newtogifted, is this your neighborhood public school that you're advocating at? If it's a private school, ignore the rest of my reply lol! If it's not, have you tried advocating at the district level? Is there a central gifted or SPED department that you could address your concerns and requests through? We were caught in a situation advocating in elementary school where the school staff/faculty were extremely resistant to providing anything above and beyond essentially "nothing", but when we pulled in a district rep who was familiar with district policy and who also was familiar with federal law we were able to make progress.
I suspect that part of what's going on with your situation is the school not being entirely receptive to having a parent with your background advocating. I don't know that it's necessarily that they would feel threatened because of your background, and I probably can't explain clearly what I think might be happening... but here's an attempt! I have quite a few friends who are teachers. None of them have the educational background you have, but through knowing them casually outside of a school/business relationship, I've seen that they have strong feelings that they are the experts in the classroom, and parental input in some instances is easily and quickly dismissed as coming from people who know nothing about education. As a professional in an entirely unrelated field, this attitude has been problematic because as little training as I've had in education, I'm still a relatively bright individual who also knows a heck of a lot about the children I'm parenting. In your situation, you have the educational background to back yourself up when advocating, and that might be beyond annoying to teachers who already have an attitude about parents who know nothing advocating. Does that make sense?
And full disclosure here - I love, admire, and think the world of most of the teachers I know and have known. Please don't anyone think I'm knocking teachers by what I said above - I'm just trying to explain a roadblock my family encountered in advocating.
What to do in your situation? First, consider going to district level.
Other things - pin the teachers down on the behaviors noted. Does your child's behavior stand out in some way? Have you been in the classroom and observed the class as a whole? I'm curious about those things because (and I say this as a parent with no educational experience or training lol!)... there are usually quite a few kindergartners in any given kindergarten class who bounce around and are easily distracted when they aren't engaged in a class activity that interests them. Soooooo.... it would be important to me to know in advocating, is the behavior concern really a concern, or is it typical kindergartener-age behavior that's just being offered up as an excuse?
Do you have a local parents advocates group? If so, call them up and ask what they recommend re your next step. Knowing the law, knowing school district policy is all helpful and can be done outside of talking to advocates, but the thing we found invaluable from our local parent advocates' group that we could not have found anywhere else was inside knowledge re school staff/personalities etc that helped give us a frame within which we knew how to approach our specific school when advocating. When we were advocating just from our perspective as parents at the school, we just saw this huge brick wall put up by staff who were arguing against everything and didn't seem to want to be supportive at all. When we talked to our advocates' group we learned that our school was historically difficult to work with, was very close to losing federal funding due to lack of compliance with IDEA, and we were given very helpful advice on how to approach the school, how to word our requests etc - and it worked. You and your school are in a completely different situation, but the idea of getting advice from a non-biased outside third party who is also familiar with the local schools may be helpful.
Was the pilot reading program in school? If he's done well in that program and hasn't exhibited any behavior issues during it, that's also a great data point to have when advocating.
Last piece of advice, keep moving forward. Don't give up. It might not work this year, but don't give up for next year. Along the way keep collecting your data - not just testing data, but homework, work done in class, work you do at home to supplement. If the school won't give him achievement testing, I'd consider looking for it outside of school. It's relatively easy in our area to find inexpensive achievement testing through homeschool community contacts.
Best wishes,
polarbear
