S/O How Hard Do You Think It Is To Get Academic Accommodations?
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Anonymous
I have a TON of experience, unfortunately, with getting services from different MCPS schools, and can tell you that your situation is the exception rather than the norm, which is the reverse of what it should be. |
Anonymous
Well perhaps you are asking for too much! For us it has been a tiny struggle (if you want to call it that)...i.e. trying to take things off the list each year, but we have been successful at maintaining our accommodations over several years without any legal counsel (just updated testing)...and now entering high school. MCPS parent |
Anonymous
NP. It was a huge struggle for us and I know we aren't alone. It seems some schools are easier than others, but that doesn't mean it's easy all around. Our experience was long, expensive and frustrating. Once we had a good IEP written (thanks to an advocate and pricey outside testing), the team was much more cooperative but by then our child's self esteem had taken a major hit and he had lost about 18 months of academic gains. |
Anonymous
What planet are you from? We had to fight like crazy even after a diagnosis from KKI and reports from several specialists there.
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Anonymous
where are you? we'd like to switch to your school.
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Anonymous
| I am ON a school team that decides whether kids should get IEPs. There have been times when I have fought tooth and nail to get kids needed services and hit a brick wall with my own team. Folks, it is often NOT easy to get services. |
Anonymous
Thanks for your support. I've often wondered what some of the team members were thinking. I wonder how they can say some of the things they do with a straight face. Once or twice, I've even repeated back what was said to confirm. I raise my eyebrows as I'm saying it to communicate 'seriously, is this what you're saying?'. The teacher usually just looks away. It must suck. Sucks more for me and my kid but it still sucks for them. |
Anonymous
That's the worst... when the teacher looks away because she knows better but doesn't have the guts to stand up to the rest of the team.
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Anonymous
For YEARS in MCPS - 504 teams would argue what is considered a "significant impairment" and conclude if your child was receiving passing grades then he/she was not significantly impaired. Only LAST YEAR did this change to "Does the child need the accommodations for EQUAL ACCESS?" in the course (including above grade level courses). This change was so new at our 504 meeting that the principal needed to be lectured by the school psychologist on the change in the middle of our meeting. For kids who have high IQ's but also have learning disabilities, the change in interpretation opened the door for access to basic accommodations where otherwise they did not have an even playing field. Even under the new standard, it took $5,000 for 8 hours of private testing and evaluation to identify my child's needs and provide the documentation to the school. Who would want to outlay the financial expense and go through meetings after meetings if their child truly did not need the accommodations? Also, accommodations can be taken away if the child does not use them and in MCPS, the teachers collect data on how often the child uses an accommodation. Say a family was able to pay a professional for a bogus diagnosis and they went through the hellish process and by some miracle go the accommodation, if the child does not use the accommodations on a routine basis, the accommodations are viewed as not needed and are short lived on the 504 plan. |
Anonymous
As I was leaving the IEP meeting today, I was thinking of this thread. My 6th grader is at/above grade level in every academic area except math. He's never been on grade level for math and has never passed a math SOL. The school team is, again, proposing to do exactly what was done the last 7 years - he's been in a self-contained special ed classroom for math for 7 years. They refuse to do anything different. You really think that my insistence on them doing something different - something more intensive - is asking too much? With 7 years of data on his progress, I can tell you that my DS will NEVER pass math and will NEVER be on grade level. Yet, he's able to be at/above grade level in every academic area in the general education classroom. You have no idea what it's like and can't see beyond your own experience. |
Anonymous
I'm an adult but I have learning disabilities and in the late 80's and early 90's, was given both extended time on tests and was allowed to take tests in a separate location. I actually never ever wanted/needed either option and only used them when I was forced to (to take my SAT's). Here's why: 1. By the time a test came around, I didn't need to think long and hard to recall the answers. I either knew the material or didn't. My handwriting may have been messy because my fine motor skills suck, but it was legible for any teacher to read. So extended time was useless for me. 2. Initially, I thought having a separate location would mean a quiet room all alone by myself, maybe with a teacher there too. But no - a separate location meant all the other kids who couldn't behave were also in that room, constantly throwing things, yelling, getting in fights, shoving chairs (sometimes into the back of my chair), and generally distracting me. Also, being away from my class during a test meant that if a kid in my class found a test question that had two possible right answers and the teacher agreed and said "You're right, I'll accept either B OR D as an answer," I missed out on that information and might genuinely think the answer was C, not having the same advantage everyone else in the class had to be given that freebie of an answer. (Also, the teacher who manned the resource room in my high school was a kind woman whose kindness extended a little too far. She GAVE ME ANSWERS TO TESTS. It really pissed me off because I may have sucked at school, but was honest about it. I took pride in my work even if I knew it was terrible. One time she gave me so many answers to a test that I wrote "Sheila Cohen" in place of my name, because all the work on the test was HER work, not mine.) 3. Everyone knows only the stupid kids take the test elsewhere. For a kid who isn't popular, the LAST thing they want is yet another reason to be made fun of. Even if a separate location HAD been helpful, I'd have sucked it up and suffered just to avoid being told to have fun in the retard room. I'm sure they call it something else now, but I'm also sure kids still get the point across - you're leaving because you're stupid. I fought and lost the battle to take my SAT's in the gym with the rest of my grade. My nerves were already frayed from the stress of that test, and I actually had to ask to be excused to go sit outside and breathe because of how rowdy the kids in the "separate location" were behaving. When my mother picked me up she took one look at my face, drove me home in silence, and then told me to take my Walkman and go walk it off (1993). That's how tightly wound I was after the test. So please don't think there's any advantage to being given a separate location (extended time, I'll give you that one). |
Anonymous
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Our ES in FCPS got the ball rolling without us doing anything at all and the MS has continued to offer more services than, frankly, we would like. It's always a fight to get them to reduce services so that DC can have time for other things than service hours, many of which, frankly, aren't all that effective (if at all).
As for the notion that we would get a label on purpose to get a leg up on god knows what...sure. Like I'd cut off my arm in order to get eternal sympathy as an amputee. I gave up a flourishing and lucrative career to deal with my child's issues, because it became clear very early on that there's only so much the schools can do well. And I'm one of the lucky few who could afford to do that. |
Anonymous
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OP here - I think a lot of parents on the board interpreted the question as "Is it easy to get appropriate services for a kid with genuine needs?"
We all know the answer to that is probably no. The more salient question, for this particular discussion, is "Is it easy to get testing accommodations only for a fake need, if you've got the money laying around?" The secondary question is "Will testing accommodations help a typically developing pupil outperform their peers?" I genuinely don't know the answer to that. |
Anonymous
Do you think this ends up adding to the cost of special ed students? Seeing the multi year struggle and countless meeings and fights that a good friend experienced, I can't help but hink fcps wastes a ton of money in the fight against accomodations that do not cost too much to begin with. |
Anonymous
If every kid were tested most would come out with areas of strengths and weaknesses, which a psychologist can then use to craft a reason a kid needs accommodations. So I don't think it is fake testing, there just isn't a need if a child really isn't struggling at school. I think the parents doing this "fake testing" are not being truthful when the psychologist asks if their child is struggling at school or to complete homework in a timely manner. The answer to the second question is YES, extra time benefits kids with and without disabilities in the SAT. It helps medium to higher performing students and really doesn't have much of an effect on lower performing students. Here is a study ETS published http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RR-05-20.pdf |