Dr. Caitlin Solone, special education advocate and faculty at UCLA, says, “It is definitely case-by-case, but if your child is in the younger grades, I would not agree to an ‘alternate’ curriculum until fourth, maybe fifth grade. I think it does really lower expectations for your child.” She continues, “Once state testing begins, the school will determine whether a child will take alternate or standard assessments, so it’s a good time to wait at least until then.”
For this reason, Dr. Solone advises parents to keep students in their general education classroom as long as possible, and continuously work to find entry points for them through the use of accommodations and modifications. If and when they do work from a modified curriculum, they should still have a standards-based education and IEP goals, and should be making meaningful progress on those goals.
For more, see our article Building a Goal-Oriented Future: Earning a Diploma or a Certificate of Completion.
