Moved from DC to Arlington? Advice?

[Anonymous]

There may not be anyone here with a situation similar to ours, as almost every post I see on DCUM about dissatisfaction with DCPS and DC charters is concerned about lack of rigor.

My daughter has learning disabilities and inattentiveness (just starting to try meds, haven't found something that works yet). She is particularly weak in reading comprehension, including very poor inferences and inability to guess unfamiliar vocabulary through context clues. She also doesn't recognize different forms of words she knows (eg. she knows what possible means, but can't tell you what possibility means).

Yes, we tutor, yes we have considered Lab (and have done Lab summer school). Assume for the sake of this question we are sticking with public schools only.

We are in 5th grade in a charter that goes through 8th grade in D.C., and I am not confident the school's special ed ELA instruction (along with tutoring) is going to get her to competent reading.

Is Swanson Middle School strong in this department? What about Jefferson?

[Anonymous]

Have you moved in zone for Swanson? If so, this is the window where you can request a prioritized transfer to Hamm or Williamsburg.

[Anonymous]

No, haven't moved, asm ust thinking about whether a move would make sense in coming years.

[Anonymous]

No, they are not strong in Arlington at middle school and beyond. With that profile, I probably would put money into private school vs paying to move to APS.

In APS, to receive structured literacy (what your child would need) as far as I know they would have to give up an elective. So instead of music, art, etc, they do more supplementation. I know there was a push to change this - maybe someone can speak to new changes in 2024+.

[Anonymous]

What I read is that you take reading all year instead of a half year plus a foreign language. And my kiddo should only do ASL, not a foreign language.

[Anonymous]

Has your child had a speech and language evaluation? Find an SLP to work with. This sounds like it may be a language disorder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, they are not strong in Arlington at middle school and beyond. With that profile, I probably would put money into private school vs paying to move to APS.

In APS, to receive structured literacy (what your child would need) as far as I know they would have to give up an elective. So instead of music, art, etc, they do more supplementation. I know there was a push to change this - maybe someone can speak to new changes in 2024+.

I believe this is the case. Unless maybe the structured literacy class replaces reading in 6th?

We have done private LD school and public. The thing that helped the most was intensive 1:1 tutoring.

[Anonymous]

My son has relatively mild dyslexia, and received pretty much no support in APS except for a full year of reading in 6th grade. We did tutoring privately, which helped a lot.

There is an Arlington reading group that would probably be a better place to ask.

https://arlingtonreading.groups.io/g/main

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son has relatively mild dyslexia, and received pretty much no support in APS except for a full year of reading in 6th grade. We did tutoring privately, which helped a lot.

There is an Arlington reading group that would probably be a better place to ask.

https://arlingtonreading.groups.io/g/main

I'll be totally honest. You will receive little support from APS with language disabilities. To be honest, middle school is the worst for support. They're almost all overcrowded and they struggle to teach to the gen ed population let alone help kids with LD. It's very likely your kids will get lost in the shuffle. Even kids who have no disabilities get lost in middle school.

Our youngest has dyslexia, dyscalculia, and inattentive ADHD. We had 2 older kids, neither with learning disabilities, go though APS middle school at Swanson. Just seeing how the school functioned we knew there was no way the youngest would get the support they needed. We pulled them for a private school. I know several other families with dyslexic kids who had similar experiences. APS is not great with learning disabilities and dyslexia seems to be one they really don't know how, or more accurately don't won't to have to deal with.

[Anonymous]

I agree that currently there is no remediation in middle/high school for kids with dyslexia. I do wonder how this will change next year when all secondary schools are required to have structured literacy classes. This seems to be a recent push by Duran to have actual reading instruction in middle and high school as opposed to the instructional studies classes which were just glorified study halls. I think this is a welcome and long overdue initiative.

I also recommend joining the Arlington Reading listserve. You can post your questions there. Folks on it are extremely knowledgeable and have been instrumental in getting APS to provide real services to struggling readers.