School Assessments: Finding Meaning & Advocating for Success
Feeling overwhelmed by school assessments? GPS Education Consulting’s life-changing advocacy & consulting services will guide you from confusion to clarity.
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Today we’re continuing our series exploring services that we use to help get your learner on a path to school success. Last week, we continued our deep-dive into the often emotionally-charged and confusing world of school assessments and psychological reports. We summarized some obstacles that are encountered when hardworking school professionals attempt to juggle competing demands within overburdened systems. We focused on implications of, and remedies for, the first obstacle.
Let me paint you an image to introduce the second obstacle:
“Opportunities to collaborate…felt less meaningful.”
You enter a small room filled with people you might not know. You’re carrying a stack of documents that describe your learner with a series of numbers and jargon.
You see reports detailing your learner’s: medical & educational history; cognitive & information processing abilities; executive functioning skills; social, emotional, and behavioral functioning; adaptive skills; achievement abilities; articulation, expressive, receptive, and pragmatic language skills; fine motor, gross motor, & sensory processing abilities; and more…
You look up, trying to hide the uncomfortable feelings you’re experiencing from this overwhelming situation. While doing so, you’re registering about half of what is said as people introduce themselves and mention the many things they want to accomplish during this hour-long meeting. They ask if you read the reports.
You did your best, but it was a lot of information to digest, and it’s hard to understand how it will be used meaningfully to help your struggling learner.
You tell them you “tried, but it was a lot.”
Schedule your FREE conversation today to find meaning & lose that overwhelming feeling.
Out of necessity, they then do their best impression of a pharmaceutical drug commercial narrator and attempt to each review their lengthy assessment reports in five minutes (to leave a few minutes left to make extremely important decisions regarding your learner’s educational programming).
Meanwhile, they shuffle in-and-out trying to be everywhere at once due to limited resources and a student body with increasing support needs. To avoid an additional meeting (the meeting calendar is already bursting at the seams), they must focus mostly on what your learner can’t do. They ask if you have questions, but you know this would take more time, and could delay supports for your learner by weeks. You say “No.”
With the best of intentions, they start talking about eligibility, or FAPE, or other words defined in laws you don’t fully understand. You hear things like “not eligible for SLD,” and “there’s a 504 team that can schedule a different meeting to determine eligibility.”
You’re confused and you haven’t heard your learner’s name in a while. The meeting ends as the next family arrives for their meeting. You leave feeling unsure about how that stressful experience will be useful and meaningful for your learner.
If you can relate…we’ve got a solution for you! Our life-changing educational consulting and advocacy services will guide you from confusion to clarity.
GPS Education Consulting L.L.C. provides expertise, knowledge, resources, and guidance every step of the journey.
Before the meeting:
Our record review services will break the documents into manageable chunks - highlighting the strengths and concerns we see based on our distinguished training and experience.
We’ll review the reports together in a comfortable place and at a convenient time for you, discussing what it means for your learner, and ways schools might interpret them.
Ask all the questions you have in the privacy of your home until you feel ready for the big meeting!
During the meeting:
We’ll join you as a non-attorney advocate to:
Support your understanding and make sure your input is heard,
Ensure your learner’s rights are upheld, &
Serve as a liaison between you and the school team, helping to find shared understanding, and productively collaborating to develop a plan that’s meaningful and personalized to your learner.
Afterward:
We’ll be there for you to: answer questions, plan next steps, and ensure proper and accurate documentation.
Best,
Evan Gallena, Ed.S., NCSP
Founder & Lead-Consultant: GPS Education Consulting L.L.C.
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Together, as one… Navigating the path to school success!