It's been a long 2 weeks

I've been getting an ever-increasing amount of pressure from Rotney's educational administrator. (What else do you call a non-custodial family member who is in charge of his education?) As you (my fictitious reader) may recall, she's very unhappy that he's not making A's and B's. During the week when I met with her three times, she had three different family members with her. Presumably, their purpose was to tell me (repeatedly and ad nauseum) how important Rotney's education was to them. Well, they actually mean it's supremely important to them that Rotney make the honor roll--they couldn't care less that he actually acquire some skills along the way. This was proven two weeks ago when the EA actually did something that totally BLEW MY MIND.

We use a reading basal in our district and two weeks ago we had a fairly difficult selection to read. Our skill was inferring and most of my literal-minded students struggled mightily with the weekly test. Not Rotney. He completed the test in five minutes, refused to go back and check his answers when I suggested he do so, and made the highest grade in the class--a whopping 95%! He averages D's and F's on these reading tests so, to put it mildly, I was intrigued. I called him over and asked him if he had ever seen a copy of this test before, and he admitted that he had. Further questioning revealed that his EA had somehow gotten copies of the reading tests and was teaching him the answers. Even the written response portions of the test were nearly identical to the suggested answers in the test book.

After consultation with the lead teacher (acting assistant principal), the principal, and the district elementary education curriculum supervisor, it was decided to not enter a grade for this test. It's cheating, but not by his own instigation. Although it wasn't discussed, we must have all felt the way I did--I'm not calling crazy, intense EA to accuse her of cheating--so we let it go at that.

We took a week out of our basal instruction for benchmark testing. The tests showed that Rotney's grades are pretty much in-line with his benchmark results--if anything, the grades are higher.

This past week, I decided to not give the test from my kit, but instead wrote a new test. On Monday, I asked Rotney if he was studying this week's reading test again and he happily told me "yes". I then told Rotney that he would be taking a different test that week, not the one that his aunt had. I might as well have lit a fuse on a nuclear bomb. (yeah, I know that nuclear bombs don't have fuses, but the phrase works for me. Thank you, anyway.)

A series of emails between me and the EA, each of us not daring to poke the hornets' nest about the reading test, began on Tuesday. Finally, on Thursday, she directly asked about what I had told Rotney on Monday and denied being capable of obtaining an assessment book. (HOW did she know it's called an assessment book?) I sent her a very polite reply about what Rotney had said and invited her to a conference. BOOM!

I, nearly immediately, received an extremely vituperative email. It was quite difficult to read because of the plethora of grammatical errors, but the gist was that I was against Rotney and always had been. And that she would be bringing her family to the conference.

So, I lawyered-up in the way that teachers lawyer-up. I had my Special Ed co-teacher there, as well as the lead teacher, principal, and the district elementary ed curriculum supervisor. This last member of the rally-around-and-support-me-crew totally took the wind out of the EA's sails. Well, not totally--she did state that she was happy the district person was there, because she had been advised to take the matter to her next, but she was definitely surprised to see her. She spent the next 40 minutes taking shots at me, my co-teacher, the lead teacher--it was like an arcade shooting gallery. Except I was able to refute what she said and even able to produce an email to Rotney's tutor that she said I refused to answer. Hah! Take that!

Nothing was resolved at the meeting. District person offered a transfer back to the school that had modified his grades to A's and B's last year, but transportation isn't available. They requested he be moved but the other inclusion class is full up, and sending him to another classroom isn't an attractive option. So I am still yet his teacher and stuck with the worst EA ever. Oh. Joy.