The details...
My nephew is a very smart kid. He picks up almost anything and figures it out no matter what it is. He did the hooked on phonics course before he was in school but never really got the hang of sight reading. This should have been clue number one to his mother. He went to public school for kindergarten and then switched to private school in the first grade. He was still having problems reading in the first grade but wasn't very far behind his class. He was doing well in all of his other subjects.
I have a couple of learning disabilities that made my school years a living nightmare. I hope that he doesn't have to deal with the same issues that I did when I was a student. There were so many times when a teacher could have done more for me but didn't. I believe that it was easier to let me squeak by each year and be someone else’s problem the next. By the time I got to High School I was into working the system because I knew how to at that point. My parents were not satisfied with the low grades that I was getting and my mom routinely put me through her version of home school in addition to regular school. But, there were a few teachers who could have really made a difference in my life and didn't. I had one who did, but she didn't help me till my senior year.
Now the reason for the article...
I am blow away that in a private school they could have such little care for my nephew. I went to a parent teacher conference last Friday so I could get a better understanding of where his teacher was in her ability to help him. I wasn't surprised; I was pissed. I sat down with this lady and had a very polite conversation considering how I felt. We have been asking the school to get him tested for a learning disability since we first noticed troubles this year. The teacher filed the paperwork in October. Someone in the office filed it with the parish (county for the rest of the world, I live in Louisiana) so that the testing could be performed. Neither the teacher nor the school ever followed up on it. Not even at the insistence of my sister. Finally, in February, someone got off their ass and finished the missing information. Now, over half of the school year has passed and they are now recommending that if he doesn't make drastic improvements he will need to be held back. The teacher takes the whole "I've been doing everything I can" stance. She reads his tests to him so that he will do better on them, and he does. That, however, doesn't make up for all that he misses on a daily basis because of the skills he lacks. The teacher says that she doesn't have to make the accommodations for him because he hasn't been tested. I am sure she does this because she knows he has a problem and feels guilty that she hasn't done more to get him tested before now.
Now my big question...
Why spend money on Private School if they don't care anymore than the Public School people do? In fact the local public school system seems to want to help quite a bit more than the private school.