I Think Being a Parent Is the Most Difficult Job

@AndyC Thank you for the insight. Evaluations such as you displayed are good starting points, but there could be nuances that--once again--result in someone (like my son) [i]falling through the cracks[/i].

So, let's look at why the school failed. A public education systems is predicated on the majority's learning capability (for better or worse). Most system's designs are (and should be) critical path with the standard. Systems fail in design when critical path focuses on exception. More often than not, I see designs fail when they reach what I would call "exception paralysis".

Instead of trying to categorize every item outside standard and accounting for every possible exception, perhaps it is better to sustain an exception [i]process[/i], and be able to implement a solution to close gaps.

In the most simple of exception processes, anything deviating from standard goes on an exception report, and a person manually intervenes. In this example, the school would deal with a failing student (my son) by sending the exception to the counselor to analyze potential root causes, and implement solutions based on the evaluation. It's now standard exception with the counselor.

It doesn't stop here, based on outcomes and evaluations (did it work), adjustments would be made. The ultimate goal is to prevent recurrence. A smart counselor would document for future reference.

We experienced the system's failure first hand dealing with the counselor who certainly had the requisite credentials, but offered nothing beyond the rudimentary. I don't know if that was just laziness on his part, or that the school had him consumed with the mundane tasks like class scheduling; something an Admin could do.

The thing is, my son realized this, and thus there was a stubborn refusal to conform to standard, and in the case of someone with ADHD (which he also has) an inability to conform to standard. We saw the stubbornness in early childhood, once when he insisted Washington is not on a dollar bill, even when showed a dollar bill.

To note, there were other things inherent in my son's struggles. One was reasoning and change. In the most simple of examples, it's expecting different results without change, or invoking a change that isn't exactly conducive to the key result. I saw this in him when he was a child trying to put a game away continuously trying to fit it in the same way with the same result. Then forcing it in. Kind of like "if it doesn't fit, get a bigger hammer" approach.

Second is the missing logic to draw reasonable conclusions. People with acute problem solving skills are very adept at drawing complex conclusions. Most people are able to draw a reasonable conclusion based on some observation and evaluation.

Real life example. One morning, I found a feral cat huddled in a corner outside the house. It was not moving, but alive. In normal circumstance, this cat (which we've seen before), would have been bounding down the path and disappearing in the woods just seeing a person. I called animal control and we trapped it. A vet checked the cat, and found its back leg horribly broken, possibly hit by a car, resulting in euthanizing.

Later, my son remarked he saw the cat there the day before. He never said anything to anyone. Reasoning was that we have many outdoor cats around, and his evaluation was this was not "unusual".