This is part two of a multi-part series about one father’s account of working with the dysfunctional special education system. (Read Part 1 here)
In my previous post I claimed my daughter’s future was compromised by the school system’s ambition to keep costs down. It’s an accusation I levied at multiple administrators over many years. All denied it. Am I just a bitter dad who won’t listen to reason? Here’s what transpired and I’ll let you be the judge.
After finally getting the school district to begin assessing my daughter for why she wasn’t progressing academically, we moved homes and school districts. The partially completed assessment was transferred to the new district, which promptly completed it.
My wife and I attended the assessment team meeting. This was the worst day of my life number two. The psychologist shared her finding that my daughter’s IQ test revealed she was “mentally retarded.” Needless to say they didn’t have enough Kleenex in the room for my wife.
Mental Retardation (MR) was an actual classification for students with IQ scores below 80 (this is where I highlight the system is MEAN) until they thankfully changed the name in 2010 to “Intellectual Disability,” too late for my sweet daughter. The stigma attached to Mental Retardation is enormous. We have never told her of this initial diagnosis and this is why I write this anonymously. Only a few people close to me know about this diagnosis. (By the way her diagnosis changed two more times, in 5th and again in 8th grade after she scored well above 80 on her IQ test, which supposedly doesn’t change with age. I believe the original diagnosis was wrong. Her current diagnosis is Speech and Language Impairment).
At the meeting my daughter’s classroom teacher tried to give us hope by sharing that she had multiple friends who had similar classifications who had become successful business people. Unfortunately after the meeting the principal apologized for the teacher’s optimism and painted a far more grim future. We found out later the principal was not happy with the teacher speaking out of turn, a pattern that repeated itself other times.
So now my daughter is halfway through her second-grade year and they are telling us she should be in a special class, unfit to be with her peers. This may have been more palatable if it wasn’t for the fact that her previous school (highly rated I might add) denied she needed any special services for two and a half years. When I complained about what an injustice it was that my daughter’s issues were only now being addressed, the principal responded in a seeming act of compassion that if only she had our daughter three years earlier what a positive difference the school would have made. What a farce that comment turned out to be.
For the rest of second grade and third grade my daughter was placed for half the day with a so-called special education teacher. We later found out that this teacher had been banned from the regular classroom due to parent complaints and didn’t really have the qualifications to be a special education teacher. To make matters worse, her full-time aid was not certificated and was rude to parents and mean to my daughter. My daughter was not progressing academically. We complained numerous times only to be told how highly qualified both teachers were.
After tiring of our complaints the principal suggested we transfer schools to where they had a special day class for kids like my daughter. She personally drove us to the school and showed us around, selling us on the idea. This was all fascinating because she had spent so much time selling us on how great my daughter’s current teacher was.
We rejected the idea of transferring schools because the special day class was full of kids who acted out, not the same issues my daughter had. Besides she had made a couple of friends and socialization was a stabilizing factor for her. We decided to hire an advocate instead.
Our IEP team was not happy with that decision. They said advocates make the meetings confrontational instead of collaborative. In every meeting our IEP team would say they were doing everything they could to help our daughter, they had her best interest in mind, blah blah. However, anytime my wife or I asked for a service that some other child was getting we were shot down. That all changed when our advocates showed up.
Signed,
Parent of San Diego County teenagers
To be continued…
