I’m mad… it could have been my son (I was so afraid at how close I think we came to that too). It could be yours. And, this family, in addition to several, no, not just several, this turning out to be hundreds of other families here are being hurt. Emotionally, Socially and the most devastating and undeniable, Educationally… We are being bullied… the worst part? My family and all of these other families, are not only providing you your paycheck with out any say in the matter, but our futures are irrevocably being altered because of your malfeasance.

Parents know their children. Parents know what is wrong, and what is right for their kids. Parents however, are made to feel stupid, made to feel isolated, made to feel like failures by the very people we reach out to when our kids are not only struggling in school, but hate school. I now know without a doubt that when a kid is receiving an education that really helps them to learn, they are at least willing to go to school… that definitely was not the case while at TCPS… it was more like a gut wrenching aversion each and every morning.

TCPS was not kind to me or my son. Trust me, that is an understatement. In the 2008/2009 school year alone, they confiscated my son’s laptop when they could not produce genuine, tangible evidence supporting their ascertainment that he made progress. They falsified documents stating they were of my son’s authoring. They edited, removed, altered and omitted documents when I asked for my son’s transcripts. They lied to me. They treated my son like an idiot. They spied on him with their “monitoring” program. I even think they hacked my computer several times. In no uncertain terms, they bullied us badly.

Last year, when the State decided that they were to provide an explanation and compensation for not  appropriately identifying one of his learning needs, this district decides 4 hours, just 4 minute hours of tutoring would be sufficient to make up for years of not identifying it… and they said, if you don’t like it, then file for a due process hearing…. 4 hours… arrogant jerks. We’re now into more like our 144th hour of tutoring and still have more to go. jerks. And a few months ago, one of their accountants called to asked for my fed id# because I was classified as a vendor… yes, as in one who provided services to them… guess I was the first parent ever that they ever wrote a check to – for $160.00. Jerks.

Most would think, alright you’ve moved your son out of the district, he’s doing great, move on…let go. I ask myself the same question each and every time I pass a particular car on the road.

Why can’t I? Well, let’s see… Not only has there been one child who we’ve lost, whose family was played like mine. There are several families facing IEP meetings, who are scared, who don’t know their rights, who don’t understand half of what this district’s mumbo jumbo they spew during meetings,  and what these people (the “experts) divine from their testing. And time and time again, I read their “diagnosis”, I read their “accommodations” and then I read their “Goals and objectives” and the ways they have decided to “determine progress”. It is, time and time again, horsepuckey. So I refer the parents to Wright’s Law, to LD online, to Parent’s Place and half a dozen other resources and I grind my teeth at the temerity this district continues to display when it comes to appropriately and proactively identifying children with learning needs.

More reasons. I live in a neighborhood where several kids have dropped out, several are in and out of the school’s punitive programs, almost all of the kids attending public school cannot spell. And, only 1 has gone on to college. This is also a neighborhood shared by a person who manipulates facts, manages to control content that is printed publicly, and willingly accepts a raise when all those around teaching our children are denied one.

Other reasons why I cannot move on… In addition to the very brief details above, I now have two separate but identical instances of substantial educational progress being made, however, they are at my own expense – an expense that was forced… allow my son’s further emotional and educational deterioration, or fight for his life and his future. By hiring a tutor and placing him an environment that will help him actually learn grow and succeed, we, I pray, have hope.

Look, on one hand I am so grateful that he has found a second chance to realize his dreams of a future like he has always wanted… and I love the schools he has and is attending… but then, when I look at the flagrant expenses of this district, and knowing that BY LAW, if the school cannot provide the education appropriate to his needs, then they are to willingly provide that appropriate placement. They have the federal and state funding to do so – for many of our kids… but they don’t. They won’t. The shuffle it and waste it. And they dare us to defy them, to make them accountable. They say sure… disagree with what we say and see what will happen… try and take us to court. Afterall, they have million dollar budgets they use like monopoly money.. and will wipe out your meager budget if you do.

So I’m living a tighter financial existence than I have in many, many years, but my children, and their future is why I am doing it. And unfortunately, I know I exhausted every possible avenue of creating an educational plan to help my son, but they refused, blatantly refused to help him (or all of the other kids for that matter).

I am so resentful that now, about $100,000 dollars later, it’s not gone into having a college fund for my kids, or adding a desperately needed  extra room to our house, that we’re literally down to our last dollars on a regular basis, that we had to wait two years to get our failed septic system replaced, other numerous other things we have had to either give up or juggle until a later date and forget about my credit rating nowadays… that so much anxiety, angst, frustration, and money was spent, and so much time was lost…

Don’t get me wrong though… I’ve not become this crazed obsessive maniac.. I’ve just had a really, really bad taste put in my mouth for a long time. Just when I think it’s gone, it comes back, and it’s like a really bad case of heartburn… that no matter how many antacids you take, it won’t go away. When I hear how it continues to happen to other families, it reminds me of all that we have been unnecessarily put though.

This all started back in the 3rd grade… even as early as the 1st grade, my son needed help… and they had the tools, the programs and the experts to say yes, he is Dyslexic, Dysgraphic and they could have gotten him on the right track all those years ago. He could have been the kid who loved to read, the honor roll student, he could have been the kid who loved school for all of these years…instead, back then, he wouldn’t work, or made noises and  they punished him by placing him in a plexi-glass solitary confinement room many times. He was just talking about it last night. Fortunately, now he can make light of it, but to a kid who is being locked up because they simply do not understand what they are learning, he was petrified back then… and their response was to punish him. Oh the explicatives my brain is reciting right now. He also recalled several other times he was punished over the years by this school, when all the kid wanted was for someone to take him by the hand and show him how to learn… explicative, explicative, explicative…

It has only been when he has been privately placed that he went from aversion (while at the public school) to almost really liking it. We’re still struggling here and there, but it’s nothing compared to what it used to be. But, I know my son is happy. He has friends. He plays sports. He is actually earning grades that are a truthful representation of a challenging curriculum and he is rising to the occasion! He’s acing Science and Geometry, he knows how to spell high school level words and use them correctly in not just sentences but multiple paragraphs – with detail, correct punctuation and grammar!! Two weeks ago, he wrote the most amazing 2 PAGE essay. Yes, TCPS, 2 PAGES, not two paragraphs, like you had as his “goal” (which were overlooked for punctuation, grammar and spelling errors). That still confounds me – your pathetic goals. Not a shred of the state curriculum, not a bit of research based evidence for appropriate services… nothing… grrrr

These nincompoops regularly changed their “determination of findings” from their haphazard evaluations, instead of acknowledging parental and expert input from me and those I hired. They regularly excluded him from accessing the curriculum in a manner that is specific to his needs and they allowed him, like many kids to just basically know that they were not going to be taught, allow them to get frustrated and resentful… and become discipline issues… thereby fast-tracking them to dropping out, expulsion or worse. This school district’s board members, lawyer, supervisors and superintendents all know what was being done to us, and they allowed it. I’m an agry mom, because there is IDEA, there is Section 504, the ADA… and so many laws this school violated with just our situation alone, but….

They used the old “Litigating the Margins” tactic on me. Exhausting us with useless meeting after meeting (each escalating in their intimidation tactics), until it reached a point that we had to give up. I mean seriously had to give up. I hate giving up. But, I couldn’t keep participating in futile meeting after meeting, (cha-ching on both sides of the table) where absolutely nothing changed except the lengths they  were going to to discredit me. The lawyer I had hired toward the end, said she simply could not risk her own practice for fear of a “liability” or “frivolity” claim (yes, their lawyer actually inferred both of those) after we clearly not only rejected their half *ssed IEP’s, their falsified claims of progress, their implied threats when we did file several due process requests. How’s that for you? Now, a year and a half later, I am still so completely astounded at how they really and truly were willing to do anything and everything in their power to exhaust us. Yeah I’m mad. I have a case… a HUGE case. But, since I have for the past hmmm… 7 years now been paying for various evaluations, advocates and educational reparations… the well is dry. Right now, I couldn’t come up with a retainer if I wanted to. And they know it. ***holes.

Trying to be the type of person who almost always has earnestly taken what they have learned and find a way to make the most of it… have been for the past 4 years or so, reaching out to other parents of kids who are Dyslexic or have other similar learning difficulties….I think, all told, I know at least 100 parents directly who have at least a shred of similarity to the experiences we have had… and more reach out every day… It’s truly diabolical… it’s maddening to know that this district continually gets away with what amounts to malpractice.

That is why I’m still here. Why this blog is still here. Why there is this, and facebook and meetings and more… there are more parents who are scared. Who doubt if they’re good enough. Parents who are still being run through the same mouse maze you put me through. What you didn’t like with me though is that I started really educating myself. That the more I knew about researched based interventions, State and Federal laws and the more I realized you were feeding us nothing but lies… and the days and hours that I spun my wheels, trying to be more prepared for the next meeting, the days, hours, months and years I spent preparing, researching, writing, suggesting, pleading, begging… interesting that on my other computer screen as I look over, sorting through my next thought, I see Polera v Newburgh… no, I’m not giving up… because one of these days… there will be vindication. Legally. (just in case you were worried)

Sigh… why does this have to be this way??? I just don’t understand it… laws like IDEA have “intentions” of good. Why do you people have to twist them and manipulate them. Why can’t you just do your job and follow the law. Why do you time and time again refuse to diagnose all of our Dyslexic children? Why do you walk around with this air of impenetrable superiority? Own up to it when you screw up, do what you’re supposed to do, how you’re supposed to do it and stop trying to bury parents who know you are not… because you’re making more and more of us really mad.. You’ve already done a fine job on me..a several other families too. As I look around me, looks like you’re going to wish you had done the right thing when you had the chance and won’t be able to leave town fast enough.

Age-Old Problem, Perpetually Absent Solution: Fitting Special Education to Students’ Needs
Kelli Castellino has struggled to acquire classes for her son, Miguel Landeros, that will help with his learning disabilities.

By Jay Mathews
Monday, August 17, 2009

Miguel Landeros is a lanky, well-spoken 12-year-old about to begin seventh grade in Stafford County. He is severely learning disabled, with reading, writing and math skill levels at least two years below his peers, and needs special teaching, according to a licensed clinical psychologist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore and other specialists.

Last February, Stafford officials refused to accept that evaluation and left him in regular classes. He performed poorly, failing all core subjects. Recently, they promised to give him more specialized services, but not the ones the experts who examined him say he needs.

I admit that education writers in general, and I in particular, write very little about learning disabilities and the many failures of federally mandated public school programs to help students who have them. I often say the cases are so complicated I have difficulty translating them into everyday language, and even then readers struggle to understand.

But that is not the whole truth. I also avoid special education stories because they all seem the same, one tale after another of frustrated parents and ill-equipped educators trying but failing to find common ground, calling in lawyers while the children sit in class, bored and confused.

That is not a good reason for ignoring what is probably the most aggravating part of our public school system, at least for the millions of parents who have to deal with it. Many prefer to fight these battles in private. But occasionally, someone like Kelli Castellino, Miguel’s mother, shames me by e-mailing a thick file of her correspondence and asking me to tell the story. I will give it a try, without much hope anything will come of it.

Castellino says Miguel attended first through fifth grades at two Howard County elementary schools, Bryant Woods and Phelps Luck. He struggled to learn to read, she says, but the schools did not test him for learning disabilities until she made a formal request in fifth grade. She was told he did not qualify for an Individualized Education Plan, which under one federal law would require special teaching to address his disabilities. He received the lesser option, called a 504 plan, which under another federal law guarantees him special accommodations in a regular classroom setting, such as more time to complete tests.

Castellino, like other parents of children with learning disabilities, had fallen into a jabberwocky world of legal, educational and psychological jargon that makes money for lawyers but leaves parents with headaches and empty bank accounts. Different evaluators might have different views of a child’s needs. The laws are vague, although a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision gave parents more sway in such cases. School district evaluators — good people placed in impossible situations — might choose the option that costs the least money in hopes that will be enough. They know their budgets may not support much else.

When Castellino moved to Stafford last year and enrolled Miguel at Shirley C. Heim Middle School, she told school administrators that she thought Howard County had overlooked severe problems (a Howard spokeswoman said “not every child with a disability qualifies for an IEP”) and asked that Miguel be tested again. School officials told her that because the Howard tests had been so recent, they wanted to wait and see.

In November, Castellino had Kennedy Krieger evaluate Miguel. That report identified these disabilities, with numbers referring to entries in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: “Reading Disorder (315.00); Mathematics Disorder (315.1) and Disorder of Written Expression, 315.2 (Specific Learning Disability); Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-Combined Type, by history, (Other Health Impaired).” Still, the school kept Miguel in regular classes the rest of the school year. Stafford agreed recently to offer him special services, but in a class with mentally disabled or emotionally disturbed children, not the placement his private evaluators recommended.

Castellino, an office manager, says her insurance has covered the nearly $10,000 spent on neuropsychological, speech and language, occupational therapy, hearing, vision and assistive technology tests by seven different evaluators, including the $2,000 Kennedy Krieger bill. But she anticipates tapping her own funds for future legal and private school expenses. “I am selling my car and will be riding my bike to work, selling anything I can in my house to come up with the money to place my child” where he should be, she says.

I asked Stafford for a response. A spokeswoman said the school system provides “an outstanding education for all of our special-needs students,” but she would not comment on any individual student “even if the parent signs a waiver of privacy rights.”

Why do you suppose that is? Castellino is following the usual course, making plans to seek a court order for a better placement in a private school. The school district has lawyers, too. They do not want their spokeswoman to say anything that might weaken their case.

Here we go again. Is there an alternative, some innovative way to help kids like Miguel? Special education vouchers? Charter schools for the learning disabled? The old way is rutted, bumpy and slow. It is not taking us very far. We need something new.

E-mail: mathewsj@washpost.com

Specifically, the need for specific national legislation for children with Dyslexia and related learning disabilities. One in 7 children is Dyslexic and 0 in 7 is being accurately, appropriately identified or remediated in the public school systems on the Eastern Shore.

I am one of the founding members of a group of parents of children with such learning disabilities and have earnestly tried to work within the constraints of IDEA legislation.

However, I, like many other parents are not equitably represented, and the public schools give us a take it or leave it attitude. Our children go uneducated according their specific needs unless we privately place or home school them.

Should we “hope for the best” and keep our kids in the system as it is now, they run a very high risk of joining the 3rd and 4th highest dropout rates in the state of Maryland for children with IEP’s.

I have personally witnessed a whole other segment of local children who are not given IEP’s or 504′s, who have turned to drugs, drop out, become pregnant or exhibit other high risk and dangerous behaviors. They are all frustrated because of the lack of complete and appropriate educational support, specific to their unique and easily remedied needs.

Currently there is only one school on the Eastern Shore that helps children like ours up to the age of 14, which costs over $20,000 a year to attend.

Further, should we try to approach the public schools for private placement, or tuition reimbursement or the appropriate and complete identification of our childrens’ needs, we are then run through a gamut of indescribable and heartless tactics and maneuvers.

Our only recourses are to either hire very, very expensive lawyers and “experts”, hoping to get to a due process hearing (which is a $20,000 or more prospect), or give up and privately place or home school our children.

As a point of reference, for two years of specialized educational placement and transportation, I spent over $40,000. I hired an advocate, had private evaluations completed costing nearly $10,000 to date. To approach the public school for tuition reimbursement, and hiring a lawyer to attempt to get to a due process hearing I spent another $20,000. I am now privately placing both children at a Christian School and have hired a tutor to help my now 16 year old son. This is costing approximately another $10,000. Other parents have also hired lawyers costing between $30,000 and $150,000 and none of them have gotten to a due process hearing either. Each of these lawyers have charged us, but have not helped our children, nor gotten to a due process hearing. They have resigned because of the public school’s lawyer’s insinuations and thinly veiled threats.

Sadly, while the Eastern Shore is perhaps the worst on record in Maryland, for not voluntarily and correctly helping our children and instead, allowing our children to become uneducated, frustrated and drop out, it is a nationwide epidemic.

The State Department of Education only reviews and investigates “policy and procedure”, despite the blatant despotism and conduct of the public schools.

I ask that you introduce legislation with our participation, that will modify IDEA to make it easier for parents with genuine issues regarding the identification and placement of children with Dyslexia and related learning disabilities. Somehow, IDEA has created enough loopholes for public school systems to drain parents of every possible enforcement of the law. We give up and then the schools continue to get away with bad education and behavior.

The recent Supreme Court rulings on Learning Disability cases strongly indicate a very earnest need for change, however, most parents are ill equipped to afford the immediate educational needs of our children in addition to very, very lengthy and costly court battles.

The public school lawyers are funded by our tax dollars and the system would rather use the money on lawyers to defeat us, than implementing complete and appropriate programs for our children.

We would like the opportunity to speak with you personally to discuss the creation of amendments to IDEA that give parents a better recourse than due process hearings and thus bankruptcy.

We should not have to go broke and our children should not grow up illiterate and have broken self esteems, when a public school system is allowed to retain lawyers at over $350 per hour or spend 31 million dollars on a renovation project and lie about the success of their “innovative educational programs”.

As a voting member of your constituency and an upper-middle income tax payer and small business owner, I ask that you directly handle this and not pass it back to the Department of Education. They have been of no help to any of us.

Regards,

Parent of two privately placed at my own expense Dyslexic children.

Try Saul Alinksy – a person who President Obama has studied and followed. Apply that to what you’re doing now to the future of this nation and our children.

For reiteration, this comes from www.childrenofthecode.org and is an excerpt from an interview with Rick LaVoie. If there are literally hundreds of doctors, therapists and parents who understand what Dyslexia and Dsygraphia are, why do the supposedly “highly qualified” teachers and special education teachers look at you like you have a third head when you show them the interviews, documentaries, articles, and multitudes of information describing in detail their child’s learning profile and the solutions to help them??

Read on…

Reading Difficulties and Learning Disabilities:

David Boulton: One of the things that I want to make sure that we spend some time talking about is the relationship between reading difficulties and learning disabilities, as they’re generally thought of as two different distinct things. Did you read our conversation with James Wendorf? It seems to me that difficulties learning to read are clearly the nation’s greatest learning disability.

Rick Lavoie: Right. We’re going to get into some of that stuff. There is a tremendous discrepancy and on-going argument in the field about learning disabilities versus reading disabilities. The bias of those of us in learning disability field is that the inability to read and the reading disability is not the problem, but rather a symptom of a larger problem. The larger problem is language development and a symptom of that is reading. The Language Arts consists of reading, writing, listening and speaking, and what we find is kids with learning disabilities have global problems in language that are reflected in an inability to read. However, there are people who say we need to focus exclusively on the reading. You have a child with poor language development, and as a result of that, he has a reading problem, so you focus on the reading.

Now, you’ve got a child who can read, but who has poor language development. So, the discrepancy appears to be whether you take a frontal assault on reading, or whether you take a frontal assault on language. Those of us in the learning disabilities field would favor more of an assault on language, because again, we see the inability to read as a symptom.

Transdisciplinary Programs:

Rick Lavoie: Literacy, in and of itself, should not be the goal. Improvement in understanding of language should be the goal. There’s a body of research that indicates that if you improve the child’s ability to listen, his ability to speak, his ability to write, that reading will also improve along a parallel course. So, that’s an ongoing dispute that, frankly, is a point of some concern to me because we are just working in such a multi-disciplinary way now where the reading specialists won’t talk to the language arts people. The language arts people won’t talk to the pediatrician. What I try to do in schools where I consult is to get away from multi-disciplinary programming, get away from multi-disciplinary teams. The term multi-disciplinary translated means many disciplines. What I recommend is what I call trans-disciplinary programs, which means across disciplines, where you all sit around the table as equals not representing your department and not representing your discipline, but rather representing the child. Where the problem is thrown onto the table and everybody jumps on it. In a school setting, who’s to say the history teacher won’t have a great idea about how to teach this kid the times tables? Who’s to say that the math teacher won’t have a terrific idea about how to get the kid to show up on time for his history class?

So, what I say is when you meet in a trans-disciplinary meeting. Picture it… you’ve got twelve people sitting around the table, twelve different disciplines, twelve different undergraduate degrees, twelve different graduate degrees, twelve sets of life experiences, twelve sets of educational experiences. That’s a treasure chest of information sitting around that table. And until we start talking together as equals, rather than going to these meetings and each of us giving our presentation from our own discipline, we’ll continue to represent our discipline rather than represent the child.

David Boulton: Thank you. I completely agree with the need for such dialogue.

Learning Disabling:

David Boulton: Relative to the oral language/reading spectrum, I think that’s really important. We’ve got that pretty well-covered with neuroscientists that specialize in oral language development, the oral-to-written language continuum, like Paula Tallal, and also the work of Keith Stanovich. There’s just no question that reading (at least initially) is a virtual reality overlay to a deeper level of oral language processing. No question about that. Nonetheless, for the reasons that we’ve been talking about, relative to shame aversion, shame aversion isn’t just this monstrous avoidance of a thing called reading. It’s also an aversion to the kind of cognitive confusion that associates with reading. Children that develop an aversion to reading are developing a learning disability, in the sense that they’re avoiding learning. That’s learning disabling. Massively learning disabling.

Rick Lavoie: Right.

David Boulton: I understand there’s a neurobiological distinction that we could make between the three to five percent of the population, that according to James Wendorf and others, actually has some kind of an internal, structural difficulty in general processing or language processing, which translates into various kinds of learning disabilities. No question. But we’re talking sixty-eight percent of our graduating high school population is below proficient in reading and, to various degrees, feeling less than comfortable with their ability to learn. That’s massively learning disabled.

Rick Lavoie: I think the concern that I have is that most adults, care givers, parents and teachers don’t understand the relationship that children who are disabled in the area of reading have with the reading process. It’s a life-long relationship, and it’s a very, very rocky marriage that they share between them and the reading process. It begins in the first year of school. The child is a happy kid, three, four, five, six years old. He can run fast. He can jump high. He’s got friends. Life is good. He can’t wait to go to school like his older brothers and sisters do. He gets on the school bus and goes to school very anxious and eager to begin this process, and suddenly, he runs into the reading process; a code that he simply cannot break. It’s his first experience with failure. He’s lived in a protective, cocoonish environment with mom and dad who protect him and love him and care about him in an unconditional way.

Suddenly, he’s run into something he just can’t do, and he has to do it; he’s being told by the adults in his life he has to do it. He begins to view himself as a failure. Other kids begin to view him as a failure. The teacher and parents begin to worry if he’s going fail. And that has a generalizing effect on the self-concept. Suddenly, mom and dad report he doesn’t want to go to swimming lessons anymore. He doesn’t want to go horse-back riding anymore. He doesn’t want to go to visit grandma anymore because he’s failing at this monumental task of reading and that begins to generalize and begins to impact his self-concept.

Then he moves into the elementary years. After around second or third grade there’s an assumption we make in education, which can be very damaging to our kids. And that is that in American education you spend the first three years learning how to read. From then on, you’re not learning to read, you’re reading to learn. You’re using reading as a tool. And if you haven’t developed that tool by the third grade, there really isn’t much hope for you ever developing because most school systems don’t provide remedial reading instruction after third grade. So, now the child is floundering in fourth grade. He hasn’t mastered this tool that he desperately needs in order to learn, so he begins to develop behaviors that are troubling.

One of the philosophies I remind teachers and parents of constantly is, at any given point in time, any kid will prefer to be viewed as a bad kid than a dumb kid. If you put a kid in the position of choosing between looking bad or looking dumb, he will choose to look bad. So, you’re the basketball coach. You’ve got your team sitting up in the bleachers. It’s the end of practice and then you look at your watch and you realize that you have five more minutes left. ‘Kevin and Michael, come on down from the stands and demonstrate that passing drill that we learned yesterday.’

As Kevin comes off the stands, he slaps some other kid in the back of the head. You need to think, why did he do that? He did it because he couldn’t do the drill. He’s coming off the stands and he’s thinking, I don’t remember that drill. I don’t know how to do it. I’m going to look dumb in front of the coach. I’m going to look dumb in front of the other kids. But if I whack this kid, the coach will throw me out of practice and I won’t have to be embarrassed. Now the kids will think I’m bad, and the coach will think I’m bad, but nobody will think I’m dumb, and I’d rather have them think I’m bad than think I’m dumb.

So, kids begin to develop these behaviors of avoidance, where they purposely get into trouble to avoid being in class; where they want to develop the reputation of being a bad kid because it’s so much less painful than developing the reputation of being a dumb kid.

Inadequate Reading Remediation in Middle and High School:

Rick Lavoie: Then you move into high school. In high school people are talking about college. People are talking about getting massive amounts of reading. Now, instead of just reading a chapter of a book, you’re assigned to read an entire book. Many of our kids really hit the wall with the reading process at that time.

The problem that we have in our middle schools and high schools is no one is doing any remediation for kids who struggle with reading. When you have a child who’s failing in school, there are two approaches you can take. One is remedial and the other is compensatory. This is how it works: you’ve got a child who’s in the seventh grade, but he’s functioning at the fourth grade level. You have a gap there. He’s in the seventh grade reading at the fourth grade level and you want to close that gap. There are basically two ways you can close it. One is with remediation. Remediation says, ‘Kid, you’re in the seventh grade, but you’re functioning at the fourth grade level. I’m going to close that gap and here’s how I’m going to do it. I’m going to make you a better reader. I’m going to give you remedial instruction. I’m going to take your fourth-grade reading skills and bring them up to seventh-grade level. I’m going to close that gap by improving your reading skills and bringing them up to grade level’ That’s remediation and that is good.

The other approach is compensation. Compensation says, ‘Kid, you’re in the seventh grade, but you’re reading at the fourth grade level. I’m going to close that gap and here’s how I’m going to do it. I’m not going to try to make you a better reader. I’m going to take the seventh grade material and bring it down to your level. I’m going to put the book on tape and I’m going to modify the material. I’m going to modify the assessment. I’m not going to try to bridge that gap by improving your skills. I’m going to bridge that gap by bringing the material down to your level.’ That’s compensation, and that’s good, too.

What troubles me as I go around the country is I see that so many schools are so deep into compensation that no one’s remediating anymore. I’ll go to a middle school and I’ll say to the principal, “How are things going with the children with reading problems in this school?” And the principal says, “We’re doing great. In fact, we took all of the history books last semester and we put them on tape, so now the child with a reading difficulty, instead of coming and taking out the history book, he can take out the history tape. We’re done. We’re fine here”. And what that principal is forgetting is this: the problem is not that the child can’t read the history book. The problem is the child can’t read, and by putting the book on tape you haven’t dealt with the problem. You’ve only dealt with a symptom of the problem. It’s like if you had a terrible toothache and I kept giving you pain medication. Well, that’s going to take care of the symptom, but until somebody gets in and deals with the abscessed tooth, you’re going to continue to have problems.

And this compensation that goes on, where instead of trying to remediate the child’s problems we merely compensate for it, as a result of that in almost every state in the United States now there are lawsuits being filed against school systems who are being sued by students who have graduated in the top twenty percent of their high school graduating class, reading at the second or third level because no one ever remediated the problem. All we did was compensate for it.

David Boulton: There’s also a failure to recognize that the process of learning to read is more fundamentally engendering of the health of learning and the ability to learn about whatever somebody might need later, than any of these other particular subjects.

Rick Lavoie: Exactly.

David Boulton: There’s a major mis-orientation as to what’s most fundamental here.

Rick Lavoie: There was a major campaign a few years ago called Reading is Fundamental. In one simple sentence that grabbed the issue that reading is the basis for it. Of course, what happens with adolescence is because they don’t enjoy reading, and they don’t read well, and it’s such a struggle, not only don’t they read well, they don’t read much. They choose not to read. So then because they’re not practicing the reading process, they never get any better and it just becomes cyclical. It’s no small mistake or it’s not by chance that fifty-three percent of the children in the United States go on to four-year colleges, where only thirteen percent of children with learning disabilities go on to four-year colleges. High school is a nightmare for the person who struggles with reading.

We Forget the Adult who can’t Read:

Rick Lavoie: But what many people forget is the adult who is unable to read. The government keeps playing with the definition of literacy, but generally you say a person is illiterate if they can’t read to at least the eighth-grade level. But you need to read at a higher level than that to read Time, to read Newsweek, to read The New York Times.

It’s been estimated that you need to be reading at fourteenth-grade level to understand Medicare forms. You need to be reading at the rate and the comprehension level of a person who’s halfway through college in order to understand the Medicare forms that the government is currently cranking out.

Prison Building Programs Based on Literacy Rates:

David Boulton: Now I’d like to invite you to go into this question that I asked earlier about the relationship between learning disabilities in the field and reading, and reading as a learning-disabling process for those that don’t get it.

Rick Lavoie: Right.

David Boulton: To an extent that it’s just mind-boggling to me, when we look at the various things children are at risk for, that they might develop that could do harm to their lives, that could diminish their potential in life, the risk of having some reading-related difficulty that can harm their life is greater than everything else we pay attention to combined.

Rick Lavoie: Absolutely. Reid Lyon talks all the time about the number of states in the United States who use reading skill levels in third grade to project how many prisons they’re going to need twenty years down the line. That’s horrifying to think of that, but they really do. Their prison-building programs are based on the literacy rates in the third grade and they’re figuring in twenty years they’re going to need this many prisons based on the number of kids who can’t read in third grade. That’s how close the correlation is. That’s how real the correlation is.

David Boulton: What we’re basically saying is this comes back to the shame avoidance, the kind of things that you’ve been talking about. What we’re saying is that children that struggle with learning to read become self-disabled in some ways. Their relationship with themselves becomes disabled. They become more prone to social pathology, and it radiates, at massive expense to our society as a whole and to our population as a whole, to such an extent that this is the nation’s greatest learning disability.

Rick Lavoie: There are a number of schools within the field of education; in terms of the way we view the relationship between reading and learning. I come from the school where the inability to read is a symptom of a larger language problem. The overwhelming majority of kids who have difficulty, who have learning problems, have difficulty reading. And the overwhelming majority of kids with reading problems also have learning problems. So, I have a difficult time teasing the two of them away because they are so fundamental and so interlocked.

Juvenile Delinquency and Reading/Learning Problems:

Rick Lavoie: The reading process is the first experience of failure that our children meet when they get to school. What begins to happen is as they become isolated from the other kids and they become rejected by parents and teachers, they can fall victim to all sorts of societal pathologies. We see a disproportionate number of kids with reading and language problems, and we see a disproportionate number of kids in populations of kids with eating disorders and juvenile delinquency.

There’s a judge in the state of Connecticut who is so convinced of the link between reading and language problems and delinquency that when she meets a child in juvenile court she will say to the attorney, to the prosecutor, ‘Does this child have a reading and language problem?’ If the prosecutor says yes, then the judge conducts the proceedings in her chambers. If the prosecutor says no, she conducts the hearing as she normally would. And if the prosecutor says, ‘I don’t know’, she says, ‘Find out,’ and adjourns the hearing until the prosecutor finds out.

We’re finding that with kids with reading and learning problems, for example, juvenile delinquency, is a strike one, strike two, strike three situation for our kids. They’re more likely to get involved in juvenile crime because they can’t get and hold jobs because of their reading and language problems. They need the money, so they’re more likely to get involved in juvenile crime. They’re more likely to get caught because they’re not real good at being bad. They don’t plan real well because of the learning and language problems. So, they’re more likely to get caught. And they’re more likely to get stiffer sentences from the judicial system because they don’t handle the proceedings really well. So, it really is a strike one, strike two, strike three.

You see a disproportionate number of learning disabled kids and kids with reading and language problems in populations of kids who abuse drugs, who abuse alcohol, self-abusive behavior, suicide. A startling statistic in California is that approximately nine or ten percent of the kids in Los Angeles County have severe diagnosed learning and language reading problems. However, between the years 1995 and the year 2000, of the school-age children in Los Angeles County who attempted suicide and were successful, almost sixty percent had a history of learning and reading and language problems. Now that, statistically, is almost mind-numbing. Do the math. It’s easily seven, eight times what it should be.

So, the inability to read because of language, whether it’s directly or indirectly caused by a learning and language problem, looms very, very large in the lives of these kids. It impacts their peer relationships, it impacts relationships with teachers, and it impacts their relationship to learning. The reading and the learning are so intricately tied together, it’s such a Gordian knot at this point, that attempts to untie them and separate them into the learning disabilities camp and the reading disabilities camp, I see as an exercise in futility. They’re so closely linked, and so closely tied together.

David Boulton: I appreciate where you’re coming from. Here’s some differences and distinctions that I would like to exercise. For example, you just made a ten percent quote in Los Angeles county. That’s true on the one hand. On the other hand, nationwide, eighty-eight percent of black fourth-grade children are below proficiency in reading. Eighty-eight percent. Eight times that number are at some degree of life risk here.

Rick Lavoie: What I said was, and I always make a point to say it, ten percent have diagnosed learning disabilities.

David Boulton: What we’re basically saying is that some are so severe and so obvious that we can put a label on them in this way. But nonetheless, some six to eight times that, on a national average, are struggling and they’re not getting the same degree of attention.

Triage Education:

Rick Lavoie: Yeah. One of the problems that I see is that school systems across the country have adopted a triage approach, in terms of dealing with children with reading and language problems. Triage, you’ll probably recognize from M.A.S.H. and medical shows, triage is a widely-accepted and extraordinarily effective technique that’s used in medical emergencies. A bus rolls over and there are forty people in different stages of injury. The first emergency workers who arrive, they know their job is triage, which is basically to put all of the victims in three categories. Category A are people who are going to live anyway. They’ve got minor injuries, but they don’t need immediate medical attention; they’re going to be fine whether or not they get immediate medical attention. Group B are the people who are going to die anyway. They’ve got burns over eighty-percent of their body, they have mortal injuries. They will not survive even if they get immediate medical attention. And Group C are people who need immediate medical attention in order to survive. The workers go and tag each one of the people to put them in category A, B, or C.

Then, when the emergency teams arrive, the conventional wisdom is that eighty percent of the time, energy and resources go to group C, the people who need immediate medical attention to survive. So, eighty percent of the doctors and nurses and personnel go to work on group C, no matter how large that group is. It could be the smallest of the groups, but those people need immediate attention in order to survive. Ten percent go to give first aid to the people with minor injuries. Ten percent of the doctors and nurses and personnel go to comfort the dying. And eighty percent go over there to group C. I would submit to you that’s a very practical and a very useable technique in medical emergencies. It was invented in 1915 during World War I and it’s still being used.

However, that triage has moved into public education. I’ll go to meetings and I’ll here teachers say, ‘Why should we give this kid help? He’s going to make it anyway. He’s a bright kid. His father owns a construction company. He can go to work for his dad. Let’s not give him any help; he’s going to make it anyway. And this kid here, he’s not going to make it anyway. He comes from a rough neighborhood, bad family. I’ve had his family, his brothers and sisters. He’s not going to make it anyway. Let’s not invest any time and energy in him. Let’s take all of our time and energy and invest it in these kids over here, who are identified and we can work with.’

I would submit to you that’s against the Federal law. Federal law says free public and appropriate education for all kids. What we’re doing is using this triage to eliminate kids who we think, in our wisdom, are going to make it without help, or the kids who won’t make it no matter what we do and we’re focusing on this identified group over there. As a result, there are literally hundreds of thousands, millions of kids who need remedial help in reading in order to master the reading process, in order to prevent this downward spiral into social pathology. And yet they’re not receiving it because they’re not identified and they don’t fit into this group C.

David Boulton: I appreciate the fact that you want to be careful with the distinctions here.

Rick Lavoie: Right.

Societal Challenge to Understand Reading:

David Boulton: When you talk with Louisa Moats, or other people that we’ve talked to, it’s really clear that one thing we can all agree to, no matter what our otherwise different lens here are, that our society as a whole doesn’t get it.

Rick Lavoie: No.

David Boulton: Those of us that can read, and read well to the point that it’s become transparent, can’t really understand or empathize with the difficulty, and the effect of the difficulty of it not being transparent. And yet, a hundred million people in our society are, to various degrees, having their lives diminished by this. This is a result of an artificial process, not a natural one. It’s an artificially confusing technological mess and our children feel as if there’s something wrong with them because they’re not doing it well.

Rick Lavoie: Right.

David Boulton: We’ve got to get that as a society.

Rick Lavoie: One of the challenges, too, that you face with kids with learning disabilities that you don’t face with kids with just reading disabilities is a thing called performance inconsistency, which is that it’s very common for one a kid with a learning problem to master material and know it cold on Wednesday and not know the same material on Thursday. And so they begin to develop, particularly the brighter ones, begin to develop the understanding that school is basically a crapshoot for them. It’s a game of chance. They have good days and bad days that are beyond their control. A kid said to me one time, it just was so profound, he said, “You know, I know if I’ve got a test on Friday, if I’m going to have a good day on Friday, if all my planets are in their right orbit and I’m going to have a good day on Friday, I’m going to pass that test whether or not I study. And if I’m going to have a bad day on Friday, I’m going to flunk that test whether or not I study. So, why should I study?” There’s absolutely no correlation.

David Boulton: On the one hand, I feel incredible compassion for the children that have those kind of difficulties, and at the same time, it seems to me, for reasons connected to the politics of how money gets allocated and how that defines what’s considered a learning disability and what’s not considered a learning disability, that something in the neighborhood of eight times that number of children are having their lives mangled but are not getting the same kind of attention because they don’t fit into this box.

Rick Lavoie: Right. Exactly. That’s where the triage thing comes in, basically we’re focusing on that group of kids. Frankly, those of us in LD, what we’re afraid of is now this new emphasis on reading, which is great, is going to begin to diminish what it has taken us forty years to get, which is for people to understand that reading can be a symptom of a much bigger problem.

David Boulton: What you’re saying is that for some percent of children reading can be a symptom of this deeper problem. Arguably, and I think this is a great case, of the sixty to eighty percent of the people that are having reading difficulties at the level that they are improficient, probably sixty percent of them, the ground problem is language facility.

Rick Lavoie: Right.

David Boulton: Even though they’re not necessarily learning disabled. So, I think you’re right on here, and I’m saying that because we’re trying to defend focus on this smaller group, which I have great compassion for, we’re turning away from these others because they don’t share the same definition of problem. Even though the effect of the problem on their lives is monstrous.

Kids With Learning Problems Make Teachers More Creative:

Rick Lavoie: Right. I was down in Florida a couple of weeks ago and I did a conference. It was jointly sponsored by the Learning Disability Association in the area and the Literacy Council in the area, which is great to see those coming together because we’ve been kind of spitting over the fence at each other for years because we’re so afraid they’re going to take some of ours and they’re afraid we’re going to take some of theirs. And we realized we have far more in common than we do different.

David Boulton: Yes and the place we have most in common is stewarding the health of our children’s learning. If we come from that perspective, we say, what’s most important? How healthily we learn.

Rick Lavoie: Right. Of course, I’m out there fighting the inclusion battle all the time, and one of the things that I say is that one of the great misconceptions is teachers believe that if you accept kids with learning problems into the school, it lowers the standards of the school, and this school becomes less quality.

My argument is quite the opposite. It makes teachers more creative. It makes them more responsive. It makes the kids more tolerant. I tell an old New England story of this group of kids in front of an elementary school waiting to get in at the beginning of the day, eight o’clock in the morning, and they’re standing in the parking lot waiting to get into the school. There had been a surprise snowstorm, so the custodian is out there shoveling off the steps so the kids can get in. This little boy in a wheel chair says, ‘Will you shovel off the ramp so I can get in?’ And the custodian says, ‘Well, wait a second, I’ve got to shovel off the steps for these kids and when I get done, I’ll shovel off the ramp, but you have to wait.’ And, the little kid says, ‘But if you shovel off the ramp, we can all get in.’

You know, if you make this place accessible to me, as a person with special needs, you’ve made it accessible to everybody. And that’s something that’s being lost. My bias is we’re going to learn more about language by studying learning disabled kids than anything because they don’t get it. We’ve learned more about language since we discovered learning disabilities, in terms of how language develops, because the best way to study disease is to study sick people. And the best way to study how language develops is to study people who don’t develop language well.

What we’re finding is so many of the techniques that we use for kids with language disabilities and learning disabilities work beautifully for the other sixty percent that you’re talking about. And so to say that we’re two separate fields; it’s ludicrous. We’ve got good practices that work, and the remedial reading world has good practices, and we need to share the ideas, rather than this on-going gun battle between.

David Boulton: Right. Separate from the methodological things and implementation levels, when we’re talking about consciousness in the country to the dimension of the problem, we’re just way off.

Rick Lavoie: Right. The problem you’re going to run into it with any of the folks in the learning disabilities field is that we are constantly accused of over-identification. You know, a mother said to me, ‘What we used to call ‘boys will be boys’ we now call attention deficit disorder.’ So, now all of a sudden, the government is taking the definition of normal language and learning and making it smaller and smaller.

David Boulton: They’re contracting it in order to reduce their footprint defensively.

Rick Lavoie: Yes. And so what we’re saying is, ‘No, no, no. We don’t want to play that game because we’re already being accused of over-identifying.’ If we start talking about numbers like eighty percent it’s going to totally discredit our field. And we’re wrong. I know we’re wrong.

David Boulton: Thank you for taking the time to talk with us. It’s been a pleasure.

Rick Lavoie: Thank you.

Solutions for Learning Differences has launched its new website! Within the site, is the opportunity for anonymous postings and discussion groups.

We know many want to share their experiences, but have been basically told if they do, they will face consequences.  And unfortunately, several on the “front lines” have already been made an example of for trying to help the kids instead of following the commands from the administration. The discussion group offers an opportunity to make a statement, and to share safely.

One thing we are finding more and more every day, is that unless we make a noise, unless we reach out, and unless we literally “Complain”, the continuing misguided direction of Special Education will continue its course. Without reprimand, without question, without accountability.

The RIGHT ears are hearing what we have to say. The more voices that speak up about their experiences, their concerns or even their knowledge about what is going on behind closed door sessions, the more we can and will change how our children are taught (or not taught as it were).

Go to www.solutionsforlearningdifferences.org and join. We know there are many of you who have been intimidated… and we know that if we create an anonymous way for you to share, you will be protected. Furthermore you can help put the magnifying glass right where it belongs.

But for pete’s sake, be sure you are not using a work computer or work email address. If you don’t have an alternate email address – there are several free options. Gmail.com, msn.com, aol.com and yahoo.com

Strength in numbers, and to quote one teacher who crossed my path for only a short amount of time, but was given the kibash to communicate – si si puede!! Yes, it can be done!

And now the important news:

Court Says Parents of Special Education Students Can Seek Reimbursement

In a decision that could cost school districts millions of dollars, the United States Supreme Court ruled on Monday that parents of special-education students may seek government reimbursement for private school tuition, even if they have never received special-education services in public school.

The case before the court involved a struggling Oregon high school student, identified in court documents only as T.A., whose parents removed him from public school in the Forest Grove district part way though his junior year, and enrolled him in a $5,200-a-month residential school.

Although Forest Grove officials had noticed T.A.’s difficulties and evaluated him for learning disabilities, he was found ineligible for special-education services. Only after he enrolled in the private school was T.A. diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other disabilities.

While most of the nation’s six million special-education students attend public school, as T.A. did for many years, thousands of families with disabled children, convinced that the public schools lack appropriate placements, avoid the public schools altogether. Instead, they enroll their children in expensive private schools for students with emotional or learning disabilities, and then seek reimbursement.

Nationally, about 90,000 special-education students are placed in private schools, most of them referred by their public schools.

The New York City schools, which filed a friend-of-court brief supporting Forest Grove, paid $89 million for private-school placements for disabled students in 2007-8, up from $53 million two years earlier.

The legal issue in the Forest Grove case was whether a 1997 amendment to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (or IDEA) prohibited private-school tuition reimbursement for students who never received special-education services in public school.

The amendment says tuition may be available for students with disabilities “who previously received special-education” services in public school, if the public school did not make a free and appropriate public education (or FAPE) available in a timely manner.

The Forest Grove school district, backed by school-boards associations across the country, argued that the amendment precluded reimbursement for those, like T.A., who never received special-education services in public school.

But the high court, in a 6-to-3 ruling, rejected that argument.

“We conclude that IDEA authorizes reimbursement for the cost of private special education services when a school district fails to provide a FAPE and the private school placement is appropriate, regardless of whether the child previously received special education or related services through the public school,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the majority opinion.

Justice Stevens said the school district’s interpretation would produce a result “bordering on the irrational.”

“It would be strange for the act to provide a remedy, as all agree it does, where a school district offers a child inadequate special-education services but to leave parents without relief in the more egregious situation in which the school district unreasonably denies a child access to such services altogether,” Justice Stevens wrote. He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito.

In his dissent, Justice David Souter, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, said that the federal disabilities law was designed to promote cooperation between school districts and families in developing an individualized education plan for each disabled student.

The dissent also discussed the high costs of private-school placements.

“Special education can be immensely expensive, amounting to tens of billions of dollars annually and as much as 20 percent of public schools’ general operating budgets,” Justice Souter wrote. “Given the burden of private school placement, it makes good sense to require parents to try to devise a satisfactory alternative within the public schools.”

The Supreme Court considered the issue of tuition reimbursement in a New York case two years, but split 4-to-4, with Justice Kennedy not taking part for undisclosed reasons.

The Solutions for Learning Differences website is online!! www.solutionsforlearningdifferences.org

If you would like to attend our meetings, if you are looking for support or maybe just a few ideas on how to advocate for your child – contact Amy at talbotldparents@gmail.com

We are growing every day and change will only come about if our number of parents continues to strengthen and we become a large and loud voice against the public education machine and how they are not teaching our children appropriate to their needs.

In other news… In the Friday/Saturday edition of the Star Democrat the following notice was posted in the classified section:

Talbot County Public Schools Special Education
Federal and State Law require (CFR 399.137.226, 300.280.284) that public notice be provided to all concerned citizens, representatives of private schools, teachers, parents and guardians to be notified annually of their opportunity to participate in hearings and provide comment to Talbot County Public Schools on the following: development, planning and operation of special education programs; PL 100-297 local application development; PL 101-476 local application development; which students will receive benefits; how student needs will be met; what benefits will be provided; how the projects will be evaluated; local Comprehensive Plans; Personnel Development Plan; and Reports.

Documents for fiscal year 2010 will be available for review at the Talbot County Education Center from 8:30am to 4:30pm for all interested parties and concerned citizens. Comment forms will be available for input at the Talbot County Education Center during the week of May 18-22, 2009. Please contact Jean Carrion, Supervisor of Special Education at 410-822-0330, if you would like to review the document or if you have any questions or concerns.
S/D 5/15 2056420

A group of us will be going the Bored of Talbot County Education Center this week to review the above items, and submitting comments. If you would like to join us, please email talbotldparents@gmail.com Also, if any one can help, the only piece of regulation that has been found relating to this statement is: PL 101-476 which is IDEA. CFR 399.137.226 and CFR 300.280.284 are missing a title number. And the one title number that one would think pertain to this, do not have regulations pertaining to the above identifiers.

Last bit of news for now, Solutions for Learning Differences is in the process of updating and revising its website. In it, look for forum and discussion boards, links to helpful sites about learning disabilities and news for parents.

We have also formed a growing group for Talbot and Caroline County parents. We will be having our next parents meeting on Friday May 29th at 7pm. If you would like to attend, please email talbotldparents@gmail.com. The parents group, is an informal meeting, which we get together discussing and brainstorming each of our experiences and ways to improve all of our situations. This is for all parents who have LD children and we invite you to tell a friend! Some of the topics we have recently discussed are IEP’s, Annual Reviews, Advocates and Attorneys and of course awaiting to hear from MDSE and the Special Education Task Force. We will also be working with our legislators to enact positive reforms for our children. So mark the date, Friday May 29th at 7pm and join us! talbotLDParents@gmail.com