special education

[sandikay]

What is the name of your state?tx
my son has aspergers syndrome. he is not recieving an appropriate education. he is not being challenged. the teachers do not seem to care. it is always my job to tell them when he starts regressing and ask that his instruction be changed. they do not comply with the ard committee changes. it is so frustrating. he is very intelligent and educatable, yet at the age of 14 he is perfoeming at a 4th grade level. how can i get the school to comply with directives from the ard committee?

 

[rmet4nzkx]

I hope you realize there is no set protocol for Asperger's and that dealing with Asperger's in educaiton is in constant change. It is frustrating becuse just when you think things are figured out, things change and your son's perceptions may not be the same as others around him. What may sound like a valid complaint may be his perception. Is he having troubles because he isn't challenged or because he IS challenged. Most typical reaction to challenge of novel information in Asperger's is to dissociate or blame their failures on others. Getting to the bottom of this will require another assessment to see where the breakdown is occuring and break learning down into rote tasks repeated over and over again, some thing may take a long itme but he will eventually catch up. At age 14 he may be having some social distractions and inappropriate behaviors. Are you a part of any parent groups?

 

[sandikay]

Special education

TX
My son has a full-time one-on-one aid. A special education aid has told me numerous times about the difficulties the school is having with my son's education. This problem has continued since elementary and if I don't do something they will continue to "sweep" it under the rug until he graduates from high school. I feel this is unfair to not only him but all other children like him and/or with other disabilities.

 

[rmet4nzkx]

If he has a 1 on 1 aide that is about a good as you are going to get. I can't comment on facts re his education plan beyond generalities, but in general, AS learn by rote over and over again, they cannot abstract therefore don't handle challenges well or intergrate learning or environmental data well. They may memorize data and never apply it to real life, called a lack of pragmatics. They may test well and never apply that knowledge and are constantly back at square 1, today, tomorrow and 30 years from now. He may depending on his abilities, interests and opportunities be able to work, he will catch up, but may never graduate high school, college although he may enjoy going to school. This is a progressive and chronic neurological disorder, so there will eventually be premature decline in functioning. It is not a matter of sweaping it under the carpet, there is no cure for this and the expectations for AS are not well understood. Support and structure are necessary for success. Even with this prognosis many famous people have had AS, we wouldn't be using a computer to gone to the moon without people with AS, hopefulle your son will find his nitche.

 

[GaAtty]

GaAtty

You can make sure that his IEP sets goals that he needs and make sure that he is progressing toward those goals. Those goals should be "objectively measureable" which means by a written test or similar thing, NOT by just a teacher's statement or opinion. If he does not make progress on them, then the teachers maybe really are doing what they should. Howver, it is incredibly common for AS parents to put most of the blame on the school, so try not to fall into that pattern. Try to make up at home what the school is not doing. He needs the reinforcement.