Failure due to Red Tape

As a kindergarten teacher of many students who come to school with little to no preschool background, I am often the first person to identify what often becomes a special education need for a child in my class.  Since I spend 6 hours a day with a child, I have a lot of insight into whether or not a child who came without any experience with the material in the curriculum (lettters and numbers) is progressing at a normal pace or not.  However, today I encountered my third experience in just two years with a child that every teacher can see has an issue that needs specialized instruction and support but whom the formal diagnostic process fails miserably.

   Last year I had a young man who was obviously suffering from some emotional developmental delays.  He was just vacant most of the time, and compared to his peers he made little if any progress towards mastering any concepts in the kindergarten curriculum.  He would sit on the carpet during story time and rock back and forth with a shoelace in his mouth.  Honestly, he seemed drugged.  After "showing my ass" so to speak in a meeting with the diagnostic team, they agreed to evaluate him for possible learning or emotional disabilites, but in the end despite the fact that this child was OBVIOUSLY in need of intervention in as many ways as possible, he was deemed "ineligible" because he hadn't been in school long enough for us to really KNOW that he wasn't learning.  He has since been to about 4 other schools, had a full psychotic sort of break, kicking, biting, basically gone off the deep end.... and I KNEW he had an issue, but what I know didn't matter- all that mattered was that he hadn't had "adequate exposure" to curriculum.

  Another guy who is a redshirted kindergartener was in a similar situation.  His teacher last year, a 20 year veteran of kindergarten, could tell in SEPTEMBER that he would need to be retained because not only did he come with no prior knowledge or developed skills needed for kindergarten, he was unable to develop and retain the knowledge and skills that he was being taught at a rate that was acceptable to the rigors of the kindergarten curriculum.  So, again, the diagnostic team failed this young man because despite the fact that he obviously needed specialized support and could have gotten it, they dismissed the veteran teacher's concerns with the "adequate exposure" clause all over again.  So now his parents have demanded an evaluation, and frankly I won't be terribly surprised with a pronouncement of ineligible because instead of comparing him with a student his own AGE, they insist on comparing him with a grade level peer, or a first month kindergartener.  So this child will likely not get served with intervention that I cannot do by myself for him until 3rd grade or later when the problems become so pronounced that he is several grade levels behind in reading and math.

  And now I have another one.  Every time I pick my class up from Art, Music, Library, Computers, or PE the teacher asks me what is wrong with her.  She doesn't seem to understand anything about what she's supposed to do.  She copies others, and when she can't do that she is completely lost and oblivious.  After 5 weeks of DAILY one-on-one interventions she still doesn't recognize her own name, nor can she name any individual letter in her name.  This despite the combination of the interventions she's already had PLUS the fact that the entire first hour of my school day revolves around letters and letter sounds.  One member of the team observed her for about 10 minutes today and pronounced her "without concern."   I wanted to scream!  This child is in desperate need of more help than I can give her.  I have 22 students in my class and she has already monopolized every resource I have available to help any child who struggles.  Her attention issues are so profound that she cannot work in a group with other children receiving help because she distracts them so badly.  She is usually unable to string more than 3 words together to form a sentence.  Like a toddler, her first instinct is to hit or spit at others when she feels threatened (including phantom threats like someone is sitting where she wants to sit on the carpet).

   This whole situation frustrates me to no end.  It's as if because I got a degree in Education rather than Psychology, my own knowledge, observation and plain gut instinct are immaterial in these cases.  You're telling me that 10 minutes of observation by someone with a psychology degree trumps 6 hours a day of agony in dealing with this child who I simply cannot help on my own. And so then I am stuck between a rock and a hard place: I am obligated to invest all the time and resources at my disposal to help her, but if I KNOW there is something wrong and that the time and energy expended will be wasted on her, then I'm denying another child who COULD made adequate progress with just a little intervention the chance to get that help.  Why should one child be able to monopolize everything I have to give when I KNOW that there's something wrong that falls outside the realm of what I'm able to handle on my own?

   It's a catch-22..... I'm supposed to be "highly qualified," highly educated, a professional educator, yet I'm not deemed qualified to identify when a child's needs are beyond my help.  Wouldn't I know better than anyone what's beyond my help?