This child will not be left behind

Remind me never to schedule taxes, IEPs and neurophysiological evaluations all in the same week. Ugh.

Our IEP meeting last week went okay. Basically, Garrett is performing below average academically, which means by public school standards it's good enough to advance him to the next grade. (Man do I hate the "no child left behind" law.) Like I stated in an earlier post, you have to be seriously deficient before you qualify for any special education once you hit 7 years old. (Which Garrett will be in July.) He didn't qualify for speech therapy because the sounds he has troubles with don't exist in his native tongue (Russian or Kazakh). But the school therapist will provide us with articulation lessons, so we can work with him on our own. If we don't see significant improvement, we'll have to go to Plan B (okay, I don't have a Plan B at this point). One area he has regressed is his behavior. He's not sitting still and listening to his teachers, plus he's being defiant. So they're going to run a battery of tests in March to see if he qualifies for special education through the back door. Our gut tells us that Garrett would benefit from repeating kindergarten, except this time we'd send him to all day K. Even his K teacher agreed with us, but later retracted because (we think) she felt she said too much.

In the meantime, I'm going to learn more about IEPs and what our rights are as parents. Our friend Michelle (who also adopted from Kazakhstan) told us about a non-profit organization in Minneapolis called Pacer Center www.pacer.org. The mission of PACER Center (Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights) is to expand opportunities and enhance the quality of life of children and young adults with disabilities and their families, based on the concept of parents helping parents. One of their workshops—Understanding the Individualized Education Program (IEP)—seems particularly interesting. It teaches parents about IEP development, including new IEP requirements, overview of evaluation, team planning, writing measurable IEP goals, adaptations, implementation and methods for resolving disagreements. I can hardly wait. They also offer individual assistance over the phone and in-person to families who have questions about their child's needs. And it's all FREE. Woo-woo.

We also have an appointment next week with Dr. Maria Kroupina for a neuropsychological assessment. She's the clinical research director for the International Adoption Medicine Program and would be able to predict behavior and other cognitive issues that may occur later in Garrett's life. The main goal is to see whether he would benefit from early intervention. (Especially since his special ed teacher thinks he should be medicated.) I like the idea of having someone whose expertise is institutionalized children because the school district isn't equipped to evaluate him from that perspective.

BTW we were so excited to get our taxes done this year. We should be getting back a nice refund this year, thanks to the international adoption credit. It'll be nice to finally get rid of all the adoption expenses.