I ask for forgiveness in advance if I go on a NCLB rant, because this story is exactly why I DESPISE NCLB.
I was a smart kid. Quite socially awkward, but given my height, other physical problems, and things in my personal life, it wasn't a surprise. I got As and Bs on all my exams, and I scored in the 98th - 99th percentile on most standardized tests. I was the model student in many cases. So, what's the problem?
The problem was in the classroom and at home.
When I was an infant, we had the first signs that something could be wrong. I was born on my due date, yet was a month or two behind on every developmental milestone. However, since I was meeting them all, the doctors didn't worry about that too much. To be fair, they had plenty of other things to worry about with me. I have a lot of interesting problems (medically) that the doctors couldn't figure out for the longest time. I had a rare childhood allergy to dairy, my ears weren't formed right, my wrist bones were deformed, my bottom tear ducts were clogged, I didn't HAVE top tear ducts.... the list goes on. Many of these problems still have not been figured out 24 years later, partly becaue of the rarity of the problems and partly because insurance won't cover the specialists I need to figure out what's going on with me. Welcome to the US. :P
So, anyways, I was an emotional, hyperactive kid. But, we lived on a farm, so I had plenty of room to run out my energy, and plenty of things to keep me interested. Looking back, things should have been obvious, even from that time, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Things became more noticeable when my parents got divorced and my mom, baby sister, and I moved to an apartment in the next town. I was bouncing off the walls, "not listening" to what my mom would tell me to do, losing all my things... all in all, I was a pretty difficult kid.
In school, I did pretty well as long as I had something to keep myself involved. The real problems started in third or fourth grade when we started being expected to sit still at our desks for long periods of time. That was torture for me. I remember one memorable day in fourth grade when my teacher got tired of asking me to keep all four legs of my chair on the ground, and he took it away from me. I spent the rest of the day kneeling at my desk on my knees. That's also around the time my grades started suffering, because that's when they started handing out homework. I would forgot I had homework, or I'd do it and leave it at home, or worse still I'd bring it to school and forget to hand it in. The school was sending home notes all the time about me not doing my homework. My mom at first got mad at me and sat with me every night to make sure that I got it done. She couldn't come to school with me, though, to make sure it got handed in. That was when my mom finally started realizing that there was something deeper going on with me.
Now, I come from an impoverished home where the highest level of education (before me) was high school. My mom didn't have the knowledge or finances to take me somewhere and have me tested. She relied on the school. Instead of helping her, they pulled out my standardized tests (even back then, the first ones were in third grade) and showed her the scores. They said there can't be anything wrong, I can't be disabled, or my test scored would be lower. I was even in the gifted program because of those scores. And in our rural area, without any money to take me elsewhere, she had to take their word for it.
In fifth and sixth grade, they started handing out detentions for not doing your homework. I was in detention ALL THE TIME. I only had one detention my entire school career that was for something other than doing my homework, and that was for running in the halls. Again, my mom talked to the school. She told them that I was doing my homework. She knew because she did it with me every night. But, far from convincing them I had a problem, that just convinced them that I was lazy, and maybe even defiant.
We gave up trying to convince the schools of anything until I got into high school. I eeked by in elementary and junior high with Bs, Cs, and the occasional D. When high school came, we did a unit in one of my classes on psychology, and I was introduced to the concept of ADHD. I went through the checklist. It fit perfectly. I took this information to the school counselors. But they said I didn't have ADHD. ADHD kids don't get good test scores, they said. You just need to try harder. I got shown my test scores again. I was given the lazy label again.
I gave up. I didn't care anymore. I graduated high school, went to college, almost failed out of my first year, went to community college, barely scraped by. It wasn't until my fourth year of college, when I went to Northern Illinois University, that I met the professor that would change my life forever.
I was doing music at the time. Struggling like crazy. I went into this professor's office to get some extra help, like I had quite often that semester, and he was sitting at his desk, his feet propped up, reading a book about learning disabled students and how some learning disabilities cause people to hear and process music differently. He looked at me as I came in and said that a lot of the things in that book reminded him of the troubles I had been having. He wondered if I had ever been tested for learning disabilities. I said no, I had always just been told I was lazy. He said he thought I should, and told me to call psychologists in the area. So I did. The cheapest I could find was $600. There was no way I could afford that. I told him so, and he said, "Let me do some looking around for you." He found the psychological services center on campus. They did the testing for $200, and let me make payments on it. It was expensive for me, but doable. So, I got tested. Turned out, I have ADHD and two processing deficits: auditory processing and short-term memory.
I was so happy, believe it or not. I wasn't lazy. This explained everything. It also explained why I was having so many problems in music. I switched my major to child development, and with minimal accomodations for my disabilities, I graduated as an A and B student for my last two years, and even made the dean's list one semester. Now that I understand my disabilities and what they are, I can cope with them.
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This diary, while not directly about politics, is very political to me. First of all, there was a thread throughout this whole thing of relying on standardized test scores. This was even before NCLB. Test scores aren't everything. Those tests played to all of my strengths, and none of my weaknesses. No wonder I got such high scores on them. I despise NCLB with a passion, and I hope that POS legislation is repealed soon. I know our schools need work, but there are MUCH better ways of doing it than NCLB. And under NCLB, even if I had been diagnosed, I would have been forced to be completely mainstreamed, because it only allows so much to go towards special needs, no matter how many special needs children there are at your school.
It is also about poverty. There needs to be more resources for children and families in poverty. If my mom would have had the resources to go and get me tested without relying on the idiots at my schools, we would have found these disabilities much sooner and been able to work up an IEP.
And, lastly, it's about health care. Mental health is very much a part of health care, and if we had truly free health care, I would have been able to go elsewhere to get tested as a child.
As always, if you have any questions for me, post them in the comments. I look forward to the discussion. :)
