Be careful what you ask for...

I was recently reminded of a children' story in which a young child writes a letter to a zoo asking for a pet. The zoo responds by sending the child an obviously inappropriate animal. So the child writes another letter to the zoo, again asking for a pet. This goes on numerous times before, finally, a puppy is delivered and the child has a pet. Now this story is wildly entertaining for a preschooler - afterall, even a young child realizes that a giraffe is not a pet. The story is also inspiring; regardless of how many inappropriate pets the child receives, the child stays committed to asking for a pet.

While this may be a completely plausible method of asking for what you want in a child's story, it is not going to be effective in the world of special education. Unfortunately, this is a story I hear more often than I would like. A parent will call and state that the district is not doing its job. Many times parents will have a general idea that something is not right with their child's education, but they are unable to state with any specifics what the problem is. And by the time they call me, the parents are extremely frustrated that they have asked, for example, that the school district teach their child to read and after four years of asking the child still can't read.

I worked with a client a few years ago who was a very strong advocate for his daughter. He attended all the meetings and at every single meeting, he asked the school district to please teach his daughter to read. With each passing year, the pleas became more passionate but they remained constant - Please teach my daughter to read. When I began working with the family I was struck by the differences between the child's performance in school and her performance during the three year evaluations. During the school year, the child often complained that by the time she got to the end of a sentence she could remember the beginning of the sentence. She argued over having to do reading homework and tried to disappear in the classroom whenever she knew the teacher was going to call on students to read out loud. But on the three year evaluations she performed well within the average range. Based on the three year evaluations the district had done its job. Based on the child's daily performance in school, the district had not done its job. How could this be?

A thorough review of the file and past testing revealed that the child had always done pretty well on the three year evaluations, but had not performed as expected in the classroom setting.  This told me that either all the district's testing (more than 10 years worth of testing by different evaluators) was wrong or there was something else going on.  After much discussion, the district finally agreed to put a reading tutor in place over the summer.  The tutor's goal - figure out what is happening and where the disconnect is.  We did not ask the tutor to implement a particular program or methodology.  We did not ask the tutor to focus on a particular area of reading.  We simply asked the tutor to work with the child for 15 hours and then reconcile the differences between her performance during evaluations and in classes.

The tutor quickly learned that the child had all the skills there, but she was lacking confidence in her skills.  That's not to say that reading was easy for this young lady; it wasn't.  But she had some amazing strategies that she was reluctant to use.  The tutor boosted the child's confidence, reinforced skills, and help the child to realize that she could read.  The district agreed that the tutoring relationship should continue for the first quarter of school. 

This story too has a happy ending.  But what a different story this might be if the school district had put the tutor in place years ago.  Ultimately, the school district is responsible for providing an appropriate education to a child with disabilities.  As a member of the IEP team, parents have the right and responsibility to ask specific, direct, and focused questions regarding their child's educational needs.  Ask for what you want, in specific terms based on your child's needs.  Asking the district to teach your child to read may get you a lion.  Asking the district to reconcile why your child performs well on evaluations but poorly in the classroom may get you the puppy.