Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy "Challenge Classes" eliminated! What to do?

I guess I would do exactly what you are doing. First pushing the school to meet your son's specific needs. Second going to the school board with the other parents to complain about the lack of "challenge" classes.

What I don't understand is what the "block" schedule has anything to do with it. Sounds like they are just using the change in schedule as the "excuse". My daughter was in a middle school that had a modified block, and my the H.S. runs a different modified blocks schedule. (Modified means.. that some days are block and others they attend all their classes.) Are they changing the number of students per class?

Bluemagic, hmmm...I have never asked about the number of students per class. I will be sure to question the principal about that. I am assuming that they are not changing class sizes much (or at least not decreasing class sizes, anyway), as they have not used the "smaller class size" claim as a selling point in discussions about the new schedule.

Yes--I believe they are short on staff and using this schedule change as an excuse to eliminate that higher class. They have also mentioned that, in past years, many students have qualified for the 6th Grade Challenge Classes (through grades and standardized test scores), only to perform poorly in the Challenge Class setting. My thought is that their qualification process must be too lenient or ineffective then, as my HG DS13 had no trouble at all with the transition to 6th grade Challenge. The students who struggled were the ones who really did not have the need for Challenge in the first place. I think our school simply doesn't have the teachers or the time in the daily schedule to fit in our Challenge Classes. They seem to be choosing, instead, to serve the majority.

Wonder how much of it has to do with common core standards and the school going with a one-size-fits all approach so that everyone gets the same standards. That's the feeling I get from our own district. They are very worried about accelerating kids or giving them anything above grade-level because then they might not master all the standards.

Sounds like an extremely annoying situation and I think your best bet is to band up with parents going to the school board meeting. The parents in my district (many years ago) got a gifted magnet that way. The district had been doing NOTHING for gifted kids, then all of a sudden this magnet was set up for grade 4-6. They simply take the top performing kids (kids in the top 2-3 percentile--a lot of families turn down the offer) from each elementary school and stick them all together in a school-within-a-school environment. Those kids would need teachers and classrooms anyway so there's no extra cost involved. They are just shuffling them around. In fact, I think the district saves money because parents have to provide transportation.