Looking for Information on Finding Suitable Private School for Learning Disabilities

[amazingmouse]

Hello,
I am wondering if anyone has experience with this, or how would other parents approach the topic of finding a school that can improve learning outcomes for a child with learning and cognitive difficulties?
I am looking at a couple of schools, and the challenge is to find objective, unbiased information on them. We do have a negative experience with one particular school years ago, that was providing lower quality education than the public school against a hefty fee.
Does anyone have experience with the Arrowsmith school / method? How reliable is the research on it?
Thank you.

---------- Post Merged at 10:55 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 09:03 AM ----------

After reviewing all the information I could find, it seems like there is no independent and reliable studies to review this method.
Can a controversial learning program transform brains? - The Globe and Mail
Actually, looked at the critics research, which seems to be well articulated.

 

[MHealthJo]

Hope that you find something that you feel is suitable Amazingmouse...

And whatever option you end up feeling is best, you can always remember that the magic ingredients of kindness, love, encouragement, and affirmation and promotion of whatever areas of life your child seems to enjoy and do quite well at, will help your child to develop a range of skills and strengths unique and individual to him or her and discover options in life that may be geared towards those.

 

[amazingmouse]

Thank you for replying, MHJo. Sorry for keeping you busy out there
It is a struggle for any parent of a child with special needs here to navigate the puzzle created by the education system and find the best educational path for their child. It really is a struggle and parents are pretty much left alone in it. The public system has adopted accommodations for differently abled learners, but they seem to provide a bare minimum that targets mostly the comfort level of the children, which is important, but again is the bare minimum the system has to provide, in order to keep these kids in the classrooms.
I realize, that even with help of private professionals their resources are limited for these kids. There is no none to develop a truly customized curriculum and targeted interventions for the kids, and even if there was, there is no-one to implement them. Teachers have close to 30 kids in class. While non-academic areas are not of concern for my kid, he gets along well with other kids and adults, the academic area seems to be a waste of time at best.
The system is developed so, that you have to go with the flow and any exeotionalities mean a set up for failure. They offer public segregated classes, and even in them the issues are generally similar. You can't take 20 kids with different learning disabilities, place them in one room and hope that by teaching a lower grade curriculum everybody will be happy. I mean, how does this serve the children? One might have Autism, the one Dyslexia, they require totally different approaches. Very messed up educational system and very challenging to parents. The alternative is private schools for 25K per year (and they have a year waiting list), or stay at home and hire tutors and transform into a special needs teacher yourself. Too many kids fail between the cracks, and never get a chance to develop their potential, to contribute to the world around them. I am organizing a parents action group in my area. This is unacceptable quality of education and to be honest, I feel that part of the problem could be that special education teachers do not receive an acceptable level of education / training for the complex job they have.

 

[amazingmouse]

Found a private teacher to help us out and a private part time program, sorry for posting this problem here. Please, ignore if you find my previous post negative. Thank you all.