Best Districts for Special Education

[Anonymous]

I would look at the different special ed laws in Virginia and Maryland as another factor. As a parent, I appreciate that VA is a parent consent state - only maybe two states are. No changes can be made to the IEP without your consent. You can partially consent if they remove a goal, accommodation or service: “I consent to all parts of this IEP except the removal of xx,” and xx continues. You need parent consent to add or take away eligibility. It helps me feel more comfortable.

[Anonymous]

I think it’s a crapshoot everywhere.

[Anonymous]

I have also heard great things about New Jersey.
My advice - you are playing the long game.
Find an advocate who can help advise in a collaborative way. Some advocates are very aggressive - some families need that given their child's needs OR the situation where they are with the school.
But early on - you are learning together in supporting your child's needs. In DC - the teachers and schools are not stable enough to say that X school has a strong program. Because they have it for 3 years and someone from central office comes in and decides to change things and it goes away. So everyone has a story of a school that worked for their child. I know a handful of kids who have what used to be called High Functioning Autism who graduated from DCPS and went on to be successful in college.

[Anonymous]

I have been thrilled with my son’s experience at Woodley Hills in Fairfax County (Mount Vernon area). They are able to dial up and down services as he needs and work closely with us. He has an IEP and all of his teachers (gen Ed, although they started him in the Special Ed class) are aware of the contents and reference it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever you do, do not go to Charles County (south of PG).

Why is this? We are new to Charles County and this is concerning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would look at the different special ed laws in Virginia and Maryland as another factor. As a parent, I appreciate that VA is a parent consent state - only maybe two states are. No changes can be made to the IEP without your consent. You can partially consent if they remove a goal, accommodation or service: “I consent to all parts of this IEP except the removal of xx,” and xx continues. You need parent consent to add or take away eligibility. It helps me feel more comfortable.

Consent right are important, but they only get you so far. You still have to get the IEP you want first, and consent rights can't help with that.

- special ed attorney

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your child will need an autism program with smaller classes (any level of autism including HFA), Montgomery county has the best options. However, if your child will be fully mainstreamed, I wouldn’t recommend.

Agree. Mainstreaming kiddos on montgomery county get ignored and bullied by both students and teachers in montgomery county but if they will be in a contained program it's an okay place

Our mainstreamed ASD child with an IEP has never been bullied but I can echo the experience of being ignored by teachers. Most teachers don't have the time, expertise or resources to meet DC's needs and the in-school services are totally inadequate. I don't know which schools or systems do better with this population. I have read and heard positive reviews of many of MCPS' self-contained ASD programs.

[Anonymous]

I would highly NOT recommend MoCo and don’t know what the posters here are talking about. Our experience with our 9 year old autism adhd son has been terrible for the past 4 years, who entered MoCo at pep in 2020. We actually had to pull him out 2 months ago and homeschool him, despite living in a “good” Cluster (Churchill). Join xminds and talk to other MoCo parents of special needs kids before making the leap. We moved from Philly suburbs area where there is a lot more resources for autism kids and are considering moving back as the resources in comparison in the DMV area as a whole have been terrible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New Jersey. I'm only half joking. I wish we had left here years ago. Too late now, for various reasons.

This was what I was going to say. A friend changed careers and moved across the country because he didn't know what to do for his ASD child in his west coast city (they had tried both private and public schools with no success) and said it was 100% worth it in terms of the difference in services and support his child got. He went from basically not attending school to graduating from high school and going on to college, and his parents credit the school system for a LOT of that.

Another friend just moved there with two ADHD/dyslexic kids and again, she said the difference in supports they receive is just unbelievable. The school district is active in trying to figure out what services they can provide that will help make the kids more successful, v. their past school, where it felt like they were fighting the school every step of the way.

Which parts of NJ?

[Anonymous]

I’m reading this as the parent of a neurodivergent kid in Westchester County, NY and my jaw is on the floor. We have had no issues getting the necessary supports for our kid and he is thriving and happy in school. Having grown up in MoCo and lived in DC it would never have occurred to me that parents in such an affluent area would struggle to get services for their kids, especially since the districts aren’t tiny. Legal precedent here in NY makes it very easy to sue for services which may have something to do with the process here. There is also no shame in neurodivergence in our affluent community that I have encountered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your child will need an autism program with smaller classes (any level of autism including HFA), Montgomery county has the best options. However, if your child will be fully mainstreamed, I wouldn’t recommend.

This is a blatant lie. Moco absolutely does not provide smaller classes for HFA in any shape or form. They push HFA kids into mainstream and then wait to see if they fail badly enough to put them into a different program. There is a lot of gatekeeping and spots are limited in the Aspergers MS program. Furthermore, there is a lot of political activism happening through the school system via budget reshuffling, and some of the previously good ASD programs are being dismantled in the name of equity - see the recent Newsweek piece on Darndestown Learning Center situation.

I bought in Whitman cluster before we knew we will need special education services and if I had to do it again I would buy in Arlington or Fairfax. MCPS is a hot mess.

We are in Whitman cluster and had a similar experience. Mainstreamed Special Ed was large, chaotic, impersonal, inconsistent, teacher quality ranged widely, and the IRL services were a shadow of what was documented in the IEP. But even after hiring three different advocates, we were not offered placements with smaller classes or programs. From what I read on DCUM, the smaller MCPS programs are good but are either limited, or recently cut. I know students similar to our child who are struggling in both DCPS and Fairfax County.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m reading this as the parent of a neurodivergent kid in Westchester County, NY and my jaw is on the floor. We have had no issues getting the necessary supports for our kid and he is thriving and happy in school. Having grown up in MoCo and lived in DC it would never have occurred to me that parents in such an affluent area would struggle to get services for their kids, especially since the districts aren’t tiny. Legal precedent here in NY makes it very easy to sue for services which may have something to do with the process here. There is also no shame in neurodivergence in our affluent community that I have encountered.

We moved out of Westchester county due to the awful fighting with the school district's apathy and negligence through every single step of the CPSE/IEP process.
My point is that there's no one size fits all good school district, which makes OP's question really hard to answer.
Our kid in DCPS is currently getting more supports than in Westchester, and that'll probably shock anyone, but I'm not going to recommend DCPS based on our single experience, it just to say that the circumstances worked out better that way (and far more affordably). It may change down the road, we may go back to Westchester, who knows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your child will need an autism program with smaller classes (any level of autism including HFA), Montgomery county has the best options. However, if your child will be fully mainstreamed, I wouldn’t recommend.

Second this.

[Anonymous]

I have been seeing a lack of speech therapy on IEPs for non verbal kids in FCPS Autism programs which is frankly shocking.