No Child Left Behind?

Well, today was the conference at Challenger for Aaron's educational testing results. I met with Karen, the intensive learning instructor, Mrs. Miller, Aaron's teacher, the speech therapist, and Lori Warne, the school psychologist. They did a pretty thorough assessment of where Aaron has been prior to coming to the Minnesota public school system (Challenger) and how far he has come. The last time Aaron was formally assessed was in 2002 at Chase Lake in Edmonds. He continues to have challenges in areas of processing/sequencing, but has also made substantial gains in many other areas. They were all impressed with his level of growth and highly praised the school he came from in Washington, Chase Lake, and all they did in getting him where he is today. That being said, there were a couple of funny things his teacher, Mrs. Miller, related to us in the report. Apparently Aaron has a way of focusing on his immediate needs, sometimes to the exclusion of those around him. They were in a Social Studies class session one day when Aaron decided to get up in the middle of the session and go over to "look at the puppets" on the side of the classroom. Mrs. Miller was understandably surprised to see him do that and called out to him, "What are you doing, Aaron?" Aaron replied innocently that he was just "looking at the puppets." Mrs. Miller responded, "Do you think now is the appropriate time to be doing that??" Aaron simply said "no," and returned to his desk. After he got back to his desk, he looks over at one of his classmates and says, "Told you so!" I could just picture Aaron's expression too... :o) Another example was one day when they were in a particular session and Aaron decided he was thirsty. Rather than get his water bottle off his desk, he got up and walked to the sink in the middle of the session. Of course he again acknowledged it "probably wasn't the best time to get it" per Mrs. Miller's inquiry. Mrs. Miller thought it was just so funny how he got up, oblivious to the current activity, and just went about his business as though nothing was amiss. The funniest moment came, however, when Mrs. Miller posed a question to the class. Apparently a couple of kids tried responding with no success, then a tense silence followed by Aaron's blurting out, "Come on, people!! Would somebody just give her the answer??? Geez!!" I think she just about had a cow in class upon hearing that. He obviously knew that's what was holding up the class session and "wanted to get on with it!" We all had a good chuckle over that.

The long and short of the testing is that Aaron no longer meets criteria for speech therapy, having mastered average vocabulary ability and other speech skills. He averages between 3-14 word sentences, apparently, whereas the actual norm is around 18 words per sentence. She said that's not necessarily "a bad thing," though, as he seems to get his thoughts across just fine with fewer words. We all acknowledged, though, that he's nowhere near ready to just be "dropped" from all learning service support so they are doing an "override" of the Minnesota criteria for special needs and using just the "language development" criteria at this point to qualify him for services. They were in a quandary as to what to do about the upcoming NWEA and other standardized testing as Mrs. Miller figured he will just be frustrated to the point of giving up and I responded that I was aware they need to meet the new requirements of the federal "No Child Left Behind" Act, but that I suspected the Act's chief proponent was probably left behind himself somewhere along the way...

At the end of the meeting, we confirmed the boys were waiting in the office for me to take them home, but before we could adjourn, I saw the bill of a beige Mariner's cap just barely come into view in the window next to the closed meeting room door (Aaron) followed by Daniel waving real big at me.

The plan at this point is they will draw up an IEP (Individual Education Plan) based on the test results and we may meet again just before school lets out to go over it and confirm plans for next year.

Andrew's cooking some chicken for dinner tonight when he gets back home and then we're all headed to choir practice. Signing off now....