Feeling discouraged

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Have any of you ever gotten a report card that was literally a blank page that says: We can't grade your child. We have no idea what she knows or doesn't know. ?

I've been killing myself this year buying crap I can't really afford like a digital voice recorder that she gets too upset to remember to use, an electric fireplace to help her sleep at night, the soothing effects of which wore off within a month, and making social stories that make sense and that are funny so I know she'll actually like them... and now I'm trying to put together an Aspergers Presentation to give at her school to attempt to educate the little blighters who seem to think that she could just act normal if she tried hard enough...

And then I get the report card in and it's that damn blank page again. And the IEP pages are full of goals with the results section being "not responding, goal in progress".

BAH! She's still miserable there! Is she even learning anything, either socially or in her subjects? I don't know! I mean last night she was prattling on about minor sparks in a super-oxygenated space creating explosions - so she clearly knows stuff... but isn't she having those sort of conversations at school? I mean, by now they should know that their chances of getting her to sit down and fill out a questionnaire about her knowledge is probably not going to happen, but seriously, can't they glean anything from talking to her?

I know I know... be patient. I'm trying. Thanks for letting me vent.

I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to put out all the efffort you are, and get a blank page back.

But.

They are protecting your daughter by not pretending there is evidence to show progress when there isn't. No, a fragment of conversation that shows she picked up a few facts is not valid proof of progress for a report card.

Calm down. Try to expect a little less from yourself, and you may be able to accept the pace at which your daughter is working. It's hard to be patient when you feel like you're the only one making an effort.

Have you considered asking the "educators" what they intend to do about their inability to assess your child's education?

Your child is *not* the problem there.

Agreed! That sounds like a horrible school. Forget patience, I would raise hell. It is their job to educate her in an appropriate manner. A blank report card is no more acceptable than a student handing in a blank test. If their methods aren't working, they need to change them. If they are unable to do so, then they need to possibly send her to a different school that can provide her with the education she has an explicit right to receiving. Don't forget - you pay their salaries through taxes (either directly or indirectly) and it's your daughter's right to be educated appropriately. If needed, maybe you could look into getting legal advice. There are often local advocacy groups that can help, free of charge, too. Good luck!

Excuse me, this is a bunch of nonsense. If a child has a problem with an expression (especially one caused by anxiety) of course that a piece of information that she provides is a proof that she listened. Slowing down because you assume she is "slow" degrades the child and magnify the problem by treating a smart child like the one with low iq.
Expressive and receptive skills are two different things.

My advice is to try to do a test-like thing at home so she can practice test-taking. This should eventually grow on her so she could relax enough to take one at school.

Excuse me, but I have an MS in eduction and taught for twenty years. I do actually know what I'm talking about.

People who are angry with this school in this case should read about this lawsuit:


Gateway Autism Lawsuit

In it, a school has done exactly what people here are saying they should: they made up a bunch of stuff to placate anxious parents despite a lack of observable progress. And now they are rightly getting in trouble for it.

Well, I am not impressed by your (or anyone else for that matter) credentials. What I am impressed with are results. When people like you don't have results they wave their credetials and blame it on child and that piss me off. If child's iq is tested normal than it is educator's fault.

And being a part of one of the worst education systems among develeoped nations is certainly not a good credential.

I hope some people realize that this attitude has something to do with why America's schools don't work well.

Which they don't.

As I said, I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to get a blank report card, but I also think the Gateway case is going to result in a lot more of them.

I think what Vector is trying to say is this:

To fabricate that a child is getting an education and is becoming prepared for life is a huge dis-service. I agree with this statement. If they can't figure out what she knows or doesn't, making something up will simply offer a false sense that goals are being accomplished when they aren't.

I think the blank report card is totally unacceptable and was handled inappropriately. It would have made more sense to call a meeting and discuss things as opposed to being so very cold and detached. I also think it's important to point out that kids with AS are not stupid. If people have limited or no patience for them, they may not be able to express that this is how they feel, but they certainly get it. That may be a good part of the reason no one is getting anything pertinent from her in a classroom setting.

i understand your point that parents are too loose on their children however i want to emphasize the other point here. From preK through K that my son attended I am constantly having discussions on how to "help him". None of these discussions were academic. He knows his stuff but complaints are that he looks out of the windows, steps out of the line, doesn't finish his assigned work and such. If he knows stuff leave him alone, if he doesn't finish his work give him a bad grade but this is pointless. From my experience they are more interested in creating zombies than education.

I don not rely on school for education at all.

I think the factory-model for education cannot die quickly enough. I would not recommend a full school day for almost any child on the spectrum, but that requires that the parents be able to be at home for part of the work day. Not very realistic. Or hire someone like me to work individually with their kid. Not very cheap.

The schools we have are designed to reward and encourage conformity, which was considered a much more valuable trait when factory jobs were the basis for the American economy. Your son wasn't acting like a good robot, which creates problems for everyone around him.

The schools we need will be more flexible but more expensive. This is why any attempt at large-scale eduaction reform any the current constraints is likely to make things worse rather than better. Schools will get better when we stop trying to fix them by making them cheaper.

i am one of the rare ones here that after 2 years of preK services for my son decided to go without iep in K and everyone looks at us like crazy. Believe it or not we are still offered/pushed into services constantly. We avoid services there because they deal with behavior instead of education and for that they usually provide cookie-cutter model (visual prompts etc). at the end no one answers if there is no progress. for behavior we choose private providers and monitor the progress however we expect school to deal with education.

my point is that my child is made for school, he likes books, he is timid little guy and soaks info even when he is not paying attention and he is on academic track. They are putting a whole bunch of people on him (OT, ST, psyc) for getting out the line when this is easly solved by 2 prompts from the teacher. At the same time during the PT conferences she admitted that there are students there who don't know letters or numbers. The point that I took is that they are always making too much fuss about irrelevant things instead concentrating on pure education.
Honestly their behavior puzzles me and for sure it puzzles my so.

I'm feeling a little better now. I just finished the presentation I was writing and sent a request to the school to preview it for them. My thought is that if Eowyn is better understood by her peers, she'll feel more comfortable doing/saying anything around them.

I don't want the school to make up grades. I want her to get grades. I'm just frustrated that progress is so slow, and needed to vent. I just have to work on not presuming that anything is going to help a whole lot right away... Ah well, a good nap and a hot bath cures many ills.

That blank report card should have said "Sorry we are unable to write a report about your child's progress because we are incompetent. We don't know how to test outside the box. We don't know how to recognize if we are making a difference at all in regards to her education. We are sorry that it has taken this long to let you know that we feel we are probably wasting her time and yours." Sorry that makes me mad.

There is NO excuse for a blank report card. I wouldn't want things made up about my child either, but I would like for the people that are looking after my child for hours everyday to be able to report something. Even if it's to say, due to the nature of the reporting system we don't feel that it adequately reflects what is going on in the school environment for your child. Then list what they have taught the class as a whole, explain what my child does whilst the class is learning.
eg; Maths- counting from 1-10 all children should be able to do this , XXX uses maths time to draw, when teacher asked her to count how many pokemon she had drawn, XXX shuts down. We are trying xyz to help her over come this.
This is a very simple eg, but for heavens sake WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO HELP YOUR CHILD?

I would be very very annoyed.

Honestly as long as she can tell you about such things at home, I wouldn't worry about her lack of progress on paper at school.

One thing I didn't mention--

It's very important that the school knows that you were hurt by the communication they sent. If you don't tell them, they'll do the same thing to someone else who isn't as together as you are.