<p>If your D is basically smart in all subjects other than Math, like my younger 2 kids, there remains the possibility that there’s a learning disability that impedes the storage of short-term memory (what was just taught 2 minutes ago) into long-term memory. It would be noticeable if , as an elementary student, she found it hard to learn and remember now how to do multi-task procedures such long division. Or, if she had exceptional difficulty memorizing multiplication tables, no matter how much drill, when she was younger.<br>
Then all those weaknesses keep tripping them up and slow down their performance on a test. It’s “poor fundamentals” but it keeps undercutting them the higher up they go into middle and especially high school.
Given unlimited time on her Homework, she might today be able to come up with a solution by thinking her way through all kinds of unusual side-steps to get to the right answer. But in a test situation, there’s no time to dream and think it up. It’s a compensation technique but doesn’t work on tests. And yet, if someone sits with her and sees she “understands” the work, well she just might. BUT, she can’t perform fast on tests. And while she can reason out the story of the trains coming towards each other, she flubs the multiplication or division so picks the wrong answer to “bubble” on a short-answer multiple choice question.
Do you want to get her tested for LD, or even ADHD, to see if she’s eligible for double-time on tests?
She might even have an IQ north of 140 (genius) and still have this learning disability, which only means a big point-gap in the SUBtests of the IQ. A gap between her cognitive and performance (timed) abilities, in other words.</p>
<p>my oldest daughter has an iq of 160 - with a significant disability in math- that isn’t obvious unless you look at the iq test subsections.
she managed to pass Ochem eventually though :)</p>
<p>I also got my younger daughter this book- hoping something will click- while my older daughter likes taking tests, I think my younger one doesn’t see the point of them, ( as well as it takes a lot of energy and concentration)
I got her this book which looks good ( but I don’t think she has opened it)
<a href=“Test Taking Strategies & Study Skills for the Utterly Confused - Laurie Rozakis - Google Books”>Test Taking Strategies & Study Skills for the Utterly Confused - Laurie Rozakis - Google Books;
<p>Couple of clarifications:</p>
<p>One cannot diagnose a math disability, using the WISC alone. The DSM-IV is pretty specific about criteria for his dx.</p>
<p>There is no longer a “Performance” section of the WISC-IV. The visual-spatial tests, which used to be timed, no longer are, specifically because one couldn’t tease out poor or slow processing, and weak visual/perceptual skills, which are not the same. Now processing speed has its own index, which actually makes a lot more sense.</p>
<p>The CB is very sticky about rules and regs regarding extended time, and the “dx” of slow processing speed must be accompanied by actual data (not just anecdote) based on test results . Weak processing skills on the WISC are not enough to warrant extended time on the SAT, for example.</p>
<p>Allmusic, I truly appreciate this helpful update^^^</p>
<p>I want to be sure I have this correct, now:</p>
<p>So how exactly would one proceed today? Does it make sense to have a psychologist conduct a WISC test and then highlight the data on the “Processing speed index” to send to the CB? Or is that just a waste of time. Is there another approach to test for this with the data that satsifies CB?</p>
<p>EK4 - pls read prev posts. Teachers were not sending home tests, part of the huge, huge problem.
P3T - she freezes on the tests, was demoralized by a teacher in 4th grade over math and never got over it. this year, with a really terrif teacher she has a 95+% average and was nominated to Natl Honors Math Soc. This year’s math teacher has already been asked to write a college rec (to which she told D that D is the only one in class she’d write a rec for and would have been sad if not asked).
I have no idea what curriculum HS is using!! Not a great one; Honors Pre-calc started trig only last week. algebra II started logs only this week. Algebra II must be different from the algebra II I learned…</p>
<p>Update on AP chem - even though D got a poor grade in AP chem last marking period, yesterday she got a 3 (10 points below a 4) on a practice exam. Now, what does that say about AP chem teaching in her school? Her teacher told me she knew the stuff -was getting perfect scores on labs, quizzes, homeworks, but having trouble with caclulations on tests (if only he’d contacted me as soon as he saw that, and he saw it early on. Another winner of a teacher who won’t send tests home so parents can look them over and help their kids succeed).
I think my town’s HS must be in the twilight zone or something.</p>
<p>yes I saw that teachers weren’t sending home tests- that can make it hard to know what is actually happening with performance</p>
<p>We have “integrated” math-
basically a spiral of skills which leaves gaps in coverage- you can exit middle school math for instance without ever learning how to do long division.</p>
<p>That is interesting allmusic
I know when my D ( #1) was originally tested, through the UW, they had used the WPPSI, the WAIS- and the WISC as well as Stanford Binet ( there may have been other tests but it was a long time ago)
She had other testing as a junior- but it wasn’t as extensive, mainly to confirm the conditions still existed.
( which doesn’t make sense- does it spontaneously resolve itself?)</p>
<p>Aside from the WISC processing speed index score, there would have to be other timed tests which show slow processing (fluency subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson, for example). </p>
<p>Usually, the slow processing has to show up across disciplines, and be a lifelong handicap (as opposed to “oops, this just showed up, right in time for the SAT”) in order for the CB to grant the extended time request.</p>
<p>One note of warning on LDs…my D has a significant processing speed issue- got extra time on exams in HS, SAT, etc. Her IQ is 150ish and her processing is sub-120, still above average, but if her IQ were average (100) her processing would be 70ish (pretty severely impaired in that case) Though she was still above average, it was a big difficulty to work through, took years of tears & frustration before it was evern diagnosed because she compensated well in class, yet was denied the gifted program (no biggie, just an example)</p>
<p>The biggest advantage to diagnosis was understanding and not feeling stupid any longer. Even with extra time on teh SAT she did not finish and her scores were in the same statistic realm as her sibs, so it the extra time really showed her for what she is, not giving her an unfair boost. Other Ds finish with tons of time leftover. So, I do not feel it is a “cheat-boost”</p>
<p>Sadly, in university, you must be impaired as compared to the average public, not compared to your potential, so no extra time, and when I read the MCAT site, it seems the same. Really tough to be at Berkeley in Ochem and doing well, but unable to ever finish or even get to the last page of the exam…imagine what she could do if she had extra time. Anway, even if you get extra time in HS, you might not in university. D is totally okay with that, though frustrated by the times when the numbers are so critical and that it will impair her from showing her true understanding of certain subjects.</p>
<p>She will work in endeavors where it does not cause her issues, but her options will be affected by a B instead of an A in classes along the way, so be it. She works slowly, she reads very slowly, that’s the way it goes.</p>
<p>How familiar–my D’s processing speed was tested at 40 points or more below her IQ as tested at various times at the school. ( 138 to 143 IQ, and 88 processing speed!)This is as a result of a visual issue which makes reading and scanning really slow. They have given her extended time on testing at school, which helps. The college board was more resistant, and it took me 2 years of fighting to get her extended time. We’ll see if it helped at all…she took the SAT on Saturday. Her PSAT scores were very lopsided–68 math, 68 writing, and 49 reading…the dense text kills her eyes. Hopefully the extra time will help her enough so that she never has to look at that damn test again!</p>
<p>“The biggest advantage to diagnosis was understanding and not feeling stupid any longer.”
I agree. My D said that having the diagnosis (in soph year of college) was her greatest experience to solve the “cognitive dissonance” mystery of her life-to-date. It meant the world to her self-esteem.
The diagnosis shed light on this: Why was someone so “smart” in other subjects, who’d also been told early on she’d rip em up in Math, fallen apart in late elementary school and never recovered in that one subject? She had felt so stupid, b/c she knew she was trying so hard in Math. She wasn’t lazy. It just felt like running up a muddy mountain, always slipping back down again.<br>
Of course, the Math weakness reared its ugly head in sciences, always depressing those grades to B, but she could usually compensate enough with her reading and reasoning to make B’s in Science. And roaring high A’s in everything literary or the social sciences.</p>
<p>And now I need to rant about the issue of how the fundamentals are taught. My complaint is: Too frequent change of curriculum, and for no ostensible benefit to the kids. Change for the sake of change, in other words. </p>
<p>As an elementary teacher (First and Second grades only), over one 6-year stint at a school we changed math curriculums 4 times. New manipulatives, new binders, re-training PD days for the new materials, and all it ever amounted to was rearrranging the sequencing. Always based on some amazing pedagogical discovery that somebody somewhere thought warranted a total rehaul of the year’s lessons. For example, we used:</p>
<p>Mimosa Math declared, "Children in First Grade should learn addition until May; when they thoroughly understand “part + part = whole,” then they’ll pick up subtraction within a few weeks at the end of First Grade. (um, actually, that worked). Spiral curriculum that revisited topics. Much attention to the vocabulary of Math. </p>
<p>Prior to that, no spirals. Addison Wesley said to teach it from the beginning with “Fact Families” using plus and minus so the kids thoroughly knew everything about 5 (1+4=5; 5-1 =4…) before you dare go up to the “Facts of 6.” </p>
<p>Prior to THAT, the school used “Math Their Way” in which kids were “bathed in
Fiveness” and did only concrete manipulative work even if they could handle some written orders-and-operations on paper. No Worksheets Allowed. Ever.</p>
<p>The year we moved away, they were launching a new curriculum, Scott-Foresman I believe.</p>
<p>What a ridiculous waste. Any one of those curricula could have taught the information if there’s a good teacher there recognizing where to supplement the weaknesses of the curriculum.</p>
<p>Along with introducing Scott-Foresman, teachers had to spend endless hours of PRofessional Development days “aligning the curriculum to the state standards” which meant taking the new “Standards” and tracking where the lessons from each of l80 instructional days, as published by the curriculum authors, matched the goals of the New York State Regents. Guess what, in every case, there was a connection! (from Standard 1a to Lesson 341…) but why teachers should be wasted doing this kind of curriculum connect-the-dots is beyond me. It helped no child, although it pleased administrators who could now reassure all, “We Teach to the Standards.”</p>
<p>What made more sense to me than any one curriculum was the statement I read elsewhere, “Research shows that most elementary children will learn Math under any curriculum if it is taught well.” </p>
<p>All this preoccupation, tinkering to find and defend the “best” elementary Math curriculum, wastes taxpayer money. Just pick one and USE it. Changing them so often is ridiculous. Besides, all the best teachers just pick and choose from the best of all curricula they’ve encountered; so limiting us to be on page 183 on February 6 isn’t the point, either. Some creativity is important, too.</p>
<p>High school also kept mucking with the curriculum. There was some big change in NY Regents during the late 1990’s, changing from a one-year sequence of algebra, geometry, trig to a different system where they “smushed” all 3 into each year; but this required an l8-month cycle. (Don’t even ask me how kids moved into and out of the state and fit in! They didn’t.)
When this failed, or rather KIDS failed Regents, they tried to cover it up by lowering the passing grade from 65 to 55. Then they regrouped it again into a
one-year-each year of Math. I’m not sure if the 3 subjects are “smushed” still, I think so. All of the time of administrators is devoted to changing the testing, meanwhile, and of course retraining the teachers. Are the kids confused? Yes.
Parents exhausted? Yes.</p>
<p>What IS the problem here? Do kids who don’t want to become engineers and
doctors really benefitting from all this? Are the mathematicians causing all this havoc from the top really in touch with the classroom realities? It is too ridiculous for words.</p>
<p>I just see much better decision-making in the Social Sciences and Humanities; less frequent change. I think the Math people are running away with the football. Everyone’s scared we won’t keep up technologically. But they’re training everyone as if all are headed for careers in technology, and perhaps we need a dual-pronged approach on that.</p>
<p>End of rant, and thanks for listening.</p>
<p>A good teacher is one of life’s great blessings! A teacher who does not understand customer-service (i.e. the importance of returning phonecalls or emails and being eager to find out what a student needs to be successful) is not a good teacher.</p>
<p>Going above the teacher’s head, even politely, invites contempt. Yet you cannot get the teacher to respond properly. The issue of job security pops into mind. If a person does not need to do a good job in order to keep their employment, wouldn’t they be less inclined to do so?</p>
<p>The OP’s situation reveals the evil in job security. If the free market were allowed into the public education system, great teachers would be well paid and weak ones would have to find another job.</p>
<p>Our school didn’t cheat the students per se, but they changed the method they use to calculate class rank. The first class effected will be the class of 2008. They informed the students of the change in the fall of this year.</p>
<p>They changed the weighting system. They used to weight honors/ap as the “most rigorous” classes. College prep courses were in the middle. And then a third level of academic rigor was not weighted. </p>
<p>The new weighting system includes honors/ap courses only, and students are limited to a “bonus factor” for 4 classes each academic year.</p>
<p>They will no longer report the class rank on the transcripts. But it will be available if a particular college needs the info for merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Spideygirl hit the nail right on the head. A great way to put it!
Update: D got into National Honors Math Society. And scored a 3 (almost a 4) again on the practice AP chem test last week.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I have not found that to be the case for my Ss, The teachers who were weak were inexperienced and did not have tenure. They left the school and some left teaching soon afterward, burnt out by the demands of the job. The best teachers happened to have tenure. They routinely went well beyond what was expected of them.</p>
<p>Similarly, college profs do not cease to be productive because they have tenure.</p>
<p>“If the free market were allowed into the public education system, great teachers would be well paid and weak ones would have to find another job.”</p>
<p>“great students would be well received and weak ones would have to find another way to get an education”</p>
<p>And maybe we could charge the parent for the difficulty of their child to be educated? 
</p>
<p>Maybe if you kid is a bit slow, we charge you more because the teacher has to spend more time with the student? </p>
<p>Maybe if your kid is a bit of a pill, we can refuse service… you know no shirt, no shoes… </p>
<p>Boy the possibilities exist.</p>
<p>As I have said before, It’s good I’m not a teacher. If my pay depends on how well your child does… your child BETTER be Good both acedemically and emotionally. The second he’s not keeping up, test for special ed. There’s your free market system for ya. Absolutely nothing wrong with the free market, but the free market works in different ways. Tie pay into successful kids and you only will teach successful kids… the other’s baaah what? am I a charity or something? Yes, capitalism at it’s finest. </p>
<p>If you want perfect education, bring in perfect kids. Problem solved.</p>
<p>Fire away…</p>
<p>I guess it all could depend on what side of the table you sit, couldn’t it?</p>
<p>Na couldn’t be that…</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/07/05/20/100loc_a1zach001.cfm[/url]”>http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/07/05/20/100loc_a1zach001.cfm</a></p>
<p>headline… </p>
<p>“Who’ll teach Zach?
Zach Kaye has Down syndrome, and every private school has told his parents they don’t have the resources to teach him”</p>
<p>There’s your free market in action. Always an easy fix to anything no?</p>
<p>Thank you Opie! The article reinforces the point I have tried to make about vouchers many, many times in these forums.</p>
<p>The other thing is that vouchers and competition have not produced much in the way of positive results for student achievement.</p>
<p>We know that the factors most strongly associated with student achievement are: student-teacher ratio, teacher content knowledge, teacher with 5+ years of experience, and # of instructional minutes per day devoted to academics.</p>
<p>Some of the schools that have sprung up to take the voucher students from academically bankrupt schools have had student-teacher ratios not much better than the schools they replaced, and to have a high ratio of first year teachers. Not surprisingly, the kids haven’t shown large gains in academics.</p>