Update:
There was a district-level meeting last week, with an educational consultant doing the presentation. Ed consultant stated pretest - show mastery (maybe do last 3-4 problems in unit - move on, as the ideal way to keep these kids challenged.
This is contrary to the current application in-district for how to deal with HiCap kids, as evidenced by the email from the teacher. Teacher wants kids to do regular work first.
We have our regular parent-teacher conferences on Friday afternoon this week for both kids. Late last week we (DH and I together) authored an email to the district HiCap coordinator which has not been responded to, voicing our frustration with the status quo.
Specifically mentioned and emphasized:
- Implementation method with small group clusters isn't going to work if the teachers can opt out. Our grade opted-out of traveling students to other classrooms daily for small group work. If the district thinks this is the golden ticket, they should mandate it. It would be wise to survey the teachers on their application of the small group clusters, and do in-class observations.
- The district is providing teacher training - great. They offered 2 days in summer, 1 2-hr class on an in-service day, 1 2-hr class in the evening after school. The teachers can get "hours" for these classes, but the time is unpaid (except the in-service day). The training is not compulsory. We suggested some of the discomfort parents had with the current program is that we don't know if our teacher has been trained. If they want parents to feel more comfortable with a spread offense (kids in small clusters throughout the grades rather than a focused single-classroom), they need to pay the teachers for training, or make completion compulsory for teachers choosing to be "HiCap" teachers.
- Pace. The pace is all wrong if you want these kids to first complete the regular grade curriculum which they've shown mastery of before moving to the next thing.
At the end of the email, we did request a meeting. This was sent last Wednesday PM, so they would have received Thursday. As we've gotten no reply, my inclination is to email again to ensure they are not going to show up at our parent-teacher conference on Friday. We'd really like those conferences to include DS9 and DS7 (only attending their own session), and not have a high-stakes meeting about HiCap as the sole focus. We want to use that time to talk about the other parts of school - behavior, citizenship, specifics about chosen science curriculum, book clubs, etc. We want the kids there for these conferences so they hear what we hear.
Would you write another email this week? Should I wait until Wednesday as that gives them a week to respond?
