Friday, May 24, 2013

About that IEP

I walked into the IEP review meeting.....

Well, actually I missed it a week ago. They forgot to send me the reminder note and my memory is poor. They were kind of glad because none of them had time for it and so it was a rush deal and then the Special Ed gal called me in to go over the paper work with me. I went in with my summer plan under my arm and lots of questions about what they see as James strengths and potential.

And the wind was sucked right out of me before I was ever seated. I was asked if I had considered retaining James since I wanted Anna-Joy retained to give her a better advantage. I said, "No. I had not considered it. No, not at all, since they had given me no reason to believe he needed to be retained".

She said, "Well, we don't retain one twin and not the other. It hasn't worked well for us before and we don't want to do that."

Like WHAT? 

She went on to say they felt that retaining James a year would benefit him a lot. He's made a ton of gains, but after reading his MAP test scores they determined that he is basically at the beginning of 2nd grade in his knowledge. That reasoning was making more sense than the twin thing. I could work with that.

BUT then she said, "We feel like it doesn't matter if we retain Missy or not. There's no advantage to her either way. She's learning but she'll never be one of the other kids in a home room."


And then, I was just SAD.


In the end it was decided to wait and see how James is doing with summer school at the end of August. The Special Ed gal said she doesn't usually deal with parents who school their kids through the summer .... I had my math with me and had showed it to her.

Someday I plan to homeschool again. I wonder if that will be sooner than I realize?

Is anybody else amazed at what they want second graders to know already?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe it is because I'm ignorant of many things but I feel tha they can be cruel end cold sometimes. Antionette

Laurel said...

Ummmm . . . what amazes me is their "twin" issue. Seriously. I am a mother of IDENTICAL twins and I would be MADDER THAN MAD if my child was treated that way.

Every child needs to be treated as an individual. It does not matter one tiny little bit that James is a twin, when it comes to educational placement. He needs to be in the best situation for JAMES, regardless of Missy's situation.

The joy of homeschooling is being able to meet their individual needs. The challenge of homeschooling adopted children with these types of issues is that you must deal with "The Game" every.single.day.all.day. After homeschooling our Little Miss for 4 years, we put her in school because this Mama just could not take The Game any longer.

Hugs & Prayers,

Laurel