Christina Gustavsson says she loves school. But her teachers have had a tough time educating her.
In her freshman year at Kennett High School, 15-year-old Christina racked up five months’ worth of absences and never completed a full day of school. Sometimes, she had difficulty remembering assignments, completing homework or even waking up in time for school. Other times, she didn’t.
Christina has chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition whose symptoms have long confounded many medical professionals and now pose peculiar challenges for educators as more adolescents are diagnosed with it. In a time of tight budgets, public schools must consider how far to go to accommodate students with CFS and a range of so-called hidden disabilities that are difficult to observe, evaluate or understand.
I can’t read the article because I don’t subscribe but I doubt that things like CFS are new stressors to school budgets. Special ed. law has long included a kind of “catch-all” clause “other medical issues” under Section 504. That’s where things like ADHD (and CFS) are placed. So, if the parents and doctor assert the need for special services or consideration (many don’t), it’s handled.
These “other” disorders require a tedious paperwork trail for the teachers but there aren’t expensive accommodation requirements, usually. It involves flexibility and more time given to complete assignments, perhaps some after-school tutoring with the teachers, or some home tutoring/visits if the student really can’t come to school for medical reasons.
What irks me is that they take a level playing field and make very much skewed, giving extra time on tests, including the SAT, for these disabilities that we didn’t have twenty years ago. The valedictorian of your child’s high school might be someone who can’t even read at a junior high level but whose parents had good lawyers and forced the school to give the child extra time on everything. I have seen kids suffering from RK&NPP; syndrome (Rotten Kid and Non-Parent Parent syndrome) get all sorts of special treatment. Medical schools are already beginning to bend admission rules. Engineering schools and pilot schools are next. We are fortunate to be able to afford a private, Christian school for our kids. They rise or fall on their own merits.
It’s too bad folks can’t always read the article because it deal with more than just the techniques used to accommodate children with disabilities. Rather, it describes the very real concerns of all involved in providing an adequate education for the child with the resources at hand. One student described wanted a h.s. Diploma but couldn’t really even go to school; she has chronic fatigue syndrome and could not get to school in time for certain classes.
I have some feelings about some types of childhood “disorders”–sort of agreeing with Robroy. But this article from the WSJ deals more with the concerns of the school districts as they honestly try to mmeet
(need to finish #3)
try to meet needs of students, families, and districts.
#2 You may be “irked” but I have to chuckle at the idea of kids in the Individualized Educational Program (IEP) getting an unfair shot at being valedictorian. Usually, parents main concern is just to ensure that their children graduate and end up with decent jobs.
I think your concern about admission rules and falling standards has more merit but you detract from your own points when you add in alarmed comments that don’t fit the facts.
You also may want to watch the rotten kid and non-parent parent talk; it makes those of us with special needs kids feel unfairly judged and even more isolated than we already are. Whenever my son acts up in public, I already imagine dozens of people shaking their heads and dismissing me as a terrible parent with a spoiled brat of a son. Is that what you wanted to reinforce with that offhand comment?
I still cringe over some of the things I said to people before I’d lived this myself. What’s the line, “I was a perfect parent, and then I had kids?”
I just had a patient like that last month. He was a nine year old boy from a single parent home with a very attentive mother with only a high school education. He was fallingout ot the chair and sleeping all day. The pediatrican paniced and sent him to the medical school pediatric department where they kept him for six days and after running every test they knew called the mother in and gravely said he had an extremely rare psychiatric disorder in children which none of them had evere seen before. They told her he would get worse and needed to be institutiolized now. In fact the social worker had the papers to send him off now. And she must sign them now. She declined, came home and got on the internet and decided he had some sort of sleep disorder like narcolepsy or obstructive sleep disorder. She sought out the sleep doctor and to make a long story short he was found to have sleep apnea and after a week of treatment with CPAP was completely normal. The school still wanted him in special education and sent back a grade! So parents need to find the correct treatment for what ever is wrong and stay away from the psychobable in the seducation establishment. I don’t know why the schools don’t get a program to have all the special ed kids studied by an accredited sleep department.
Robroy, Our daughter reads fast and learned easily. She was accepted into a private Christian school. Our son is dyslexic, reads slowly and works very hard because it doesn’t come easily. We applied to a private Christian high school for him which had some services for special-needs kids. He was rejected, sight unseen, on the basis of his test scores. He was brokenhearted and felt that being a God-loving Christian didn’t matter…He was still rejected by a Christian community. Instead he went to public high school and was put in classes with gang members and drug addicts. He is a senior and is just now healing from the rejection he got from the “Christian” school. Of course, several years of Christian counseling have helped. I won’t believe that Christian schools are truly Christian until they believe that all Christian children deserve the love and support of a Christian school.
RE: “I won’t believe that Christian schools are truly Christian until they believe that all Christian children deserve the love and support of a Christian school.”
Why not *all children* rather than “Christian children”? Why stop with “Christian children”?
Why not other children who need help and love and support?
#9 Sarah, the Christian School must, of necessity, use discretion when accepting children from non-Christian families or it can become a dumping ground for so many social misfits and uneducable children that it can no longer function as a Christian school. I have seen the devastating effect that just one or two “free thinking” 7th & 8th graders can have on the social/moral behavior of the whole class.
Often the Christian school lacks the financial means to hire the specialists needed to teach “special ed ” students. If it admits too many children with learning difficulties, no student gets a quality education. I’ve years of experience…on both sides of the teacher’s desk.
Frances S Scott
9. Sarah, The school we applied to was a “covenant school”; that is, they accept only children of Christian families. What I object to is that they only take SOME of the children of Christian families. A friend and fellow church member with several children in this school went to bat for us, saying we were “just the kind of family the school was looking for.” However, all private schools, Christian or otherwise, sell themselves to prospective families by their graduation rate, the prestige of the colleges their alumni attend, and the prestige of the careers of alumni. The school didn’t accept our son because he would skew their success statistics.
Now we are not talking about a severely disabled child who could not become a productive citizen. Nor were we stretching the school’s limited resources. The school charged a surcharge for the special needs services it offered; the surcharge was roughly equivalent to 1/3 of the tuition. We were willing to pay that, to volunteer in the school, whatever it took. However, the school was not willing to even interview us or our son or to discuss what accommodations he might need. (And in case anyone is wondering, none of his problems are behavioral. ALL his teachers praise his work ethic, his good manners, and his classroom behavior.) So my son felt rejected and angry with God, because God made him that way.
I am certainly NOT speaking out against children and their parents with real special needs. In fact, they are the ones that are hurt most by those that are gaming the disability system. (The ones hurt the second most are the children whose parents are the gamers.)
But I would disagree with unleveling the playing field by giving kids with disabilities extra time on tests. Disabilities can be a blessing. If a child knows they have a weakness and overcomes it, they are far stronger for it. In contrast, a child knows if he is given extra time then the “A” he got on the test isn’t real a real “A”. We have a daughter that struggles with reading. She hasn’t been officially diagnosed with dyslexia but I notice that she routinely confuses “b”s with “d”s.
And country doc gives the example of the kid with sleep apnea. One of my screening questions that I suspect sleep apnea is how they are doing in school. But for every kid I diagnose with sleep apnea, I see ten that are sleeping through school because they are up to two in the morning playing video games and texting (and their diet consists entirely of junk food). A good number of the later kids are getting diagnosed with ADHD.
We have had the same experience that Francis Scott talks about. MomVictoria, I am sorry that your son had the experience that he did. Private schools do often cherry pick the better students. Unfortunately, developing a reputation for successful students is often necessary for survival.
RE: “If it admits too many children with learning difficulties, no student gets a quality education.”
Thank you, Frances Scott — that’s what I was getting at and you got it. All schools have standards, and proclaiming that no school will be considered “Christian” unless they accept “all Christian children” is just unbelievably generalized in the extreme — except, obviously, those “disabilities” [like not coming from a “Christian” family] that are considered properly “rejectable” I guess.
Sarah, I’m saying that schools that teach that God doesn’t make mistakes, that he creates all people in His image and redeems them through the blood of Christ; but then sorts out those who won’t graduate from prestigious colleges, is not practicing what they are preaching. Let’s just call them Christian High Academic Achievers schools, not Christian schools.
Robroy, thank you. However, I don’t understand why you think extra time on tests is “unleveling” the playing field. Unless the test is specifically testing how quickly one reads and absorbs information, then how is extra time unfair? Would it then also be unleveling the playing field for a child to take a test wearing glasses? Would it be wrong for a parent to send a child to a speed reading class, because it would give the child an unfair advantage?
A dyslexic child who reads more slowly also has problems with moving from test sheets to “fill-in-the-bubble” sheets and has to take extra time to ensure that he/she is filling out the right numbered answer. My son, who is considered an outstanding soccer referee, once failed his recertification test because he got off the line on the answer sheet and then answered every subsequent question wrong. Should he have been allowed to be certified? His coaching tester, knowing my son and his disabilities, overrode the test results and recertified him. The tester knew that my son knew all the answers and was a more than competent referee.
You seem to think extra time gives a child time to reconsider his/her answers and perform better on the test. In reality, it just gives the child time to finish the test. If my child is making poor grades on tests, the first question that I ask is “Did he finish the test?” Most often, the answer is no; that, in fact, most all the answers he completed were correct, but he failed because he was too slow and didn’t finish the test. Is that a level playing field? I always tell his teachers, “If you want to test how fast he can read, give him the normal time on a test. If you want to test what he has learned in your class, give him extra time.”
First off, Christian schools aren’t going to admit students with profound special needs so they don’t need to hire special teachers. At least in my state, all certified teachers are schooled in special ed. practices and are required to continue in-service training. They are prepared to teach children with learning differences. If, at the very minimum, Christian schools aren’t hiring certified (or certification-eligible) teachers then there’s something amiss.
Secondly, if a couple of “free-thinking” students is able to upset the apple cart, then I’d wonder who is in control. And if the school, parents and students cannot see any benefit (even if it’s “merely” learning and practicing compassion) by having some people who think and learn differently in their midst then I’d question their mission.
I’ve taught at both private and public schools. The private, RC school did admit students with learning disabilities and had some supportive services for them. I thought it was valuable for the high- and over-achievers to share a classroom with those who learned, behaved, and thought differently. There’s much to be said for slowing down sometimes and pondering an individual tree rather than focusing on the forest. The students with learning differences, by slowing down, often had fascinating, insightful observations and questions along the way that the others missed. There is opportunity for mutual enrichment here
I think we have a problem when self-named Christian schools in actuality operate as exclusive prep. schools that incorporate some religious practice and symbolism. Either operate the school as a Christian entity or shed the window-dressing to become a non-sectarian prep. school. But all over America, we play this shell game so that the “betters” in every community don’t have to send their kids to public schools or make any uncomfortable accommodations to their beliefs and values. Thus, the children who would truly value and benefit from a Christian education — those who are on the margins and struggle — don’t fit and aren’t wanted.
RE: “Sarah, I’m saying that schools that teach that God doesn’t make mistakes, that he creates all people in His image and redeems them through the blood of Christ; but then sorts out those who won’t graduate from prestigious colleges, is not practicing what they are preaching.”
I don’t think that being a Christian necessitates offering all persons equal outcomes.
So I guess we just don’t define “Christian” in the same way. I can well believe that God creates all people in His image and redeems them through the blood of Christ while at the same time recognizing that I will be rejected for placement in any number of Christian groups that are working towards various goals which I’m not able to assist them in meeting.
To put the shoe on the other foot — I run my own consulting business and have certain criteria for acceptance of clients. That doesn’t mean that I think that all persons are not created in His image and redeemed through the blood of Christ.
I guess I can see — with your definition of Christian and “practicing” the Christian faith — why your son would feel so personally rejected simply because his scores didn’t fit that school’s criteria. People get rejected all the time for one reason or another and it’s not usually personal.
I was taught — in the numerous times I’ve been rejected — to say “Next!” ; > )
Since life is about being rejected, I find that word, said in a cheery and squared-shoulders, straight-ahead sort of way to be very helpful in my life. I catch myself saying “Next!” all the time — several times a week. Rejection is a part of life, and adults in my life have taught me that rejection doesn’t mean anything about my value or me personally but generally has to do with goals and actions and my not being the right fit for their goals. And if I’m not the right fit for their institution or job or whatever . . . then they’re not the right fit for me and it’s fortunate that this has been discovered early and not later. I’m reminded of the line from the Monty Python skit from the Father to his daughter: “He wasn’t worthy of you, daughter.”
RE: “I think we have a problem when self-named Christian schools in actuality operate as exclusive prep. schools that incorporate some religious practice and symbolism.”
Interesting — so you don’t think that exclusive prep schools can operate as Christian schools? How odd. I don’t divide the sacred from the secular. As long as there is not something intrinsically sinful about a thing, I see no reason why Christ cannot be asked to infiltrate and influence it. Whether I’m running a school for kids of poverty-stricken, one-parent families, or running an exclusive prep school I’d want to operate it to the glory of God. And I don’t think either is intrinsically unable to be operated as such.
RE: “But all over America, we play this shell game so that the “betters†in every community don’t have to send their kids to public schools or make any uncomfortable accommodations to their beliefs and values.”
Well . . . certainly parents — even middle-class to poor parents — are desperately seeking to put their children into actually *working* schools that actually *educate* children. That’s what happens when we have the general disaster that we have in so much of public education. I’m not sure how it is that parents who scrape up the money to offer what they can to their children and get them out of toxic environments has anything to do with “betters” and “shell games.” It seems rather classist to imply that only “betters” desire something better for their children.
CAN they operate as Christian schools? Of course. Do they, in practice? No, especially if they restrict their population to the “cream of the crop” and focus almost exclusively on academic preparation for the Ivies. The Christian mission is much different than that. It can include it, certainly, but it’s not the reason for being. It’s also rather ironic considering that many religious schools came into being to educate the poor and disenfranchised, particularly immigrants.
And we can wax poetic and philosophical about the reach and limitless nature of Christ’s purpose which, of course, trumps all but I am phrasing in very practical terms. It’s difficult for schools to serve two masters. Should Christian mission and truth yield to keep donations flowing and the elite served? That’s often the choice, even in the small things. It was difficult to watch the sons of a major donor flaunt their prohibited mohawks, dog collars, and steel toe boots with their uniform unpunished when the scholarship students were routinely thrown into a week of detention if their hair touched their collars or their shirts were slightly untucked. New teachers were told the special rules of the road.
It is a shell game and it has nothing to do with “scraping up money” to get children out of toxic environments, per se. Charter schools are free of charge and many perform quite well. There are free, independent alternatives to the traditional public schools now, particularly in inner cities. No, what I’m describing are the elite prep. cum Christian schools that keep the Christian label to avoid state interference and maintain independence but operate as Ivy League feeders. They may present an impressive, traditional face but will fall all over themselves to accommodate the non-Christian wealthy who require a place for their kids but don’t want them to be exposed to Christian theology or, sometimes, worship. I’m surprised you would defend that, Sarah.
Giving extra time is certainly un-leveling the playing field. Many (most?) tests are difficult to complete in the allotted time. So my mom has a good lawyer and gets me labelled me with dyslexia (and I can assure you that I can find someone at a Sylvan learning center that, if paid enough, will write a letter attesting to the fact that I really do have dyslexia). Now, I get three hours instead of one hour and I get to take the test in a quiet room in the library. Am I going to score higher?
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron ]Harrison Bergeron be damned. We need Diana Moon Glampers running our schools![/url] I can’t run a five second forty. I should only have to run 20 yards when trying out for the football team.
In my profession, I see these gamers of the system all the time.
Robroy,
Not sure what your point is. Based on what you write the issue you care passionately about is people gaming the system by using extra time on tests to get an unfair advantage in our competitive educational system. Is that it?
So what is the solution? Eliminate individualize educational programs (IEP)? Tighter controls to prevent normal kids from being included in the IEP? More regulation on what is permissible under IEP in order to prevent cheating valedictorians? Better research on what actually helps kids who have needs?
I can understand that in your context you are seeing people cheat. I am not sure where I stand on the “extra time” issue but if the problem is cheating then we should fix the cheating. IEP by it’s very nature is “unfair”. Why should anyone get special treatment?
The metaphors and examples that you use are addressed to high end achievers. This is so wildly not the case in my experience it is difficult to make sense of what you are saying.
Sarah,
That Teatime2 is a class warrior is clear from this as well as his/her comments to other posts.
Robroy,
As a child with special-needs, an IEP/504 Plan, I respectfully state that ….. you obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Trust me … we are not gaming the system. My son kwow the answere to the questions, but cannot articulate them in an time-frame that has been arbitrarily set NOw, is that fair?
Sarah, After reading your post, the line from the old song came into my head,”just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.” How sweet! Except that dealing with rejection is not the issue; my son has had to deal with rejection all his life and has learned to deal with it. What happened when he was rejected is that he was out of options, which had been gradually narrowing. His only option was a classroom environment in which one of his gang-member classmates was arrested for murder, many classmates came to school stoned, and almost none of them wanted to work. My son would find the one or two students in the class who hadn’t given up and pair with them to get the work done. Was he able to salvage something out of a bad experience? Yes. Was it anything approaching a quality educational experience? No.
The mission of the school we applied to is “to provide excellence in Christ-centered education as an extension of the Christian home.” How was my son unable to help the school meet that mission statement? Only as Teatime2 so eloquently put it, if excellence is defined as a “focus almost exclusively on academic preparation for the Ivies.” I agree with Teatime that the Christian mission is much different than that. The schools do cherry-pick the most able students, as we found with my daughter, who had no trouble getting into a Christian high school.
And Robroy, you’d have to get an educational psychologist either within or outside of the school system to submit testing that demonstrated your learning abilities. A lawyer can’t do it, neither can a Sylvan Learning Center. Obviously, you believe that dyslexia and learning disabilities aren’t real. I’m sure you’d prefer that we go back to the days when these kids wore dunce caps and dropped out of school as soon as possible. And, by the way, extra time is defined, not as triple the time, but as 1 1/2 the time. So you’d have an hour and a half, not 3 hours, to finish READING the test.
[blockquote]My son kwow the answere to the questions, but cannot articulate them in an time-frame that has been arbitrarily set NOw, is that fair? [/blockquote]
Are you asking if it is fair that your child has a learning disability? Is it fair that my kids don’t have Tim Tebow’s athletic ability? Is it fair that one of my kids will probably always struggle with reading whereas another is reading at a college level in elementary school?
[blockquote]Obviously, you believe that dyslexia and learning disabilities aren’t real.[/blockquote]
I most certainly do. Plenty of famous people had learning disabilities and overcame them. They were better for it. The bar wasn’t lowered for them. The bar height is the bar height.
[blockquote]The metaphors and examples that you use are addressed to high end achievers. This is so wildly not the case in my experience it is difficult to make sense of what you are saying. [/blockquote]
Actually, I think it is unfair that the kid who is an academic mediocrity but tries hard but his parent doesn’t get him labeled with a disability and ends up graduating with a B- (or C-) average in contrast to the kid whose parent gets the kid labeled and gets extra time on all his tests and ends up with a B+ (or C+) average.
I am for remediation, tutoring, special education, etc. But taking the test in a given amount of time is part of the testing process whose purpose is to stratify academic abilities.
The purpose of testing, or so my college professors of education told me, is to determine if the students have learned and understand the material covered in the course. If too many students fail the test, then there is something wrong with either the test or the method of teaching the material. The purpose of a test, other than perhaps a college admissions test, is not to “stratify academic abilities.” I’m not sure what the purpose would be in that.
And to say that having a learning disability is “unfair” in the same way that not having superstar sports ability is “unfair” is to denigrate the very real struggles of people with disabilities. If your daughter had cerebral palsy, would you think she should just overcome it? Suck it up and get out of that wheelchair?
Talk to many famous dyslexics, and you will find that they are successful in spite of school or because teachers “bent the rules.” Like the famous screenwriter Stephen Cannell, whose mentor was his college writing professor, who didn’t count off for his misspellings and punctuation, but said instead, “I want to see what’s inside your head.” Unfair? Well, this teacher gave him the confidence to pursue a writing career, something no one else thought Stephen could do. Stephen didn’t discover that he was dyslexic until his daughter was diagnosed. (Often dyslexia has a genetic component.) He said he thought he was “just kind of dumb.”
[blockquote] The purpose of testing, or so my college professors of education told me, is to determine if the students have learned and understand the material covered in the course. [/blockquote]
Well, your college professors were wrong. When I was teaching, I had to give some people A’s and some F’s. I had to stratify the students, and I had to do it in a fair way. My courses were not pass/fail. My tests had questions that tested fundamentals and ones that separated the just-passing from the excelling.
I am not talking about super star sports abilities. One of my colleagues did have a son who had cerebral palsy. He not only made the tennis team but excelled despite his “special needs.” He was not treated differently. He didn’t take a spot that a better, non-special-needs player would have had.
Academic success shouldn’t be any different than athletic success. That’s fair. That’s the American way. We aren’t all equal.
robroy, that may be the american way, but is that the christian way???
Schools, governments, corporations, should reward people fairly and justly – they should be meritocracies.
Jesus teaches us that the kingdom of God is NOT a meritocracy! Praise to Him, the father of all mercies.