Looks like we are on an educational rant, my biggest pet peeve. I have 6 kids, 5 who are in school. Both of my adopted kids are special needs (not severe), but have learning difficulties due to growing up in bad homes, being shoved around foster care, and on top of it all, the Hawaiian school system that just kept pushing them forward.
In Washington state(where I thought things would be better) my adopted daughter is doing better grade-wise, but rarely has homework, which makes me think her special education classes are probably easy. My adopted son is struggling in school. It took almost a half year to get him an IEP, and put in the correct classes. Still having a hell of a time, but I can't get the teachers to keep contact and let me know when he is having problems. I e-mail them, and if I'm lucky I'll get a response a few days later. Yesterday I found out he is doing very poor in two classes, apparently not turning in work that he is supposed to be doing in class as well as some homework.
As far as homework goes, he never brings any home. When asked, he doesn't recall having any. If I want to find out what homework he does have, I have to go to one of these online websites where the teacher might have an account and occasionally post assignments.
I understand the teachers are busy, but if a kid has went even a week without turning in work, a phone call or e-mail would really be useful to the parents so we knew what was going on, and whether he turn in the assignments late.
My adopted son displays quite a few signs of Attention Defecit Disorder. Try to ask the teachers if they think he might have a problem, and they won't report anything back. I've asked numerous times, "what does he do in class when he is supposed to be working on class-work?, but don't get any response. I'm not trying to make excuses why my kid is doing poorly, I really want to know what is going on so that he doesn't get sent to 8th grade if he is just going to continue to fail.
Anybody else's children get graded with GLO's instead of letter grades? I had a teacher explain how each GLO corresponds to an actual percentage.
Exceeds Standards 94% or higher
Meets Standards 76-94%
Below Standards: Not sure but something like 56-76%
Failing (but they use a different word I think) less than 56%.
So Kid A is actually performing at a 90% level, but gets the same check in the block as Kid B getting 77%. How does this motivate anyone to try hard? Some schools have done away with honor rolls, because it's "not fair" to less productive students. WTF? I had an 8th grade science teacher who always gave a candy bar to the top test performer. Probably would get a teacher fired now, but it sure motivated the hell out of us to score well. When a good portion of the class is scoring within a few percent of eachother on a test, it must work.
All we are doing anymore is dumbing down our educations system. I know there are some good public schools left in America, but chances are if you really want your kids to get an education, you have to be able to afford private school or you're better off teaching them yourself.