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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'll just mention that finding a "better public" is not always easy or reliable.  I work in the schools.  Your child's experience and learning comes down to the specific special education teacher. That's it. A supportive, knowledgeable Assistant Principal can help (and you can find out their background, if they have any experience in sped), but it's really about the actual SPED teacher. Who may move or transfer. 
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Not at all. We were at Bethesda Elementary in downtown Bethesda (MCPS), and my son had a different IEP case manager every year. Everyone who was remotely involved with special needs kids was committed to their progress, from the Principal and Assistant Principal (one of them always sat in on IEP meetings) to the case managers, therapists (DS worked with the speech therapist) and the paraeducators.

I don't know which school system you're in, PP, but clearly your experience is very limited. [/quote]

I work in a school system and sadly, your experience as a parent is limited when it comes to the school and the classroom and how they implement IEP’s. Please don’t praise the assistant principal that is REQUIRED to sit in on the meetings. Everyone is committed to the child’s progress when you have a meeting. It’s all a show… sit in on your child’s classes and see how the teacher and the special education teachers interact and accommodates your child. See how others in the classroom, his peers, view and interact with him. [/quote]

PP you replied to. Said kid is now in college. I saw the progress he was making at Bethesda Elementary. It was satisfactory, and I mean that as high praise. They were doing the best they could as a school system, and I know what that looks like from talking to MANY other parents of SN kids in various schools in MCPS, FCPS, DCPS and privates (and in my home country).

If you work in a school system and take parents for ignorant idiots, you have a problem, PP.

I note that no principal, assistant or otherwise, was ever present for his middle and high school IEP meetings. Just the case manager, one teacher, and sometimes the psychologist. The meetings and his schooling there also went well. I actually have no major criticism of how his special needs were accommodated throughout his K-12 education in MCPS. We were knowledgeable and prepared, asked for reasonable things, and they had the resources and goodwill to accede to those requests.

I've said it before on the Special Needs Board, and I'll say it again: I see a lot of parents with unrealistic expectations of what a school can do for their children. At the end of the day, even with all the goodwill in the world, there is a hierarchy of needs in schools and a finite amount of resources, so IEP teams will rightly serve the neediest kids most. Parents must understand that education begins at home, and that educating a child with special needs can't be foisted onto someone else (just like educating a neurotypical kid can't be all the school's job, but a lot of parents don't realize that because it's easier). Parents of SN kids need to put in so much sweat and money into their child's care and their emotional, behavioral, physical and academic wellbeing. For many years, our lives revolved around my son's therapies, trainings, coachings, in every sphere. We did a lot of it ourselves.

So OP is free to look into private schools, of course. I hope she finds the right fit! But psychologically, i want to warn parents out there that it's only too easy to fall into the trap of paying for a service and believing it will solve all problems. It won't. You still have a ton of work to do with your kid.

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