To move forward or backwards or stay put?

The first of the year, Erin's school started to do in depth assessment testing on her to see where exactly she is.  She is still learning ASL, but they felt she knows enough to do the testing.  I have been also questioning on some things as I seen them as red flags.  This past Tuesday (the day in between returning from Milwaukee and Katie's surgery), we had a big meeting at the school to discuss the IEP and also what they found.  During some of the testing they saw some areas of concerns that they don't know if she struggled because of learning ASL or if there is something else going on, so they are going to observe in different settings and see how she does.  In math which is pretty much universial, she scored at a 8 or 9 year old level.  Reading was also the same thing in parts, but with reading they aren't sure if it mainly language barrier or something else as in some areas she did better then other.  Erin was at this meeting and the teachers did talk about how much she  has improved, and also talked about what happens when she doesn't understand something and they have tried to explain, she gets fustrated just like everyone else, but then she shuts down, gives up and very difficult to redirect.  This is a area of concerns along with the math and reading.  They decided to add more services to her to see if they can get a better idea with everything.
When the meeting was all done, I asked the question of what does this exactly leave Erin in terms of where she is at grade wise.  They didn't have a concrete answer.  We talked about letting her go up to the high school with the services she has.  My concern was, if she doesn't have the basic down, she will struggle with hs.  The teachers talked about how much of an individual plan Erin has and that with her being deaf, she can "graduate" from that school, and then stay there until she is 21 for a transitional program.  They do agree, that some of the ways that Erin handles things when she doesn't get it, it isn't accepted in the HS.  Erin has the desire to learn and really wants to learn, but I feel her fustration is stemmed from how she was taught in China and how they teach.  I do feel Erin has some sort of learning challenges and until we can truly figure it out, we have to try different approaches.  If we decide to put Erin down a grade or two, would that cause a big hit with her self esteem, which already suffers dearly when she gets fustrated with her homework.  If we keep her at the current grade and have her repeated that next year, her friends will move up to the hs and she will still behind.  The one thing they stressed with me is if we continue to let her move up grades, she will graduate when she just turned 18, which means it will her 3 years with the transitional schooling if she needs it.  Where as we hold her back, she has less time at the end and it might benefit her more later then now as she still learn so much of the basics.  They did reassure me that they will make sure she doesn't fall behind and that they will keep working with her to try to get her caught up and to learn how to apply her fustrations and so forth.  It was decided after the 2 hours meeting that we are going to talk about what to do for next year at the end of the school year, to see if the extra support help her. 

On a very positive note:  Erin took a very huge step today towards a relationship with her father.  The last couple of weeks I have mentioned about doing family game night with her dad and sisters.  She has joined in the last two times we have done this.  On Saturday we were at his parents house and she wanted to play spoons and asked her dad  if he wanted to play.  We had a lot of fun.  This weekend is my weekend to work, so she was home today by herself as her sisters were with their dad.  I had to volunteer at a basketball tournement for Gymnastics after I finished work.   I had a enough time to come home change clothes, run over to Dave's house to do Katie's ear (which is looking awesome) and get to the tounment.  I was going to be gone for just over 4 hours.  Erin told me she was bored, and wanted me to called Dave's mom to see if her cousin was still there, which she end up not being there, so I kiddingly (not thinking there was any chance), you can go over to dad's house and hang out with your sisters.  She thought about it for a few seconds and said sure.  I think I almost fainted.  I explained to her that I wasn't stay there and so forth.  She told me she understood.  I am so proud of her and she enjoyed herself over there, her and Dave even had a couple simple conversations.  Thank you so much Lord for giving her light to see that her dad is a good person.  Dave was just amazed as I was.  The patience of the situation is paying off.  God always has a plan and he is showing us that it will all work out the way it is suppose to and that we just have to have complete trust in him and to allow him to show us what we need to do.