I recently came across a post from a special ed advocate about IEP goals. The gist was that if your older child has been reading at a 2nd grade level for years, something is wrong with the system. The whole thing felt designed to trigger people.
Here’s the irony: just yesterday, I was at a graduation party with close friends — parents of kids who grew up alongside Wil, kids who also have Down syndrome. And guess what came up? That exact reading level. Because that’s where several of our kids are. And I want to say this clearly: that’s okay. That is their ability. We worked with them. Their schools worked with them. Their teachers and therapists poured themselves into this. We parents worked at home. And a 2nd grade reading level is the result of all of that hard work — not a failure of it.
We’ve actually moved things like that off Wil’s IEP now, to focus on other life skills. But that wasn’t an oversight. There was no missing “system.” It was a thoughtful, deliberate decision made by people who know Wil.
Now, are there always areas for growth? Absolutely. I’m not saying the system is perfect. But if I were a newer parent reading that advocate’s post without the context I have, I would have been devastated. Or furious. And neither of those emotions would have served them well.
What I know from the inside is this: no system is ever better than a one-on-one conversation with an educator. A 2nd grade reading level is not a bad thing in a vacuum, it’s relative to the child. Broad statements that sweep across thousands of kids and thousands of teachers don’t honor that. They create broad anger instead of appreciation for the individual work happening behind the scenes every single day.
Most teachers are underpaid and overworked. Like every profession, there are bad eggs, but they are not the norm. Don’t let posts like that one define your perception of the people in your child’s corner.
What I’ve found, over and over again, is that open communication and working together beats any “system” every time. Focus on your child. Focus on your team.
That’s where the real work — and the real progress — lives.