IEP

IEP stands for “Individualized Education Program”. My son has had one since Early Intervention when he was 3 years old. Here is a description in Wikipedia.

What does this mean for a homeschooler? Different things in different states. My son is entitled to “Resource” and “Speech”. He receives speech therapy 3 times each week in a small group. I take him to our neighborhood school for that. Some districts will send an itinerant speech therapist to your home but I like taking him by the school regularly. He still feels part of the school community that way and it seems to perk him up and improve his attitude.

“Resouce” is more difficult. It is tutoring, either in a small group or “push-in” where the teacher is in the classroom. My son would be working on his reading skills every day. Since this is more dependent upon the curriculum we are not using resource services right now. I do plenty of one-to-one reading with him daily. Right now we are reading “The Diary of Anne Frank”.

An IEP can prescribe many things. Your school psychologist can conduct the testing. Your struggling child could need extra help with reading, math, speech, occupational therapy, or just about anything that can affect school performance. My son’s triennial evaluation is in progress and I’ll be interested to see what it suggests. At some point he will “test-out” of the need for services.

We had a scare last year when a court decided that NYS law did not require school districts to provide IEP services to homeschoolers. Luckily our sensible new governor, David Patterson, intervened and a bill was passed in our favor.

If you are a struggling homeschooler and you think your child could benefit from help I urge you to get the testing done. You and your child are entitled to it. Contact your local district and ask for it. Having speech therapy done at school, funded by taxes, has personally saved us many thousands of dollars over the years and has been of great benefit to our son.

See my IEP page for additional resources.

MATH FACTS

Today’s subject is MATH. I am not a believer in the “constructivist” math often taught in the schools today and prevalent in New York State. It is not “real math”, it is “fuzzy math”. My children have been told that they can get wrong answers and still receive full credit for their effort. That doesn’t sit well with me and in the real world it is nonsense. A math problem has an answer and if you cannot get the correct answer each and every time your skill is useless. 

Constructivist math tends to be heavily dependent upon word problems. Math taught this way is terrible for children with a language disability. A child who is having difficulties with English should not be failing math simply because he cannot understand a convoluted  word problem.  I have seen state math tests, given in districts with large numbers of English language learners and low literacy parents, in which every single math problem is a word problem and it should be no surprise that scores are low.

 I believe in slowly building up skills and confidence and providing children with the advantage of knowing their “math facts”. Teach them the math FIRST and don’t make it into an English course.

Now, the end of my rant and the solution to the problem – SAXON MATH. I purchased the SAXON 7/6 HOMESCHOOL package for my son, who is lagging behind in math due to poor instruction. It teaches new skills while providing plenty of “mixed practice” so that skills learned are not forgotten. Each lesson provides a “warm up” of facts practice, a math lesson, and supplemental practice sheets. Regular short tests are given which enable immediate intervention. Saxon Math provides a combination of number problems and word problems but the word problems are simple and straightforward and not the main focus. My son is doing well and building up the confidence he needs. I should have done this years ago.

You can purchase the complete curriculum directly from Saxon. It includes the lesson book, an answer book, and a practice & test book. Used curriculums are frequently sold on Ebay and in homeschool forums but may not contain all three items. Be sure you check the contents.