Reply to Experience with mediation in FCPS?

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[quote=Anonymous]OP again.  DS is at least 2 years behind in every subject. He entered K with an IEP.  Since first grade, we have asked for additional special ed/services hours.  We've not been able to ever get more than 15 hours total of special ed or more than 6hrs/mo speech.  As he's progressed through the grades, he's gotten further and further behind.  At the end of first, he was 6 months behind, at the end of 2nd he was 1 year behind, at the end of 3rd, he was 2 years behind.  DS is making progress but we don't consider it reasonable progress.  That was one of the reasons we requested the IEE - it did more thorough testing than the school did.  The test scores were congruent with what the school testing had shown but the recommendations were vastly different than what the school was proposing.  Among other things, the IEE stated that school interventions to date weren't sufficient in duration or intensity.  Which makes sense, why would continuing to do what they've been doing yield results different from the last 4 years?

I understand the concerns about LRE.  However, DS is not able to access the curricula in the general ed classroom.  His instructional and social language is so much lower than his peers that he can't keep up during instruction or in interactions with his classmates.  In fact, his classmates aren't his peers anymore.  This isn't just our observations, it's borne out by all the testing that's been done as well.  Can you imagine being asked to spend hours in an environment where you only understand 25% of what is said?  Not only is it difficult, it's exhausting.  It's no wonder DS hates school (BTW, he's the youngest of 4 kids so I've got some perspective).

We've been asking ourselves for a while if general ed really is the LRE for DS.  As much as I hate to say it, I don't think gen ed is the LRE for him anymore.  But what is the LRE for him?  It would be a special ed school where the kids have language based LD but do not have ASD, intellectual disabilities or emotional disabilities. The instruction in all subjects would be provided by a special educator. Yeah, I understand that's the ideal and the reality is that there are always kids with ASDs, intellectual disabilities and emotional disabilities in a classroom  The point is that he doesn't belong in an 'ASD classroom' or an 'ID classroom' or an 'ED classroom'.  He needs to be in a program for kids with language based LDs.  FCPS doesn't have those kinds of schools and we can't afford private.   So where does this leave us?  Mediation?  That's why I'm asking if people have any experience with it.[/quote]

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