In Fort Wayne, Indiana, Tammy Stein had to sue to get her son the teaching he needed to perform according to his potential. There's a need for Wrightslaw.
“It infuriated me,” Stein said. “They were lying to me, making me think he was getting services when he wasn’t.”
Fort Wayne has a Scottish Rite dyslexia treatment center. It is simply inexcusable that young Master Stein had to struggle for years.
Special-ed case to be probed
Fort Wayne Community Schools admitted it failed to provide a dyslexic boy with necessary services.
By Sheena DooleyThe U.S. Department of Education is starting a preliminary investigation into Fort Wayne Community Schools’ admission to a parent that it failed to provide her son with “the agreed upon special education services.”
Tammy Stein filed a formal grievance with the department’s Civil Rights Division on Sept. 15, arguing the district denied her 11-year-old son, a fifth-grader at Lincoln Elementary, a free and appropriate education (FAPE) with the services outlined in his Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Failing to do so, she said, put her son further behind in the classroom.
The News-Sentinel is not identifying the student in order to protect his privacy.
Stein’s son was diagnosed with dyslexia in fall 2004, after struggling with reading, spelling and writing since he was a second-grader. To bring his reading level up to that of his peers, the IEP called for 30 minutes of one-on-one reading instruction and 30 minutes of academic support daily, starting the first day of this school year.
Lincoln Principal Craig Martin and FWCS Special Education Director Theresa Oberley admitted in a letter to Stein and her husband dated Sept. 15 the school did not give her son the 30 minutes of daily reading instruction he was entitled to. The assistant to her son’s special-education teacher, whom Martin and Oberley said in the letter has a master’s degree in elementary education, provided the 30 minutes of academic support.
The News-Sentinel received a copy of the letter from Stein.
“This is my child, and they need to do their job,” Stein said. “My son is intelligent and he can do this work; he just needs to be taught.”
FWCS spokeswoman Debbie Morgan said the district couldn’t comment because the situation involved a specific student. She said, however, FWCS takes special-education laws seriously and investigates and works to correct any problems reported to the district.
The Department of Education has 30 days to evaluate whether there is enough evidence to justify a formal investigation.
Stein contacted the federal government after Laura Cooper, her son’s special-education teacher, told Stein she hadn’t worked with her son.
Before that conversation, Cooper had sent a note home with Stein’s son that said he was “a joy to work with every day.”
“It infuriated me,” Stein said. “They were lying to me, making me think he was getting services when he wasn’t.”
Stein said she has struggled to get help for her son since he started having problems reading in the second grade. At that time, she asked for him to be put in programs for children who weren’t reading at grade level. School officials told her he didn’t qualify, she said.
FWCS officials tested Stein’s son in summer 2004, after his third-grade year. They told Stein and her husband that their son had a communication disorder and a learning disability, although the district didn’t tell them what his learning disability was, Stein said.
About five months later, Stein took her son to a doctor specializing in neurological disorders after learning dyslexia ran in the family. The boy then tested positive for the disorder.
Stein’s son entered FWCS’ special-education program at the beginning of his fourth-grade year. After about six weeks, Stein said she removed him because of problems with the teacher and behavior changes in her son.
“He started yelling at us, and he never had done that before,” Stein said. “Every morning he asked if we would take him out of special (education).”
In June, she agreed to put him back into the program with the hope he would get the help he needed to start reading at grade level.
“I believed in what the principal was telling me,” Stein said. “We were going to start over this year. I put my trust in these people that they would do what they were supposed to do.”
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