Michigan failing its special needs children, parents and studies say.

Reblogged from bridgemi.com by Chastity Pratt Dawsey

Renee Honor knew something was wrong with her son, Nicholas, when he was struggling to read in third grade. She was upset his school didn’t catch it.

Honor, 43, of Detroit, asked his school to test him for special education and soon found out he had attention deficit disorder, a mild cognitive disorder, and is on the autism spectrum.

The diagnosis has turned Honor into something of an educational nomad. Over the past five years, she’s switched school three times in Detroit in hopes of getting better services, which have ranged from little intervention to a self-contained special-education class.

Now 15, Nicholas is heading to Mumford High next month with assessments that show he’s reading at a sixth-grade level, but a report card that says he’s passing all his classes. Honor says her son still confuses the letters “b” and “d” and struggles to count coins.

“They’re not giving him what he needs,” Honor said. “This is how a kid ends up wanting to drop out.”

Read more>>