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Narjas Zatat
Jan 17, 2019
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A teacher has revealed the lengths one mother went to in order to prevent her child, who showed signs of having learning difficulties, from getting the extra help he needed,
Reddit user FourLear11 recently took the website to share a story about a child whose parents were both PhD holders.
For the mother, it was so difficult to accept the prospect of a child who had learning difficulties, she tried to get him to learn the class tests beforehand – effectively a form of cheating.
The post revealed that after the first “4-6 weeks of school” the “first grader” showed numerous signs of a learning disability when it came to reading and math.
“Even with extra in-class help,” the poster wrote, “their grades were very poor.”
The teacher passed this along to Mrs. PhD, requesting a meeting to discuss her son's performance, requesting that she allow SN Student to be placed in special education classes, and requesting that she permit the state to test her child for learning disabilities (which up until 2nd grade, also requires the consent of the parents).
As is all too often the case, Mrs. PhD demanded the principal be in attendance at the meeting, and spent the first half of the meeting berating both the Teacher and the principal as "My child has no issue.
He's the genius offspring of two geniuses and is the opposite of someone who needs special ed.
If you didn't suck at your jobs, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
The second half of the meeting consisted of Mrs. PhD attack the Teacher over her choice to design and use her own tests, and instead demanded that the Teacher use the standard tests provided with the textbooks, as [insert statistical PhD BS] was causing her son to perform worse on the custom tests.
In the end the head teacher agreed with the parent, and instructed the teacher to use the standard tests on the child. A month went by with the standard tests, and the child had “an A average across the board, with perfect 100’s on all reading tests.”
“Mrs PhD sent quite a few smug notes to the Teacher pointing it out.”
So what changed?
It turned out, the parent, could access the teacher’s edition copy of the textbooks, and had her son memorise the answers beforehand.
The Teacher spoke to SN Student, said she was impressed with his performance, and asked if he was doing anything different at home to study.
As 1st graders do, SN Student proudly responded that the tests were easier once he could start practicing them in advance.
In the end the teacher was able to make small alterations to the test, which resulted in the child getting very poor grades again.
Though the teacher requested that the student get state testing for any learning disabilities, she “never got a response” from the mother.
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