Reply to Yet another teacher has left BASIS and parents are in the dark

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Reply to "Yet another teacher has left BASIS and parents are in the dark"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]IEPs and accommodations can be a double-edged sword.  They can help in many cases but they also need to be applied judiciously, reservedly and with a lot of objective assessment.  If a student needs a large amount of extra help and a lot of extra accommodations in testing and other areas can give a skewed idea and incorrect expectations of where the student actually is at and what the student can do.  And compounding this is the fact that less and less help is available later on - at colleges and universities, for example, workplaces and so on.  The first rule is that people have to be realistic and objective - and when it comes to most parents, few are.[/quote]

There is a rumor that IEPs are handed out in some DCPS like candy. When Johnny can't read or do basic math, but you have to move him up a grade anyway, do you teach him the skills or label him so you don't have to and get extra money for him instead?  Not a BASIS parent, but to quote my husband, "you can't accommodate stupid." You also can't accommodate years of neglect. It sounds like at 5th grade, you should not go to BASIS if you cannot read, write, or do math well. Johnny may not be stupid.  He may be just another kid that DCPS failed.  But BASIS?

Lots of extra help may be a problem, but BASIS offers it to all kids.  Watering down the standards, definitely.

But if all a kid needs is extra time, IMO that is very different. Some kids have problems writing.  It takes them longer. Some kids have handwriting so bad they have to type and it slows them down. Some kids have ADD.  I don't know much about ADD, but they might need extra time.  None of these means stupid or lacking skills.

One of the brightest men I know is on medication for ADD.  He attended a top Ivy, stayed for law school, and is now a partner at a firm making more money in a year than many of us will make in our lives.  He would have loved to go to BASIS.  If he needed extra time or to take tests in a quieter room and BASIS said no, as his Dad, I would have hired a lawyer.[/quote]

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