According to the tutor, your son is fairly productive when he is in the scheduled private sessions, but you really need him to get to the point where he is that productive when he is in his regular middle school classes. In fact, the middle school has indicated that unless your son can find a way to manage his own behavior he will be spending the rest of the year in the counseling center, this includes lunch and before and after school times.
As parents, you are struggling to figure out a way to help your son successfully function at school so that he can make both academic and social progress.
The tutor’s notes indicate that your son is a charming and engaging young man in a one on one situation. Your son was evidently able to focus and write answers to most of the comprehension questions that he was given, indicating that he had read the selection as assigned. Although your son has always indicated that he likes to read, he rarely completes anything that is assigned to him, so you take this note from the tutor as a positive sign.
The tutor has recommended that your family might want to visit one of the private middle schools in the area, and the suggestion is that your son might have more success in a smaller school with smaller class sizes. You fear, however, that when these private schools see the Autism diagnosis on your son’s school file that they will not even consider him for admittance.
When he is struggling to settle and to cope, you r son has explained that it seems as if his body is against him. He explains that his arms, hands, feet, body, and leg motions seem to do the opposite of what he tells them to do. Both you and your husband have noticed these behaviors, sometimes as often as every 30 seconds, and it is apparent that these uncontrolled motions are very frustrating. And while he knows that they are happening, he has explained that he feels stupid when they happen. He attempts to create goals for himself, like picking up a pen with perfect accuracy. With tears in his eyes, however, your son indicates that if achieving these goals were like getting 100% on a quiz, he keeps getting an F.
You know that the benefits of private school education are many, but you fear that the schools in your area will not see your son as a good fit. You hope that with the individual work with the tutor, and with continued sessions with a behavior therapist your son’s behaviors will be more predictable and manageable.
The Chance to Attend a Private School Can Provide Future Advantages
Whether you are considering a private middle school or a private high school, the choice of the education that you select for your teenagers often determines how they will succeed in the future. For the parents who make the decision to start private education at the preschool level, the commitment to the best education is apparent.
Consider some of these statistics about the differences a private education can make:
- 30,861 private schools in the U.S. serve 5.3 million students, preschool through senior year in high school.
- 24% of the nation’s schools provide private educations and they enroll 10% of all preschool through grade 12 students.
- 80% of the parents who send their kids to private schools indicate that they are happy with the academic standards of those schools.
- 96% of all private schools in the 2011 and 2012 school year were coeducational; while only 2% enrolled all girls and 2% enrolled all boys.
- Typically private schools are smaller than public schools; In fact, 86% have fewer than 300 students.
- 91% of parents surveyed indicated that the dedication of the teachers was their main reason for choosing private school, according to a study completed by the Fraser Institute in the year 2007.
- Students who attend preschool do 21% better on reading and math tests in kindergarten than their peers who do not attend private preschools.
- 88% of private high school students apply to college. This number compares to 57% of public high school students who apply to college.
