Special Education & Report Cards for Middle School and Beyond?

[NortheastDisneyMom]

My son is a special education student in an inclusion setting in 6th grade. This is his first report card that has actual grades vs. the elementary way of "satisfactory, needs improvement, etc." As I expected, his grades in the "core" classes were not very good. He has processing issues, PDD-NOS, ADHD, slowing in his brain, etc. He struggles a lot, but since he is required to take the same standardized tests as the other children in his grade, he must do the same work as them, albeit it's modified to be less, etc.(he has a lenghty IEP with multiple services and a one to one aide). I am being realistic in acknowledging that all report cards will probably look like this one unfortunately. I do wish his effort was recognized like it was in elementary school, but it's really not.

Sorry to ramble, but I guess my question is for those with children that are past this point, maybe in high school. Do your children just keep on receiving poor grades and continue on through each grade in school? Is it ever notated on their report card that they are a special education student and have an IEP? It's not notated on his.

 

[bookwormde]

My son is in 6th grade general ed (with pull out classes for ELA). If the school knows how to supprt his EF needs (lots of Image based information, pre teaching, supplying focus points, allowing tasks and tests to be broken up in smaller segments, limiting social overlay content in the questions etc) and of course providing an enviroment where he is confortabel adn anxiety is at low levels, there is no reason why he can not excel at acedemics. Unfortunatly most schools do not know how to do this (or do not think they are required to). It is time to call an IEP meeting to make sure the accomidations are adaquate to allow him to thrive.

Most of the time it is a "battle" to get the schools to provide the supports our kids need but it is worth it.

bookwormde

 

[clanmcculloch]

If it's been identified that his ABILITY to learn is clinically lowered then there should be modifications in his IEP as to his academic goals and what he's being graded on. PDD-NOS and ADHD are definitely not disabilities with lowered abilities to learn. If he's identified with Mental Retardation (I'm talking clinically) then his IEP is insufficient in the sense that he should be measured on a different academic scale. If he's capable of learning then his IEP is failing to include the steps he needs to thrive in the classroom. Either way it's a failing in his IEP but you need to know which direction to pursue for him.

I'm always making sure that my daughter's IEP does not include any kind of simplified work because she is very strong academically. Her IEP covers the classroom accomodations needed for her to succeed. Her 1st 7th grade report card came home a few weeks ago with straight As in regular ed classes. She does all the work that everybody else does though the classroom structure may get modified for her to include sensory and social breaks and the work is often broken up into more manageable parts for her (they're working on teaching her these skills so eventually she can do this herself; this is part of this year's IEP goals and I suspect it'll be a multi-year process to really achieve this fully independently). She's finally really thriving this year.

The only standardized tests that all kids have to take are the ones for NCLB. The classroom tests CAN be modified based on the need of the child.