I have raised three children as a single mother and I know a bit about the weaknesses of our current educational system. The program “No Child Left Behind” almost left my child behind.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, my youngest son had difficulty learning how to read.

Each year I would go into the ARD meetings and fight for him. The teachers and principal kept wanting to flunk him.

They had no justification to do so. I checked his homework every night and he never had a bad grade.

They even put him in special education. He came home crying when they did that. He said he knew everything that they were trying to teach him when he went to that class.

At the next ARD meeting I had the special education teacher crying.  I demanded that they pull him out of special education.

I couldn’t figure out why they kept wanting to flunk him when he was getting good grades.

Then it dawned on me. They were scared he wouldn’t pass the TAKS test. This was due to the program entitled “No Child Left Behind.”

They were worried about their ratings. The ratings were more important to them than my child.

I had observed this child from the time I gave birth. He was brilliant, but his brilliance was in technology, not reading.

He could barely walk when he figured out the VCR. When it would stop working, his older brother, sister and me would sit on the couch and ask him to fix it.

He would toddle up to the box, push a few buttons and it would work perfectly.

Thank God I saw his potential because the teachers didn’t. I demanded that they pass him during the years he struggled. I also tutored him every evening at home.

The first TAKS test he took was in third grade. He passed. The teacher said I had been right all along.

Like I didn’t know that?

This was my son, I knew him better than anyone.

He is now a senior in high school, a member of the National Honor Society and has a 4.3 GPA.

If they had flunked him and kept him in special education, he may have doubted the brilliance that I saw in him.

I don’t think his potential has even been tapped. I have told him his intelligence will explode in college. That is when his mind is going to be challenged and that is when his complex reasoning skills will be used.

The one who knows best what a child can achieve is the parent, not the teachers.  It is our responsibility to advocate for our children in a system which may fail them. Don’t ever underestimate the potential that your child may attain. What others may see as a deficit could blind them to the hidden treasure of brilliance.

This post was originally released in September of 2013, I want to add an update to this post. It is now 2019 and my son has graduated with an Industrial Management Engineering Degree from Louisiana Tech University. He got a job soon after graduating and makes more money in his first year out of college than I ever made in my life. I am so proud of him!

If you want to read a fantastic book about a single mother who rocks the world, read The Shattered Vase by Gracie Lynne. You can buy it by clicking on the following link.