In this episode, Tonya breaks down a case study of a twice-exceptional (2e) student—someone who is academically gifted but struggling with the biological hurdles of ADHD.

Show Notes:

What happens when an honors student gets dropped from math class — not because he failed, but because his teacher refused to teach him?

In this episode of the Water Prairie Chronicles, I’m walking you through a real IEP case study: a 9th-grade honors student with ADHD whose IEP was legally compliant… and completely inadequate.

His teacher refused to acknowledge his disability. The school’s response left him sitting in a media center during math class for weeks — until he was quietly dropped from the course entirely. He lost a full year of math.

The IEP checked every box. It just didn’t do its job.

In this episode, I break down exactly what went wrong — and what was missing — so you can spot the same red flags in your child’s IEP before it costs them, too.

What we cover:

• The “High Achiever Trap” — why bright, polite students are the most overlooked
• Why intelligence and executive function are NOT the same thing
• The Assistive Technology red flag hiding in plain sight
• The “Cost of Doing the Work” — why grades don’t tell the whole story
• What compliance actually means (and why it’s the floor, not the goal)

👉 If something in your child’s IEP doesn’t feel right, trust that instinct. Book a free coaching consultation: https://waterprairie.com/iepcoach

📺 Watch the full 4-part video series breaking down this IEP:

• They Said He Was Too Smart to Need IEP Accommodations (Coming soon)
• Why Your Child’s IEP Is Missing This Critical Accommodation (Coming soon)
• From Remedial Class to College A’s: What His IEP Got Wrong (Coming soon)
• Your Child’s IEP Looks Good on Paper. So Why Does Something Feel Off? (Coming soon)

Work with Tonya as an IEP Coach: If you’re looking for personalized support, a trusted partner, and expert guidance through the IEP process, I would be honored to be part of your team. Find more information about my IEP coaching services here: https://waterprairie.com/iepcoach

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Music Used:

“LazyDay” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://audionautix.com/

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Episode #150: The IEP That Almost Destroyed an Honors Student

What happens when an honors student gets dropped from math class — not because he failed, but because his teacher refused to teach him?

(Recorded March 26, 2026)

Full Transcript of Episode 150:

Tonya: Welcome to the Water Prairie Chronicles, the podcast for parents of children with disabilities. I’m your host, Tonya Wollum, and I’m glad you’re here. This week I’ve been working on a video series analyzing a ninth-grade IEP. It’s a document that looks, on the surface, like a good IEP. It has honors classes, it has polite teacher comments, and it has goals for organization.

But if you’ve been following that series, you know how the story ends. You know that shortly after that IEP meeting, back in 2017, the student who had been an honors math student all through middle school sat down in a ninth-grade math class where his teacher refused to provide his accommodations. She told the team plainly that she didn’t believe “ADHD was a thing.”

The school’s response wasn’t to correct her, it was to move him to an online self-monitored math class. And if you know anything about ADHD, you already know how that went. He ended up spending that class period in the media center, not learning, not supported, just waiting out the hour. Day after day, six weeks into the school year, the teacher formally dropped him from the class.

He lost an entire year of math. And you also know the vindication that in 12th grade, he walked into a college level math class with no IEP, and came out with an A.

Today I’m going behind the scenes of that case study. I’m talking about the red flags we missed, the high achiever trap, and why I am so personally invested in this story. Because today I am pulling back the curtain.

That student – he wasn’t just a client – he was my son.

I want to start with the strength section of that 2017 IEP, because I think it tells you everything you need to know about why this plan failed. The words the team used to describe my son were “polite,” “respectful,” “kind.” And if you’re a parent, you know how good it feels to hear those words at a meeting.

After years of advocating, after fighting for every accommodation. After wondering if the school even sees your child as a whole person. Having them say something kind feels like a win. But I want you to notice what those words don’t tell you. They don’t tell you what happens when the student is overwhelmed.

They don’t tell you what his face looks like when he’s hit his processing limit and still has three hours left in the school day. They don’t tell you what he needs when his brain has run out of fuel.

Because my son has ADHD, and as we discovered after that ninth-grade year, he also has narcolepsy. He was literally fighting his own biology every single day to stay awake and focused in high-level honors classes. Not some of the time, every single day. I didn’t know it, the school didn’t know it, but that was the reality of his life.

And because he wasn’t acting out, because he was polite and kind and didn’t cause a scene, the school interpreted his struggle as a choice. As a lack of motivation. As a student who was smart enough but just wasn’t applying himself. I hear this all the time from families that I work with. I call it the high achiever trap, and it works like this.

When a student is bright, the school assumes the academic placement isn’t the problem. They assume the student can do the work, and so instead of asking, “What does the student need to access the curriculum?” They ask, “Why isn’t the student applying himself?” Those are two completely different questions, and they lead to two completely different IEPs.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t have the language for in 2017. Intelligence and executive function are not the same thing. You can have a brilliant mind and still struggle to find your shoes in the morning. You can understand complex math and still be unable to start the problem set. You can have excellent verbal skills and still fall apart trying to organize a five-subject notebook.

And if your child’s IEP only looks at grades and test scores and never asks, “How is the student managing the cognitive load of just showing up?” That IEP is missing the point.

Now let me talk about the red flags. The things I can see clearly now that I couldn’t see in that meeting. Partly because I didn’t yet have the coaching framework that I have today. And partly because when it’s your own child, the weight of those meetings makes it harder to think like a coach.

Red flag number one is assistive technology. In this IEP right there in the section where they ask, does this child need assistive technology? There’s a box that they’re going to mark, and in this IEP, the team checked, “no.”

 I want to be honest with you about something. At the time, I didn’t push back on that because I had the same bias the team had. I thought assistive technology was for students who couldn’t read or write, or for those with a visual impairment.

I didn’t understand yet that, for a student with significant processing fatigue – a student already exhausted from fighting narcolepsy while sitting in honors classes – a laptop isn’t a luxury. It’s an energy saver. Think about it this way. Every task your child does at school has a cost.

Writing something down costs energy. Finding the right notebook costs energy. Remembering to check a planner costs energy. Keeping track of loose papers costs energy. For a student whose brain is already working overtime just to stay present, those costs add up fast. Now imagine that same student, but every logistical task is handled by technology.

Speech-to-text takes care of written output. A digital organizer sends automatic reminders. A smart pen records the lesson so he can focus on understanding instead of transcribing. What would’ve been left over? The actual thinking, the math, the history, the ideas that were always there.

Instead, we spent all of that cognitive bandwidth on the administrative task of being a student, and there was nothing left for the learning. This is what I mean when I talk about the cost of doing the work, and this is the lens that separates a Master IEP Coach® approach from what most teams bring to the table. We don’t just ask, “Can the student do the work?”

We ask, “What is the cost of doing the work?” And if the cost is an anxiety attack at 9:00 PM every night after a full day of white knuckling through classes on sheer willpower, the IEP is failing. Full stop, no matter what the grades say. The most heartbreaking part of the story started for us in ninth grade, and the ripple effect lasted for years.

My son’s math teacher refused to provide his accommodations. She said directly that she didn’t believe “ADHD was a thing.” Those were her exact words. When we brought this to the team, the school’s solution wasn’t to hold her accountable. It was to move him to an online self-monitored math class.

For a student with ADHD and narcolepsy, someone who needed external structure, reminders, and a human in the room, unsupervised, online learning wasn’t support. It was a different way of failing him. He spent that period sitting in the media center, not learning, not progressing, just there, losing an entire year of math content while his classmates moved on.

Six weeks in, the teacher formally dropped him from the class. And that loss followed him into 10th and 11th grade, where the school pointed to the gap and said he wasn’t a math student, that he needed a lower track. As a parent, you start to believe them. You think, maybe I’m pushing too hard. Maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there, but my gut told me they were wrong.

We paid for private special education for part of the day in 10th grade. I drove him half an hour to class, waited while he was in school, and drove him half an hour back to his high school for his afterschool activities. In 11th grade, his local school assigned him to a remedial math class. Then came 12th grade.

He enrolled in Quantitative Literacy at our local community college. No, IEP. A different environment. Different expectations about what learning could look like, and he got an A. I want you to sit with that for a minute. An A in a college-level math class, for a student who had been told by an official team reviewing an official government document that he was not a math student. That A didn’t just prove he could do the work, it proved he had always been able to do the work.

It shone a spotlight on every single failure of that ninth-grade IEP. It proved that the ceiling wasn’t his, the ceiling was theirs. So what does this mean for you? Three things, and I want you to write these down. Number one, trust your gut. And I want to be specific about what that means because trust your gut can sound like a vague encouragement.

What I mean is. If you feel like the school is mislabeling your child’s “can’t” as “won’t.” If you feel like the description in the IEP doesn’t match the child that you know at home, you’re probably right. In that 2017 IEP, I had actually asked the team to document in the official record that my son’s anxiety was being misunderstood as a lack of effort.

I knew something was wrong even without the full coaching framework that I have now. I want you to trust that knowledge. Document it. Put it in writing. You have every right to have your concerns reflected in the document. And number two, write down, don’t settle for compliance. I want to say this directly because I think sometimes parents hear that an IEP is “legal” or “compliant” and feel like it means it’s working.

This IEP for my son was compliant. It was finished on time. It met every state standard, and it was a failure. Compliance is the floor, not the goal. Your child deserves an IEP that actually solves the problem. And number three, write down. Get an expert in your corner. I’m sharing this story, this deeply personal story, because I don’t want you to spend two years in remedial classes waiting for someone to finally see your child’s potential.

I don’t want you to spend money on private placements that your child’s school should have been providing. And I don’t want you to sit in a meeting and doubt yourself when your gut is telling you the truth. I became a Master IEP Coach® because of this story. Because I lived it as a mother before I ever lived it as a professional.

And that means when I sit down with you to look at your child’s IEP, I’m not just bringing you a framework. I’m bringing you the hard-won knowledge of someone who has been exactly where you are on both sides of the table. You don’t have to figure this out on your own. You were never supposed to.

If you recognized your child and my son’s story, or if you’ve been sitting with a nagging feeling that something in your child’s IEP just isn’t right, I want you to take one step today. Book a free coaching consultation with me at https://waterprairie.com/iepcoach. There’s no cost to it for you. 20 minutes we’ll spend together.

That link’s in the show notes. We’ll look at your child’s document together, and I’ll help you see exactly what the team is seeing and what they may be missing.

If you’ve been watching the video series on YouTube, I appreciate you going on this journey with me. Those four videos covered the high achiever trap, the assistive technology question, the difference between lowering the bar and strengthening the ladder, and how to turn your parent intuition into IEP documentation.

All four of them are linked in the show notes in case you’ve missed any of them. And if someone shared this episode with you and you’re new to Water Prairie, welcome to the community. This is a space for parents who are done being told that their child’s struggle is their child’s fault. I’m glad you found us.

Until next time, keep advocating and collaborating with your child’s IEP team. Your child is counting on you, and you’re more equipped than you know. I’ll see you next time.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

1. What is a 2e student?
   • A 2e, or twice-exceptional student, refers to a child who is ‘exceptional’ in two ways: they possess high intellectual potential or giftedness, and they also have a learning difference or disability, such as ADHD, dyslexia, or autism.
2. Can my child be in honors classes if they have an IEP for ADHD?
   • Yes. A student’s placement in honors or advanced classes should be based on their academic ability, not their disability. Having an IEP or 504 Plan for ADHD does not disqualify a student from high-level curriculum.
3. Why does the school say my child is ‘fine’ because they are polite?
   • Being polite doesn’t mean a child isn’t struggling; it often means they are “masking” or hitting a processing limit without acting out.
4. What should I do if a teacher refuses to follow accommodations?
   • This is a violation of the IEP. You should bring this to the team immediately and document the refusal in writing.
5. Is assistive technology only for students with physical disabilities?
   • No. For students with ADHD or processing fatigue, technology acts as an energy saver for executive function.
6. Can my child be smart and still need an IEP?
   • Absolutely. Intelligence and executive function are separate. High-achieving students often need support to manage the “cost of the work.”
7. What is ‘compliance’ in an IEP?
   • Compliance means the paperwork is legal and on time. It does not necessarily mean the plan is effective or helping your child succeed.
8. How do I handle it when the school suggests a ‘lower track’ for my child?
   • Trust your intuition. If the barrier is the environment and not the ability, a lower track may just be a different way of failing them.