Week 10 - Enlisting the Reader

I talk about my children a lot.  Well probably even more than a lot according to some people.  It just can't be helped, I stay at home full time with my four kids, and they pretty much determine what I do with my time each day.  After the kids all go to school, it's generally a small window of time that I get to myself to go through the mail and enjoy an extra cup of coffee.  Last week, as I leafed through the mail, glancing through the lastest sales flyers and sweepstakes winner notifications, I saw a rather thick envelope from my son's school.  Grimacing, wondering what new batch of useless information it might contain, I ripped open the envelope.

It contained a sheaf of paperwork regarding my son's recent evaluations and school progress for the year so far.  Somewhere within also would be the recommendations regarding his program for next year.  Steeling myself I begin at the top, trying to read and decipher as I went down the page.  As my eyes glazed over and the grocery list began drifting to the front of my mind, I realized I was not absorbing any of the information in front of me.  If you have ever had the pleasure of reading such a report you know that about four sentences into it, the "educational-ese" begins.  The first few are "I examined/observed such and such child who resides with none/both/one of their biological parents with 1/3/72 siblings, ages 3, 7, 9, and 105..."  blah blah blah.  Things I know and anyone who knows my kids or family knows, do they really need to put it in the report to tell it to me though?  Since no one without a signed and sealed declaration, and perhaps blood sample, can get a copy of the report, really does it require an introduction?  Perhaps its just to assure me that the person is actually talking about my son, rather than the 300 other children they are responsible for documenting on.  I wonder if it's like a form letter, filling in the blanks with pertinent information.  Of course that just leads me to think maybe its more like the old Ad-Libs books, adjective here, adverb here, word that ends in "ing" here... and when they are stumped for a good word they pull out the thesaurus and grab the longest word they can find, sounding sufficiently impressive and knowledgable. 

Luckily, or not as the case may be, I am familiar with the layout of this particular fill in the blank report, and there are handy section titles that direct me to the last paragraph or two of the report, "Conclusions."  My observations prove to be correct yet again, since this section is made of single syllable words and a couple of mis-spellings, obviously quickly typed or dictated and not properly checked for accuracy or complete sentences (note my son's name is spelled incorrectly, sigh).  The total sumation of the "conclusions" is that my son is receiving all of his current services and supports and making progress with said services.  In addition the writer, a consulting psychologist for many of the local school districts, determines that the services should continue until the next evaluation.  Phew, what a relief, my son is getting his services (which I observe and discuss with his teacher almost daily), making progress (which I see on a daily basis and again hear from his teacher), and should continue with the same regimin for another year (which is a relief since schools rarely manage to leave working programs alone without meddling with them). 

I notice the page number at the bottom, #14.  Fourteen pages to sum up essentially, it ain't broke so we won't fix it.  I wonder if the school has to pay the consultant piecemeal, per page of results per child.  I also wonder if perhaps it might be better to eliminate needless meetings and reports and fund some of the sorely lacking areas of the school budget.  Maybe an opt out option?  Certainly it might fund the notebooks that my daughters third grade class held a bake sale to pay for?