Two weeks ago I met with my youngest son's teacher and a couple of
other personnel in order to decide his fate for the coming year. For
those of you who are familiar with the special-needs parlance, it was
his annual ISP (Individual Service Plan) meeting. The meeting that will
determine how much therapy he gets, what the years goals are, and
essentially how much attention he'll get over the next year. And yes,
it's almost impossible to imagine where a four-year-old will
be in a year in terms of his abilities. So the uselessness quotient of
the ISP has not escaped me.
However, it came up in discussions,
now that he's getting bigger, where he might be headed in the future:
mainstream school? A special-needs classroom? Which is better? And how
do you know? It turns out there's no easy answer, and many parents say
that the mainstreaming of the past has done more harm than good.
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