So, here's my issue. The teacher has provided some in-class differentiation, at our request. She also made a point of telling me sometime after her first differentiation effort that DS7 was the only one in the differentiated group who was unable to even start on the differentiated work -- he said he didn't understand what he was supposed to do, until she sat down with him and walked him through it. We've seen similar things at home: fear of starting the unknown because he might do something wrong, and not really be smart....
My prediction is that it's going to take a huge effort to change this teacher's actions. Are there any alternative settings (homeschooling/different school/subject acceleration/ gradeskip) to explore. In a way, it really doesn't seem 'fair' to ask a teacher to redesign a whole curriculum for one student, particularly if her curriculum is working for the vast majority of kids in the classroom. Of course, it isn't fair to ask a child of your son's age to face 17 pages of 'easy peasy' day after day after day.
At the very least you might try sending in your own assignments for your son to do during the day instead of the regular assignments...I have know families who 'homeschool' inside the school building by taking 100% responsibility for the worksheets. One thing to find out is to ask the teacher for next week's handouts, and create some 'harder handouts' that are similar enough (in some way) to the teacher's handouts that the teacher would allow a substitution - instead of an addition to the daily worksheets.
Good Luck,
Grinity
