Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Success Stories of HG+ in Public Schools?

In some of the discussions lately, there have been a number of comments that it is difficult (if not impossible) to meet the needs of a HG+ child in a regular classroom in a public school. Are there any success stories out there -- particularly in low elementary grades? My DS6 will be in 2nd grade next year.

Don't know if DS is HG+ but he is in first grade and very advanced with math in particular (for instance can do long division word problems) and his current teacher is giving him the correct level work. The last teacher was a disaster. Current teacher did a lot of assessments to find out what he knows/doesn't know and prints out advanced level worksheets based on what he needs to work on next. I didn't ask for this, although I'm sure she figured out there were problems in the other school and that's why we switched schools. Although despite this she seems to be the type who is very involved, differentiates for other advanced kids, and would have done it if he had been there all along.
That is just this year though. Who knows what will happen next year, although she said she is going to pass on what she's been doing to the next teacher and talk to the teacher.
I think in public schools, unless there is a special gifted program, it all depends on the teacher and the attitude of the teacher. Some of them can't be bothered, and others totally get it. If the principal gets it, then the principal can help to make sure the child has a teacher that "gets it" each year. In our last school, no one seemed to get it. The principal's bad attitude trickled down to the teachers.

No. None that I can think of from our experience.

PS: We were very successful afterschooling and it was a great success because of all the low intensity work that went on all day long and my child was out of school at a reasonable time and had a lot of energy left (also had a lot of early school closures and budget cut days off etc)

My son is doing okay. We did have a grade skip and so he only has one year left in elementary and we are hoping to be able to muddle through it.

We have plans to homeschool middle school. No expectations that middle school would meet his needs at all.

DD6 entered a virtual school as a 3rd grader mid-way through the year (in March-June completed the 3rd grade year), and completed 4th-5th the following year.

After that, she was placed in 6th grade (as an 8yo) within the just-starting GT program.

Honestly, I give this arrangement ~70% in terms of grading. Yes, it has worked. It's also required continuous management/interference from us to MAKE it work tolerably well... and the mismatch between DD's readiness levels in literacy, science, and social studies as compared with math... and most troublesome, written expression... have meant tethering her to her WEAKEST skill set for the past 8 years.

Now, her writing is now college-ready and then some, so it has worked to prevent those asynchronous gaps from widening further, and I do believe that they would have if we'd continued to homeschool. However, this has also come at the cost of crippling perfectionism that developed (IMO) in large part as a response to a completely inappropriate educational setting otherwise.

DD appears to be functionally PG-- I know HG and EG students in the school who seem to have tolerated it far better than she has. Though again, this is with both parents running interference and tweaking elements of the program as you go... and it amounts to the time commitment of homeschooling, but with more stress since it's not on your own timeline.

On the plus side, my DD14 can still get a week's worth of AP coursework done in about 10 hours, as opposed to the 30 she would otherwise be spending just at school as a 12th grader... which frees her up for more engaging pursuits. Provided that her task-avoidance doesn't kick in and make that 10 hours something more like 75. {sigh}


Credentialling is excellent with this model, though. So there's that.

I have 8th grade (14yo) twins now in their 9th year of public school. We are not sure about LOG, but do have EXPLORE and SAT scores comfortably clearing the bar for DYS. Our kids have gone to neighborhood public schools in a district that has minimal gifted programming. Overall our experience has been positive, based on the following factors, especially in the elementary years: laid back kids who love the schoolness of school, stimulating activities outside of school, parental advocacy, maintaining a long term perspective, some (not all) excellent teachers. Our kids went to a Title I elementary with an accommodation mindset developed for its significant population of special needs kids - this worked in our favor. We've turned down offers of grade skips, but they've been subject accelerated in math, the only subject the district is equipped to do this for. (They are currently in Honors Alg. II/Trig., which they take at their middle school.)

When DS was in first grade, his teacher mentioned in a staff meeting that she had a couple of students whose differentiation needs she could not meet in class. A 4th grade teacher, who at one time had been the gifted pullout teacher and was a few years from retirement, volunteered her prep period 3-4 times a week, and took these kids through the 4th grade math curriculum, supporting where needed (with both math and the reading), touching on pre-algebra.

Midway through 2nd grade, all the classes regrouped for math by readiness, which was helpful but not quite enough. At our request, the teacher sent home more advanced homework. 3rd grade started the replacement classes for math and LA. Happily, that teacher can choose her own textbooks. Like amylou's twins, DS is laid back, school-happy if sometimes frustrated by slow pace, and took alg II/trig in 8th grade. Now a HS freshman, he is happy to be in classes that don't depend on your standardized scores or age, but on what you can do.

I think it would be generally more challenging to find success stories here. Hard to say what is the measure of success. We have also found reasonable success with a Title 1 magnet public school, DS8 is constantly learning and differentiation is working fairly well. Though it took two or three months for DS' excellent teacher to get what he needs (rare enough that many teachers have to learn from a case of one.) Ideal? not exactly, having instruction at level in math rather than soloing online would be better. And next year will be a new teacher, though we hope there is a good warm hand-off (do schools do that? as in a few hour or day meeting between elementary school teachers to talk-through the students being handed on.)

In the lower elementary grades? Unfortunately no good stories from us. My DD(now)13's public elementary school experience drove us to a private K-5 school.

Public schools seem better equipped to deal with true giftedness in middle and high schools than in elementary. It seems the lower grades take the wait and see (or maybe wait and it'll be someone else's problem) approach.

--S.F.

"In a regular classroom", not so much. Our school was fantastic with DS11 from the beginning, but what they did for him involved quite a few classrooms.

In first grade, he had a teacher who totally got him, and she gave him whatever he needed in her classroom. By second grade, he was going to the fifth grade class for math, and third grade for reading. He also went to hang out with the fifth grade for science sometimes, when he could get away with it.

Since then, he's been doing various things that involved being elsewhere for increasing portions of the day, and now, in 7th grade, he's taking two classes with the e-school and going in to the school at third hour. Next year we're trying for only two regular school classes and the rest e-school.

DD7 is in second grade, and they split the three rooms of second grade into three groups for reading and math -- below level, at level, and above level.

So it all seems to involve more than one classroom, no matter how they do it.