher (they had a mutual hatred society) and do his writing assignments at lunch/recess. This removed the positive reinforcer of avoiding the work by getting sent to the office and gave him a different option if he chose not to work with his classmates. He is now in grade 9 and a B+ English student. If he chose not to do it at lunch/recess, he had to do it at home and lost his Scout meeting privilege for the week. Sorry this is so long, but I really believe that kids with anxiety really suffer at school. I will say that once we had this diagnosis, things began to improve. The FBA also recommended he be transferred out of the math teacher's class and he improved so much that he is now in Honors math! Now when there's an issue, I simply tell the teacher that my son has a diagnosed anxiety disorder pertaining to school and that we need to come up with alternatives for some assignments and that because he is classified, I have that right. Most of the teachers have been very willing to work with us. As long as my son makes the effort and does what he can, they are very accommodating. In sum, please pursue getting her an IEP, look into whether or not anxiety is the real culprit, read up on ED classification (be VERY careful here because some diagnoses disqualify you for services but anxiety does not, at least in NY) and think about putting a positive spin on RR (you can tell her to try it for a month or for the next quarter or whatever and then see what happens. My kids opted to stay in at that point.) I hope you don't think I'm being too pushy. I just hate to see a child suffer internally and externally from the residual effects of anxiety. [/QUOTE]
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