Where does the time go?

I can't believe that another summer is coming to an end. Jake is 7 1/2 now, and is getting ready to start 2nd grade!

Up until the end of the last school year, Jake has been in intervention classes, and classes for children with behaviour issues. There is a gap for kids like Jake in the education system; they don't fit into a "regular" classroom, and there aren't enough funds to tailor classrooms to all of the different needs of autistic kids, so they just kind of stick them where they think they can do the least damage. Of course no one stops to think about the damage to the kids; it's all about making sure that the kids are "manageable" and if they happen to learn something in the process then that is a big plus.

Jake is very, very intelligent, he just has a difficult time communicating what's in his brain to those around him. He also tends to act out what he sees, so if he is around kids with behaviour problems, he will tend to act like he is a problem, even though that is not really who he is. At the end of last year his teacher and I discussed the need to move him to a different type of classroom, so the last three week of the school year Jake spent half his day at Sandy grade school in the Behaviour classroom, and the other half at Nass elementary in the nearby town of Boring in an academic classroom for kids with Autism.

The changes in Jake were immediate; his verbal communication shot up and he was carrying on real, live, actual conversations on a regular basis. His math, reading and writing skills also improved (although he has consistently been above average in math) and he just seemed to be feeling more confident about himself. But, the process of switching schools, meeting new people, learning new rules and change in general was tough on him, and by the time school was over in June, he seemed to really, really need a vacation.

After seeing the huge change in Jake from three weeks of half days in a specialized classroom, I can only wonder how far along he'd be if he would have had a tailored education from day one. a public eduction is the right of very citizen in the US; but the state of public education in this country is pretty sad. Services for mainstream children in schools across the country have been sliced to the bone over the years, and if you have a special needs child, you can be almost certain that their education will be lacking in a major way. Maybe instead of spending trillions of dollars overhauling an a healthcare system that currently works for 87% of US citizens, the government should be focusing on overhauling the education system, which seems to be failing 100% of our children. It's just a thought.