Tutoring

In my school district they have a system called No child left behind and basically it has failed. It might have worked if all the children were the same but the reality of it that they are all very different. What works or doesn't work for some children may not work for another child.

The schools focus a lot of testing and this takes up quite a bit of the learning time. Also, from what I understand teachers have been told what to teach and can't hang around a certain problem area longer if she felt like the students just wasn't getting it. They have to just push through to the next thing and hope it all connects.

My son has an IEP and I felt like we things were not moving in the right direction. So, we had a conference and basically I learned that at our meeting last year we were lied to. We were told that he would be taught math and reading at his grade level that he tests at but it's not being done. He is being educated on 6th grade math even though he has trouble with the multiplication facts. 

Now, they are at least pulling him out for tutoring with reading at his level.

The good news about this system failing is that if your school isn't getting high scores then they get so many hours of free tutoring. We went to a local high school and they had tons of tutoring people there and we have to think about which ones to choose. We have to pick five and hopefully we get our first or second choice.

We are leaning towards one that is tutoring on Saturday and it's four hours broken up with lunch and they provide the ride. There are some options that come to his school but the ride home is the issue plus I don't want it to turn out to be help with homework. I want it to be more about getting the tests and going back to the basics and teaching him instead of paper pushing. The problem with the Saturday thing is that it would take away from his every other weekend with his Dad.

They have online tutoring and would even provide him with a little computer but I just think that's a bad idea and even though my husband and son hear the word "toy: when someone says computer.

Some of the programs will only allow math or reading and the one on Saturday will give 30 hours of both.  All this tutoring won't even start until the winter time and I wondered why but then someone mentioned ISAT's and a light bulb when off in my head. They want to up their test scores. Last year, even though my son needed tutoring,... he couldn't have gotten this because he was at school that was scoring well. He did get some ISAT tutoring for about six weeks but I didn't see any overall improvement with that.

This whole middle school thing is just kicking our butt's. My son fights cause he doesn't want to do it but always does it and basically he doesn't get any free time during the week to be a kid. Oh except the fit throwing.

Sorry, I needed to vent. I didn't sleep last night cause I was fuming cause I felt like I was lied to and when wrote the counselor back who said we can talk to her too since the special needs counselor hasn't been the best with calls. I basically thanked her for her help and asked if they have paperwork on the meeting from last year and basically she told me to buzz off and I had to talk to the other counselor.