Sent to Pearlsky’s Team Facilitator and the school’s Director of Special Ed. Note that a day earlier I had a discussion with the TF about how the attempts at communication have been a joke, and particularly told her this story from just about exactly a year ago. So yesterday I wrote …

Subject: Pearlsky, communication, the farce continues

Mary:

You and I just had a discussion on Pearlsky and augmented communication just yesterday. I told you that in my humble opinion, what the school district has offered all these years has been a farce. I have said at at least the last six or seven IEP meetings that switches won’t work the way they are using them and no one listens. I offer other ways of communication and again, no one listens.

Remember the main point, you cannot tell someone’s intent without a second mode of communication. She hits the switch on the right, did she intend to? Unless she tells you she did, you probably don’t know. Simple.

Here is a quote from the first page of the most recent progress report which I just got drunk enough to read.

“When presented with an activity or object Pearlsky will independently hit a switch that says “yes” to indicate that she would like more of an object or the continuation of an activity 80% of the time.”

You can ONLY know she is indicating she would like more of the object if in fact you already know that she would like more of the object. How do you rate 80% of the time not knowing what she is trying to do? Makes no sense. And if she does not want more of the object, or does not want to continue the activity, then not hitting the switch at all will be 100% accurate.

Followed by:

“Given given [sic] a simple one step direction, Pearlsky will communicate using change in affect [sic], switch, or other means to indicate her interest in following directions related to her daily activities with 80% accuracy.”

What what if she is never interested? Then she will never indicate with the switch, and hence, she will be 100% accurate if she NEVER hits the switch if you are boring her. What are you testing here? Certainly not mastery of English.

Later on …

“Given a switch attached to a computer Pearlsky will purposefully depress the switch to interact with a prefered [sic] computer program 80% of the time.”

“Preferred” by … Pearlsky? How do you know? Preferred by the tester? Again, a joke.

And you wonder why after 17 years of this I am a curmudgeon. Yet not a single effort at the types of communication I have explained have promise.

Where’s that bottle …

-SingleDad

Now, admit it, you dread an email with FROM: SingleDad in the header.