Welcome to the Success Stories thread!

Have you had a good experience while advocating or with a certain school district? Post about any successful experiences you may have had with gifted education in this section.

I just want share one parent's recent message to us:

We had success advocating for our child at our public school district. I have been working with the teachers and administrators for about two years, now. I'd have to say that an I.Q. test, combined with an out of level achievement test were the most persuasive pieces of information I gave them, in attempting to demonstrate that my child needed more.

Dual enrollment is often used at the high school level, but in some cases I think it can be appropriate for certain children at the elementary and jr. high level, as well.

Luckily, the state of Illinois, where we live, allows for partial homeschool and we've taken advantage of it at different times to enhance the services that they are getting at school. So far, it's worked extremely well.

I believe we have been very fortunate with our children's schooling experience.

DS16 was identified as being gifted by his preschool teacher (I was clueless) and when this was communicated to the public school (K-12) they picked it up from there. He was given extension work within the classroom from kindergarten to Yr3. From Yr4 onwards he was subject accelerated in Mathematics (3 years) and Science (1 year). During middle school (Yrs 5-8) the core subjects were ability grouped so it was very easy for the school to accelerate due to the concurrent timetabling. They have been able to continue this past Yr8 which has lead to his current situation of being in Yr11, doing Yr12 Physics and also being enrolled at university in a BSc majoring in Mathematics and Applied Physics. He has just commenced his second year. DD18 was subject accelerated in English and Maths (1 year). I have to commend the school as it was difficult for them to concurrently timetable both of my children in their accelerated subjects in high school.

In both cases the school has been the one to do most of the advocacy, I have only done the fine tuning. In our case IQ testing was not required for any of the accommodations. DD didn't want to be tested and DS was tested at 11 so he could access university programs.

I can't really say 'success' because we are still very much in the middle of all this, but finding a school that truly is prepared to accommodate our kids, and a Principal who is one terrific advocate for gifted kids, has allowed us to have many more sleepfull nights.

We had very seriously considered moving from our S. IL community to St. Louis many years ago. I think our son’s earlier education would have been less stressful had we made that move. Overall, I would say that St. Louis is welcoming to gifted students.

For all appearances, St. Louis area public schools take gifted education seriously. They have a magnet school for exceptionally gifted students, bus middle school kids to high school as needed for subject acceleration, and the public high schools have several AP courses. Our local public schools don’t offer any of this.

Many of the private schools in St. Louis are excellent as well and we are quite satisfied with the STL private schools our kids have attended for the last two years.

We have an excellent school that bends over backward to do everything they can for our DS7. It's just a small public school in a town of less than 1000 (students come from as far as 40 miles away), but they are really on the ball here. DS7 was officially identified as 2E this year (Asperger's and gifted) and as such is in the GT program and Special Ed too. They have placed him in math class with the 5th graders and reading with the 3rd graders, and they give him two periods a day of a computer learning program called Success Maker. Next year they are looking at getting ALEKS for him because they don't want to send him to the middle school for math. They also have a team that works with him daily on social skills, a traveling Asperger's counselor that comes in monthly or so to work with him, and they sent their counselors to a seminar on 2E issues. He is the only 2E student in the district, and the principal has told us that if they went by strict interpretations instead of the looser guidelines that state funding works with, there would be only 3 gifted students in the district and he would be one of them. So all in all, for a tiny minority of one, they are absolutely outstanding. We would really prefer to move to the larger town down the road, but I will not take him from this district (to put him in the district where I went to school)!

We have been repeatedly stunned at how well advocacy has gone in our DS's school. He nearly 7 and was accelerated from 1st to 2nd grade in January. After two disastrous years in private "gifted" school, we moved him to a public charter school figuring that we should not continue to pay for garbage when we could get garbage for free.

Shockingly, the public charter has been willing to do what the private school wouldn't even discuss. They quickly and easily placed him in a 4th grade level reading group in 1st grade. When he blew through that work, his teacher asked about a skip to 2nd and the principal only briefly hesitated. After just looking at the IAS Manual, they agreed to move him.

He's now in a GATE cluster, accelerated and loving life. He's eager to go to school, delighted to learn again and working hard on an oral presentation about Thomas Edison. He's the happiest he's been in more than 2 years, which makes me the happiest I've been in 2 years!

Our suburban public school district has been very accommodating and gifted friendly to us. DD began attending school here in 4th grade and as soon as IQ and achievement testing were done, a plan was made for her to join the GT classroom. Since she was an early entry to K, she was additionally subject accelerated another year in math and LA. This year (officially a 6th grader in the school) she began pre-Algebra and found the pace slow. She spoke to her teacher and guidance counselor and after some discussion she was advanced to Algebra.

This school district recognizes how gifted children learn and most math classes go deeper as well as faster than regular curriculum. The school is also friendly to non-GT academically advanced students as they can test into portions of the GT program. I have watched my daughter go from frustrated daydreamer to an active participant in learning. It took a lot of research and sacrifice to move to this district but it has been worth it.

Jen

Our school district is very small and serves three different towns. Although our state isn't considered GT friendly, they did everything they could for my son. They worked hard to find classes he would fit into during his K year. He spent part of his day in four different grade levels. The following year he was radically accerated to 4th and further accelerated via on-line courses for math. It didn't work because of my sons lack of maturity and inability to see shades of gray when dealing with classmates.

He is homeschooling now but I give the district all the credit in the world for trying.

DS6 started the year in K. His K teacher recognized immediately that he was far ahead of the other students in her class and immediately jumped on the chance to get him tested for whole grade acceleration. Long story short, DS6 is now in 1st and in Target (Accelerated Learning Program - once a week) and doing well academically! We are so grateful he is in such a great school!