What is her placement now? (regular classroom? autism classroom? multi-handicapped classroom?) What other placement options are available in the district?
Originally Posted by
melrose7
But now I need to prove the school is not teaching her and even though she is making progress I feel she could make more elsewhere.
The key is that you will need to show that she is not getting the Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) she is entitled to by law. Remember, that the law doesn't require the district to provide the best education, just an appropriate one. So that is the term you need to use, over and over. You need to show that her current education is not appropriate and that she can get an appropriate education elsewhere.
When you say that she is making progress, what do you mean specifically? Do you mean that she is gaining new skills? Do you mean that her behavior is improving? Do you mean that she sits quietly and doesn't make trouble?
If she is gaining new skills, that is great, but how are her skills advancing compared to her same age peers? Her 2nd grade peers started the year ahead of her academically, and they are probably learning new skills at a faster rate than your DD, which means that your DD is falling further and further behind her peers. So gaining new skills is not enough. Do you have evaluations and test scores that your DD has taken over several years? How have her percentile rankings changed over the years - do these ranking scores reflect that she is falling further behind her peers? Does the school have a plan to help close this widening gap between your DD and her peers? Is that plan realistic? Can the private program you want provide a plan to close this gap? Do they have a history of helping other students?
If you haven't already read "From Emotions to Advocacy" by Pete Wright, I highly recommend it. It gives a lot of good information about how to show a lack of appropriate progress, how to phrase things correctly, how to work within the school culture, etc.
A local support group may also be able to provide good resources and possibly a parent advocate.
Gena
DS, age 11 and always amazing
“Autistics are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg." - Paul Collins, Not Even Wrong