The Atlantic's Tracy Thompson just wrote an article that I had a little trouble getting through. Ms. Thompson details her struggles with getting good programming for her daughter, who requires special education, and all of he hurdles and interpersonal struggles she encounters with the schools system. Working from the other end, I have to agree with her. It stinks.
When an IEP is set up, or as a school psychologist I make recommendations, we constantly bump up against the limits of what we can do. Districts have fewer and fewer resources and more and more paperwork and demands on their time. Parents want what is best for their children, so sometimes the demands increase. In the article, Ms. Thompson mentions school staff suggesting placements for her daughter that sound like they won't help. The sad fact is, they may have just been all that they had to offer her.
What worries me, not so much when reading this article, but reading more adversarial articles is that I get a feeling from parents that they think school is always holding out on them. When a parent asks that their child be evaluated, and I respond that the student's grades are high enough that there is no chance that he or she needs special education, it's never because I just don't feel like doing work. There's always a lot of needs. Our resources don't go up with demand like in a for-profit business, so we may not have anything to offer, or we may be desperately trying to make sure we have enough resources for students who need the most support. For every child who is reading a little more slowly in the first grade, there may be another in the fifth grade who can barely read at all.
What does this mean if you are a parent? Well, first of all, I can't give professional advice over a blog. I don't know the exact policies or resources of your school district and I don't know the exact needs of your child. I would like to suggest though that as parents you talk to people in your school district as people. Maybe talk and learn, as much as you can, with a few people on your team and really understand their position and end up on the same side. I can only speak from my experience in this area, but I think that mutual empathy has ended up really helping more than one student as we've tried to figure out what to do for them: both what we should do and what we can do. In the meantime, Ms. Thompson and every other parent out there has my sympathies.