Reply to Is a "top" school district really the right choice for special needs kids?

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Reply to "Is a "top" school district really the right choice for special needs kids?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^oh, and of the areas you mentioned, I would pick Lexington, MA.  MA is great for SNs probably the best out of all the areas you mention.[/quote]

Should I be worried that Lexington is too “top” aka competitive for an ASD + ADHD kid?  That’s almost the top school district of the entire nation … a lot of Harvard / MIT parents I guess … lol[/quote]

OP, first understand that "top" as it is generally used is arbitrary and has almost nothing to do with the quality of the schools. If you round up a bunch of children of type A, Ivy League grads and put them in the same building, of course their scores are going to be high. We recently switched our ADHD DD out of a "top" school district and could not be happier with that decision.

In our experience the teachers at these "top" schools were actually quite lazy and poorly trained. They were used to having high-performing students spoon-fed to them and had to do little more than make the curriculum available. Teaching neurodiverse kids takes quite a lot of skill, emotional intelligence and dedication. Why should they invest all that time in struggling students when most of their student can excel with the bare minimum effort on their part.

When looking at "top" schools understand that test scores reflect very little on the school. Find a school with highly skilled, trained and dedicated teachers and don't worry about test scores. [/quote]

I definitely agree that testing scores are utterly useless when choosing a school district for a SN kid.  I'm really ranking school districts by their SN resources ... which happens to give me all those "top" districts.  The reality is that usually the affluent towns with "top" school districts are also the ones with ample SN resources.

I understand "a school with highly skilled, trained and dedicated teachers" is the best.  But I don't know where to look in order to find a school with "highly skilled, trained and dedicated teachers", especially in case of public schools.

Any input is appreciated.

[/quote]

Go to teacher training programs in the areas where your child needs help.  Take a class with these teachers from different districts and it becomes apparent VERY quickly who supports SN kids the best.  (Often there is a teacher in there who also has a kid struggling with same issues - they give the best advice).  We did this - found a better district and child is thriving.  [/quote]

Wow, that's quite some in-person research.  I'll see what I can do, since we haven't moved to (or even decided about) the target areas yet.  Thanks very much[/quote]

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