<p>I’m sure that an educ. psych can diagnose LD, however, I don’t know if all insurances pay for that type of testing. I’ve been told that a neurological psychologist who tests for medical reasons may have a better chance of being covered by insurance. Of course, if you can self pay, I suppose it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>The parent indicated she had already contacted a neuropsych. I am hoping that she has scheduled this evaluation. As I mentioned earlier, I think having a comprehensive educational work up done through the schools would be an excellent addition. When an IEP is developed, the present levels of academic performance in ALL areas assessed in the IEP are required. The school will NEED this information in order to set up an IEP. If you wait until after the neuropsych is completed, these levels will still need to be established.</p>
<p>I am hoping the OP is reading these posts. The big message here…please, have a comprehensive assessment done with your child. Find out what his strengths and weaknesses are (and YES a good assessment will address strengths as well as weaknesses). Work with the educational team to develop goals and objectives to address the areas of weakness. </p>
<p>Time is ticking away. Please don’t wait any longer to get this done.</p>
<p>Just a short comment here on decoding:</p>
<p>Decoding is one thing. Comprehension and retention are others. I teach ESOL, and I have plenty of students who are great at decoding, but have no idea at all what they are reading because they don’t know what those new vocabulary words mean. In the long run, comprehension and retention are what matter.</p>
<p>I am still reading. Some of these posts resonated with me, especially the one by collegeshopping. I am very, very tired. Just tired of trying. Numb. Feel like I want to talk, but just don’t want to even move my mouth (or fingers). I’ve been really sick with a virus, and I also am very anemic and need a biopsy, which I can’t have while I’m anemic, and I have a fibroid that has doubled in size over the past couple of years (stress written all over my body). I’ll say this:</p>
<p>My son had taken the Algebra exam last week. I knew he had passed by the following day. A friend of mine told me that I should not say anything to him because she thought that I wouldn’t get a lick of work out of him for the Algebra class for the rest of the year if he thinks that passing means he is “done”. I felt there was validity to her point, but I also don’t want to lie to my son. Trust is everything for me. But my son didn’t ask, and I didn’t say anything. </p>
<p>Monday he said he had 7 Algebra problems to do and didn’t know what to do with them, and I told him to use the review site he used to study for his exam. He came into my office and in this really forlorn way said he just wants to know if he passed and wants to get it over with. I told him that even if he passed the exam, my expectation for him is at least an 80, and that he legally must be in a math class the rest of the year. Then I told him he passed with a 69. I told him that we both know that he really didn’t study on his own, but given that he had been scoring about a 55-60 on his own, the one session studying one test with me raised him 10 points. There is no reason he can’t study between now and June and raise it 11 more points. A little while later, I heard him out in the dining room, laughing and cackling. He was laughing about a video, but I also think he was laughing about the test.</p>
<p>Then he came into my office and said he needed six quotes for To Kill A Mockingbird. Last year, he was assigned that at the other school, and I don’t recall that he ever read it. He watched the movie. I had given him a fill in study guide to do to help him with reading logs. He filled in some of those guides, but not many. I had read it in order to discuss it with him. Now he had to read it again in the new school. I was tired, I told him that I am not helping him find quotes, too bad. He brought up something from the book, and I didn’t remember it, and I told him I didn’t remember. All of the sudden, he started quizzing me, saying “Who is Walter Cunningham?”, and I apparently gave the wrong answer. He started bombarding me with questions about who the people were in the book and stuff, and he was kind of laughing and getting off on the fact I couldn’t remember the details. I asked him how he suddenly seemed to know all of that, and he said it’s because I had talked to him about it last year. He went back out and about 10 minutes later, returned and said “Well, that was easy. I never thought English would be easier than Math.” I asked how he got the quotes done, and he said he “skimmed” the book. Well, that’s a first.</p>
<p>Then I heard him out there saying to himself, kind of cackling, “I’m smart, I just don’t want to do my work.”</p>
<p>Today, I asked him again about the book. I said that I know damned well he didn’t read that book, why does he think he knows it so well now. He said it’s because I made him read it last year to fill out the study guide. I said “Then why didn’t you seem able to do reading logs or write essays about it last year? Are you telling me it took you until now to understand it?”. He said “I don’t know, my eyes were screwed up then. Also, I knew what the book was about, I just didn’t want to do any work for that teacher because she was mean to me.” I said “But you were the one punished, with bad grades”. </p>
<p>Here’s the thing-- I read at a very young age. I was placed in the “A class”. I didn’t particularly apply myself back in the 70s and 80s. I won the spelling bee in 6th grade without doing anything special. I tested into a rigorous public high school. I don’t recall doing a lick of homework, bending over books in grammar/high school. I did the homework during class and studyhall so I had time with boys. I do recall not doing well in physics, and that’s because I would have really had to study. Basically, if I sat in class, I listened while writing letters to boyfriends, and somehow absorbed. I actually remember getting tired of boys and “studying” for the first time in senior year, and my grades skyrocketed. I had a gap after high school, but then no issue in college. In fact, I was at the top of the class. I liked to learn, but if I hated the course, I relied upon memory. To me, if the intelligence is there, it’s pretty impossible to surpress it. However, I was not bombarded with the amount of work he is. Had I been forced to be organized and do so much work, maybe I would have done poorly. Because I wanted a social life. </p>
<p>So. Do I think my son has some sort of learning or continuing disability? He sure has seems to a good deal of the time, and it did not seem as if the vision therapy alone helped. But I also didn’t really see him try to read after the vision therapy. Or is it that my has trouble because he never read or applied himself and now that the work is sophistocated, he can’t keep up? I mean, as smart as I am, if you test me on biology and I don’t read the chapter and I zone out in class, I’m not going to do well. Or did his eyes legitimately impact him, but now due to age and the therapy, his brain is finally starting to work despite his expressed lack of care for school? I don’t know. </p>
<p>:(</p>
<p>That’s the issue: we don’t know. You dont know and you son doesn’t know. The only way to know for sure is to get a full work up done. It’ll also lift a weight off of you and him if there’s a disability, it’s diagnozed, and therefore can be helped. Based on what you said, it sounds like your son devised strategies to cope, which would indicate a gifted/LD combo, but we’re just strangers on the internet. For your son’s sake as well as your own, get him tested to get facts and real answers.</p>
<p>WAPTI - I’m glad you are still here reading the responses. I understand you are tired, mentally and physically. Please, let us know that you have called your public school and/or made that neuropsych appointment. You will have a partner in finding solutions to your son’s issues, which will not only help him, but it will help you, too. </p>
<p>Setting aside the potential LDs for a moment, your recent post gets right to the heart of what I was saying in my posts when I called you out for being an enabler. </p>
<p>All the example of his success in last post show how he does better when you involve yourself in his work/studying. You show him how to organize his thoughts, you help him work through the material, you motivate him to get work done! </p>
<p>While you pursue the other avenues, you have to keep up with him and his homework/studying. Even when you are tired and sick, you still need to show him it is important enough for you to take time to spend with him. Not by yelling or punishing but by taking an interest. Show him its ok for the work to be hard (as you did when you didn’t remember the book but he did - great for his self esteem). Teach him how to study (as you did with the book journals). Work with him (as you did with the algebra). </p>
<p>Keep up the good work!</p>
<p>Don’t make him take an SAT subject test, I don’t think… He doesn’t sound ready. They’re hard. Specific information and aimed at trig and Algebra 2, at least. They’re for high school students. </p>
<p>This student has NOT taken a math subject that aligns with the SAT subject tests. End of discussion.</p>
<p>Your last post still rings with rationalizations…maybe this, sometimes that.</p>
<p>Did it ever dawn on you that your SON might actually be relieved to get to the heart of his learning differences? I have worked with older students who were evaluated for the first time. Once the results came in, the STUDENT said “I always knew something wasn’t right. Now I understand. OK…what can we do about this?”. Your son is old enough to know that he is in some kind of hole.</p>
<p>If you wait to see if the vision therapy “takes”, you are frittering away more time, in my opinion. </p>
<p>Correct me if I have this wrong. Even in 2008 (likely before) you saw these learning and school performance issues with your son. You have taken him from school to school hoping this was a school based issue. You took him for vision therapy (on the promise from that optometrist that this would remedy the situation). The problem is still there…and even your son recognizes it.</p>
<p>You also mention a 504. Let me be very clear on this. A 504 is an accommodation plan to help gain access to what is in the general program. 504 plans do not include any specific remediation. Special education remediation is done through an IEP.</p>
<p>In addition, all PUBLIC schools are required to have researched based interventions in place prior to a special education referral. This is called RTI (unless you live in CT where it is SRBI). Schools MUST show that the student has been given levels of researched based support in areas of concern. Private schools do NOT have to do this.</p>
<p>Please, stop hoping for a miracle cure. Get a comprehensive evaluation done with your son. At least then you will be playing with good diagnostic information…and can move forward. </p>
<p>OK, these last few responses are really tiring, especially when people have not fully read all of my posts due to length. “Enabler”, “Relieved to get help”, etc.? Additionally, just because I was here to get help on my son’s math placement, which frankly has not been addressed, does not mean that I am somehow ignorant as to surrounding issues. Getting a “diagnosis” only means that I get another “diagnosis”. It doesn’t mean my son’s life is going to get easier. In fact, my son has already felt the relief of getting a diagnosis, being subjected to 20 weeks of vision therapy, and he’s somehow going to feel better for me to get him another? He’s already seen how schools treat a child with a disability-- they take the paperwork and then do nothing or cause him to be ostracized by his teachers, who then signal his peers do do the same. </p>
<p>I mean seriously, when the principal says to me “OK, we need to make a decision about whether we are moving him down, or keeping him in the class, or find some other solution for math”, I’m supposed to blow her off with this statement “I now think that the documented disability that he has is not sufficient, so DESPITE THE FACT THAT YOU NEVER IMPLEMENT THE HELP HE ALREADY IS ENTITLED TO, I am going to seek out new professional opinions, and I expect this 1-2 day impartial evaluation will somehow catch all of the nuances of who he is and what makes my kid work. Thereafter, I will provide you with a new diagnosis, and a new set of accommodations for it, and I miraculously expect THIS SET OF ACCOMMODATIONS to be complied with. While I’m at it, I know that I haven’t at all addressed for you the math placement, and we are really a pain in the ass. It’s now February of his 8th grade year, and if you throw him out, no matter where I send him after (which undoubtedly only the public school will take him), he will be traumatized and struggle to cope with a new school and routine on top of any undiagnosed disability.”</p>
<p>Your son has some kind of learning disability and yet you seem adamantly opposed to getting him tested by the people who would be most knowledgeable about how to help him. Apparently this has been going on for years. You have put this poor kid in one school after another (does he even have friends at this point? Is he happy being bounced around like this?). Somehow all the schools are bad, all the teachers are bad, and most of the teachers hate your son for one reason or another. Why don’t you listen to the 50 or so responses you’ve had on this thread, many from parents of LD kids, who are just trying to help you? The math is not the main issue here. He needs an appropriate professional evaluation and you aren’t getting it for him. Also, after a year and a half of algebra, a gifted kid should be able to do way better than 69 on a Regents exam, bad teacher or no. My daughter had a terrible algebra teacher and she basically taught it to herself by reading the textbook and did very well. If you don’t address his reading issues, he won’t be successful in high school and time is running out. I don’t think most private schools are equipped to deal with kids who have unusual needs. Are they even obligated to provide special help to kids with disabilities? All the money you are wasting on one failed private school experiment after another would probably be better spent on a specialist working with him a few hours a week to address his specific problems. </p>
<p>I’m also not sure why you are so dismissive of the public schools. 1/4 of the teachers in our public middle school are exclusively for the LD students (ie. we have for 3 grades as many LD teachers as 8th grade teachers). I’m sure it could always be better, but is your son getting anything like that at his private school?</p>
<p>Private schools are not obligated to help students with learning differences, public schools are.</p>
<p>The student here has some kind of learning issue. It could be an LD, but it could be something else. A comprehensive evaluation is what is needed. Just churning wheels until that is completed.</p>
<p>Your son is not entitled (your word) to help under the 504 plan at a PRIVATE school. Yes, they promised you help, but there is nothing to enforce that promise. A 504 plan is just to give him accommodations to allow him to do what others are doing - extra time, seat in the front of the room, directions in writing/oral if needed. It doesn’t excuse him if he’s not doing the work, even if the accommodations aren’t provided.</p>
<p>What is your goal? To get him into public high school, correct? What does he need to do to get there? I’d concentrate on that. There are a ton of students headed to NYC public schools who haven’t passed Alg I yet or bio or ANY of the high school requirements. Why? Because they are HIGH SCHOOL requirements and these kids haven’t been to high school yet. Do not worry about him needing to be ahead. Why can’t he just be an 8th grader if that’s what he is?</p>
<p>I am not unsympathic with your struggles. My daughter qualified for 0-3 care and therapies, and then Child Find therapies, and then ‘additional help’ (but not an IEP or 504). It wasn’t perfect, didn’t ‘cure’ her, but she was able to stay in a classroom. Other daughter had speech therapy. It IS exhausting, trying to find the issues, take them to therapies, be patient hoping the therapies will work. My friend’s child was also labeled ‘twice exceptional’ and while school wasn’t a problem, all the other medications and therapies were. She sent her daughter to camp for the entire summer every year and admitted that she just needed time to relax and not be constantly following up on schedules and medications and forms. </p>
<p>Personally, I think my friend expected too much from the system so was always arguing with someone and yes, it was exhausting. She wanted both for her daughter to be special and for her to be just like everyone else. I think sometimes kids just AREN’t as bright as their parents want them to be, or they can’t do a perfect cartwheel, or they just didn’t do the homework and deserve a 0 on that paper. My friend insisted her daughter use a keyboard in 3rd grade, so the kid had horrible handwriting (although she’s a fair good artist, so eye-hand coordination is not the problem) and still does. My daughter had terrible handwriting until the second grade teacher challenged her and taught her to write. Yes, very messy for a long time, but now beautiful. It can be done, even by a lefty.</p>
<p>Honestly, there is some serious comprehension issues going on here! The imminent issue is not getting another evaluation. I had already come to a conclusion that a) If he can’t raise his grades on his own, or if I can’t get these private schools to implement a 504, he’s going to end up either in public, boarding school, or homeschooled. Private schools in my area are not reliable about implementing a 504, and continued low performance will cause him to lose his place at a private high school; and b) An IEP may preclude him admission at a private high school, but it has more legal teeth if he’s got to go to public; and c) I cannot stand nor do I have any respect for my local public, and I therefore have to consider selling my house and moving to a better public district. </p>
<p>The topic of discussion is my imminent issue of handling this math issue. The last time I had an appt. with a highly recommended neuropsych, she booked me a month in advance, and she had essentially retired, but agreed to see my son and get it done because of who I am and who I know. When I call again, it’s going to be the same, an appointment in a month. I have a letter on my table from last week from the principal, wanting my input on either keeping my son in his current Algebra class, or moving him down to Math 8. This letter predated his Regents exam, which he passed. I cannot ignore this letter. I have to make a decision. And I’ve got to say, given that the teachers DO NOT comply with the 504, that is a problem. I pay tuition</p>
<p>Last night, for the hell of it, I had my son pull up a NY 8th grade math assessment online from 2010. The topics were things like figuring out the degrees of angles at intersections and stuff. Neither of us got out paper, I knew the answers just looking, because I know that both sides have to equal 180 degrees. He’s not as fast as I am and he went about one problem with more steps than needed, but the fact is that he knocked off the first several problems correctly without needing paper. The subject matter, at least as evidenced by standardized testing, is NOT a challenge. Coupled with getting him any assistance he legitimately needs, I also need to ensure that he is challenged just enough to keep moving forward, without drowning. It does not serve him to be enrolled in a subject that a standardized test shows that he can master. What he needs to master is how to be a successful student. Getting him to understand, complete, and turn in HOMEWORK is the problem. Getting him to STUDY effectively for teacher concocted tests is the problem. It is his in class performance that is the problem. </p>
<p>The other issue is the trend of teachers to inject their views of what students are and know into curriculum. My kid spent his formative years in organized sports afterschool, not watching Hannah Montana and playing XBox. He’s really, really innocent, and doesn’t get context that teachers presume they should know. On issues of English and history, there are societal mores that get injected that are the problem. For example, last year, when he was 13 years old, my son had to read “To Kill A Mockingbird”. He didn’t even know what rape is. For that matter, we still have people arguing over what that is. Funny, but until then, I never thought about how innocence is really lost in the English classroom! He had to read “The Crucible”. He was asked to write an essay on the deleted scene answering the question as to how the play would have changed had it been included. In the scene, the man went and met a woman behind his wife’s back, but the word “adultery” was never specifically stated in the book. You’re supposed to infer that, but you can’t infer what is not within your sphere of knowledge. In asking for that essay, there was a presumption that my son understood that what the man did was adultery, and therefore wrong. After all of that, he had to research and write a paper on McCarthyism, and compare and contrast the Crucible to McCarthyism. He knew nothing about Russia, politics before that. I looked it up, that was 10th-11th grade work. Is this the new way of raising kids, set the bar extremely high and give them work that presumes emotional maturity, and then call them failures and disabled because they can’t do it? </p>
<p>Comprehension is about a lot more than just regurgitating what you read. There is now a presumption that all kids Facebook, have Iphones, watch TV, play video games, watch football, know about politics. But ask yourself, if you were to take the best Amish student and put them in an “American school”, when they’d never been exposed to sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, would they appear to be “deficient”? I’d bet they would. This sort of issue has been raised in other contexts, such as putting questions on standardized tests about sports, presuming an adoption of “American Culture”.</p>
<p>It seems in y our posts there is always something else to blame. Now it’s your son’s relatively isolated upbringing. I see your point, but it has nothing to do with his many years of reading avoidance or with his nearly flunking algebra. You’re bouncing from blaming one thing to another. Get him the evaluation he needs. If you think 8th grade math is a waste of time, keep him in algebra. He has a lot more work to do in algebra. I just don’t see what you think will happen next year. He has all these issues, and he needs professional help. The difficulty and the expectations will ramp up every single year at this point. It’s not going to get better. It will get much worse. How will you feel if he flunks out of 9th grade, will that be enough to convince you to bring in the professional help? Or when?</p>
<p>Your worldview is very “me vs. everyone else”–perhaps your child shouldn’t have been so sheltered… Is it always someone else’s fault? :/</p>
<p>Incidentally, my 8th grader doesn’t Facebook, she doesn’t have an Iphone, she watches almost no TV, she’s only ever played a few video games in her life, and she’s never watched football. She knows a little, but not very much, about politics. And she’s doing very well in school. I think you’re grasping at straws here. Most of the things you mentioned are in fact contributing to poor academic performance.</p>
<p>If your 8th grade son doesn’t know what rape or adultry is, he needs to learn. How? By reading the books he refuses to read!</p>
<p>You’ve decided that we’re all wrong. Your original question is what should you do about math? Nothing. Nothing is going to make it right, so just let the school handle it. If he stays in algebra and gets a D, it is not going to be better than dropping back to regular math and getting a D.</p>
<p>If you don’t think kids in organized sports after school are talking about xbox and Mtv and ‘butt’ jokes and farts, I think you are naive. We got a new girl in preschool, and within 3 days my kids knew everything there was to know aobut Power Puff Girls, and neither of my kids had ever seen it or heard about it before. We don’t have an xbox or watch Mtv and my two will tell you they were the LAST kids in America to have cell phones, but they fit in with their peers and do know what that stuff is. One is a little less ‘worldly’ because she also doesn’t like to read and is dragging herself through Jane Eyre right now. I’m sad at how little they know about baseball, but that isn’t the school’s fault, it’s mine.</p>
<p>Math is one symptom of whatever is going on with your son. You are trying to put bandaids on the issues, instead of WANTING to get to the root of the problem and begin working on a solution.</p>
<p>MATH is NOT the primary issue here. You think it is, but it is NOT. It is one of many issues your child is having with school. Reading issues, not completing assignments, not doing written assignments with ease (a bright kid should be able to do these things IF there is not a disability getting in the way)…these are NOT MATH issues, and they will have the same detrimental effect on your kid as a weaker math score or lower placement in math.</p>
<p>And as stated above, the private schools are under NO obligation to accommodate a child who is not doing what they expect their students to do. They will simply tell you it’s not a good fit and ask your child to leave.</p>
<p>Stop trying to find a quick fix. Stop trying to fix ONLY what YOU view as THE problem. I’m not sure what your issue is with getting a comprehensive educational evaluation done …but I personally think (from what you have posted here) that you are fearful of what will come of that. I want to say positively…it is very likely that this evaluation could be the start of a positive uptick for your child. It will give everyone insight into what issues he has, what strengths he has, and what can be done to enable him to more efficiently work to his potential.</p>