I just wanted to say that I find that linked story so disturbing I have read it a couple times. If it can happen to a well-educated, well-to-do family it can happen to anyone. It reminds me so much of our school and I can see something like that happening here. They report families to CPS or the police without bothering to discuss the situation with the family or get the whole story, they fail to do evaluations when parents have concerns, gossip and talk behind the back of the family, falsify records when backed into a corner, etc. etc. etc. I think it's a disgrace that apparently nothing happened to the school or anyone in it. They didn't have to pay any damages? No one was fired? Schools do this because they know they can get away with it. No one ever loses their jobs and nothing ever happens.
Seriously. And this is real. I actually talked to these people and they are really intelligent educated people. The case transcript is online too. My DS's school was never this bad... But our experiences were definitely reminiscent of this and my DS did end up with anxiety disorder because of school and how poorly he was treated. The complete lack of understanding of the disability and the tendencies to view it as some sort of behavior challenge rather than be willing to address it as a learning disability that, when there are no accommodations and support, results in "behaviors" feels very, very familiar. Also the absolute refusal to see a problem with the writing or a writing disability rings so true. In our school, I insisted they look at DS for writing disability despite his teachers insisting he was fine (even though it was soooo obvious he was not fine!) and had a behavior problem not a writing problem (he's "off task," he's "too slow" due to attention not writing problems, he's "oppositional" not struggling with the motor task). The writing disability was not identified as a result of that school eval. Why? I realized this year that they tested him mostly for adhd and not a writing disorder (even though I specifically asked that he evaluated for dyslexia and writing disorder). Then school psych, when discussing the eval with me, casually mentioned that writing improves when adhd meds are introduced. They really just do not want to identify writing issues at all. They seem to push adhd (even though at that time the BASC did not even support an adhd dx.) It is so weird to me... I am not sure if it something purposeful or what. Often I suspect that it easier for them to deal with adhd b/c there are drugs for that and it is on the parents really to do something about that as opposed to a situation of a learning disorder... it seems like with a learning disorder the onerous switches to the school to do something, i.e. provide several accommodations involving technology and extra people and to remediate the disability.
