Talking about us and our kids again Aunt Malkin?
Luckily we can home school, but are your children so lucky?

The union parrot will chime in soon squawking “Polly needs more money thrown at it” when reality is we need remedial English and Math with a comprehensive plan (what a concept).

BTW Doug it’s less than six weeks at this FT and my kids have read their first short novels, handed in a book report and are almost finished their first JUMP Math workbooks. Not bad for a couple of board certified “slow learners” I’d say in a couple of more weeks they will have done the whole semester. I don’t expect them to always make this progress, but then I will tailor the curriculum so they are not left behind. (Wow another incredible concept, maybe the board should hire me.)
They can be taught with the right teacher, I guess I’m just better at my job than what the board has to offer my children.

“What’s wrong with this picture?”

It would appear that from the classroom, through Principal, and on up through the former-educator trustee, (that seems to be trendy these days) that the public system is doing its level best to keep the problems problems and not work to solutions.

More of the Excuses-R-Us theme that so often greets parents advocating for some basic service from a system that seems more about keeping people employed than it does about educating children.

FYI - tune in to TVO tomorrow at 10:30pm for a look at the parent of 3 special needs children and her experience with “the system”.

This parent in your scenario is not quite as helpless as you suiggest, but she may not know her legal rights (schools rarely tell parents what their rights are, and upstarts like me who DO tell them get their wrists slapped).

The parent should document her interactions with the school staff about her concerns: date, substance of conversation, with whom, etc. and note results (the brush off).

She is legally entitled to a meeting with the Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC) to discuss her son’s needs and request appropriate services.  She should put the request in writing, to the principal of the school, ccing the director of special eduication, the chief psychologist, the director, and her trustee.

This request should be sent by registered mail, return receipt requested. The board is obigated by law to schedule a meeting of the IPRC within 20 working days or something like that (that detail escapes me but it is a short timeline.)

Now, the IPRC consists of some special ed consultants, a psychologist, a principal and sundry others—social work, SLP’s etc. Normally a child has had an assessment before coming to the IPRC. The school will look like idiots if they bring a kid to this committee without the appropriate background steps.

She will probably get a flurry of activity with 48 hours of receipt of the letter.

Now, the real problem here is not so much the school level staff (in general) but the fact that the MOE is trying to discourage people from going the IPRC route and is quietly getting rid of special programs (a leaked memo from Ben Levin gave that game away).  Psychologists are in such demand to do the assessments that the waiting list at my school has varied from 2 to 7 YEARS for some high-needs students (severe autism, developmental disability, multiple severe LDs, etc.)

So the buck gets passed down the school chain to slow and stall the IPRC process, which is quite effectively done by obstacles to testing. Nevertheless, if the parent makes enough noise (deadly polite with lots of legal jargon works well), she will jump to the front of the queue. If she is a member of a minority she can also file a Human Rights complaint. Some boards, including mine, have lost a number of major cases at the OHRC.

A parent should always seek advice and information from non-school sources. Organizations like LDAO, Association for Community Living, ABC (Assoc. for Bright Children) and many others are usually able to liaise with parents and provide coaching and valuable advice.

Ye olde squeaky wheel still gets the grease.

This is so sad.  What about the rest of the kids, TDSBNW?
I used to go through the chain of command—teacher, principal, superintendent, director, then on to the ministry of ed.  One time I got through to the Deputy Minister!  This always worked, but the staff at the school board used to ask me to please not contact the ministry.  Too bad they oftentimes left me no choice—can’t have it both ways…
My children weren’t in need of remedial help—I used to do this when vast tracts of curricula in basic subjects (writing, grammar, spelling, math) weren’t being taught.
Always have to keep an eye on whether or not curricula is being delivered.

Most teachers follow ministry curriculum suplimented by board developed materials and improvise themselves where there are gaps. Your problems are with the ministry.

The ministry and board officials believe they are acting based on the very best research available which supports mainly curriculum and pedagogy that you don’t seem to like much.

“Your problems are with the ministry”

Nope. The Ministry is included in the swamp of excuses and actually lead the parade when it comes to passing the buck and failing to deal with legitimate parent concerns.

So Chuck, I guess you have a long term problem then. You don’t like the response of ministry, boards, supers, principals and teachers. You don’t like the fact that there is very little support for DI and phonics except in limited situations. The possibilities for vouchers and charters are extremely limited. Even a Hudak government is going to be very reluctant to do much knowing the polling on these issues. There isn’t much media support to change things so exactly how do you propose to get out of the fix things are in from your point of view?

Mr. Little,
Where did you read that I didn’t like the curricula?
This has all gone way off topic.
I always got the curricula taught, but at times, when at the school and board level, staff weren’t responding, I’d contact the ministry in order to get the curricula taught. 
When it was, I was happy—that’s it.

you can make all of the assumptions about what I have, and don’t have, what I like or don’t like, but you just can’t stay on topic can you Doug?

The topic is the Ministries role as the vortex to the axis of excuses.

This is your opinion Chuck, the lead and the discussion were already all over the system so what is your proposal for change Chuck, what exactly would you change?

Read, Mr Little,
If it matters at all, it was you who threw the curve ball.  Prior to that the discussion, as you say, was not ‘all over the system’.

I disagree.

I have been in the very same position, from time to time. In fact, it seems that I have always had one foot near the door of a law office. Some of the posts have claim we have rights. The rights exist, but in order to access them, there is obstacles to overcome. The obstacles represent one brick wall after another. Knowing your rights are one thing, accessing the system to use your rights, is a different kettle of fish. A parent in Canada, not only in Ontario, need a high set of skills and abilities to advocate for their children in the public school system. Few parents have the skills to fight them, and as I have found out, that a parent ends up wearing many different hats, including the lawyer hat. It is not isolated, and its an event the occurs on a regular basis. The trouble is most parents give up, and start to pray for intervention, and where the school decided what is best for their child, while the parent is praying. As a parent, it makes me very angry that there is people that insist, that parents and their children who have learning problems, are getting the help at school. Than there is the other set, who insist that it is our responsibility and our fault, our kids are not making the grade.