Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Math misery and public gifted program

Hello, all. I am trying to get ideas for tackling one of our more frustrating school problems. DD10 is in 4th grade ina public gifted program. This program, for grades 2-4, accelerates about one year in math pretty rigidly. (5th grade is a little different because of a new middle school math program with a more flexible online component. DD has always loved math, but hates it in school, partly because they have been so incredibly resistant to acceleration. She is likely 2E and definitely struggles with anxiety, perfectionism, sensory challenges, and some behavioral challenges which have improved over the years. A recent outside psych eval suggested a subclinical rating for ADHD. We do Beast academy and fun conceptual stuff at home as possible, but she struggles with homework loads and extra material does not always fly.

She scores above standard at least 2 grade levels ahead on the state tests, and at standard much higher. She recently was given the WISC-V and the WIAT-III (Though exhibited pretty variable compliance and poor attitude through the test). Her WISC scores were pretty consistently MG. FSIQ 135. Her WIAT was all over the place in ways that look familiar (i.e. Math Problem Solving 160, 99.9 percentile, numerical operations77th percentile). Her reading, listening, and writing sores have simmillarly wide range).

We are heading into a 504 process soon, but I am frustrated. It seems like, for this kid, elementary math has just been torture. She's always been the kid that will run with a logic puzzle or a story problem, but acts like you are killing her with any hint of operations drills. She spent 20 min the other night chattering to me about the applications of the Pythagorean theorum and binomial trees. Even if we afterschool with math, she still has to slog through what they give her. In our state we could typically pull her out and homeschool for math, but the gifted program says it's their nearly universal policy to not permit kids to stay in if they do partial homeschooling. I think the assumption around here is that parents are trying to push their kids past their tolerance.

We have talked about leaving the program and asking for a grade acceleration, but she would have to change schools and leave her friends. Ditto, other options. I am not even sure what to push for.


Has anyone else been in similar shoes? Thoughts or suggestions?

I'm very sorry atnightingale. Unfortunately we are facing a very similar public school scenario and there is no easy solution.

I suggest starting with the teacher and going up the ladder to at least be heard, all the way to the state, if need be. If we all did that, maybe someone would actually change the restrictive policies.

"Nearly universal" means short of universal. I would record a candid video of her enjoying math at home and show it to the teacher, or invite the teacher/administrator to sit in on a homeschool math session. The contrast should speak for itself.

I have a DS12 who looks a lot like this in school. He's a natural mathematician who flies through math many years above grade at home, but was barely passing math in primary school. For what it's worth to feed into your thinking, here's what we have figured out so far is going on.

What's caused bad grades: He seems to have a combo of inattentive ADHD and writing issues (both physical and cognitive); oodles of anxiety. In younger grades, math was a lot of writing - which he never completed, so never got to move on to more challenging work - and a lot of repetitive, basic computations - which set off the ADHD and anxiety something awful. We're guessing fine motor problems from hyper mobility (so writing hurts), and likely expressive language deficits. He also has a weakness in computation, which may be memory retrieval issue, not sure. This wasn't apparent until grade 6, when the work got hard enough and other kids fast enough that his teacher started to notice he was spending too much time in tests working out basic calculations instead of having them memorized, and was introducing a lot of errors as a result (errors also come from not being able to read his own writing). (He keyboards all work except math.)

What caused good grades: His math grades leaped up into As in grades 5 and 6, when for the first time he had teachers that allowed him to spend most of his time off curriculum. Not overly enriched, and certainly not accelerated, but at least interesting. Key success factors: more conceptual math, allowed to do other stuff while concepts he already knew were being taught/ practiced, no worksheets, and far less writing (show your work using math, not "explain your work in multiple sentences/ paragraphs" on every question.) The harder the math, the better DS does; he does far better at contest math and AoPS than school work.

When he was younger, I would have said he was a great candidate for acceleration (alas, not an option around here). As he got older, though, it became obvious that while he needs (but won't get) radical acceleration in math, his writing and executive function skills are so weak that full-grade acceleration would not have been a good idea. Grade 7, this year, is becoming a painful struggle with these issues. Moving to a gifted program in grade 6 brought all his other grades up - being far more engaged helped him work through his disabilities. But now the sheer output and executive function expectations in that program are overwhelming him, and grades are now plummeting. Like you, we have also found at-home math enrichment increasingly difficult in the last two years because of all the incomplete writing school work (never math!) coming home.

Our pathway may look nothing like yours, but I thought I'd share as food for thought in case something resonates. The huge challenge with these kids is that what they need looks so different from year to year. The impact of their strengths and weakness depends much less on the kid than on the environment they are in. Ideally, 2E kids are best placed according to their strengths, while supporting their weaknesses: not by holding them back to their weakest area. But that may be easier said than done if you're in a system that can't deal with a kid that uneven. So all that to say, if you are looking at acceleration, you may want to ask some very pointed questions about how they could ensure challenging material without overwhelming expectations for output or executive function or other 2E issues.

atnightingale, first, just a big caveat here - I'm not a professional, only a 2e parent. So take what I have to say through that filter

There are signs that your dd might be struggling with an undiagnosed challenge that's impacting her ability to succeed at specific types of academics. It also sounds like she's had some evaluations, but not a truly global educational evaluation. Was her recent psych eval a full educational psych eval (typically includes ability+achievement testing, behavior ratings, review of homework, development history through parent interview, as well as follow-up testing based on results of ability+achievement testing when discrepancies or questions are noted), or was it an eval focused on specifically on ruling out/in ADHD? Was there any other testing included?

It's really tough making decisions about placement in school and how to meet a 2e student's academic needs without having a good understanding of what's at the root cause of observed behaviors. It's been our experience that our 2e kids need to be placed where they should be placed intellectually, but they also need support with accommodations in order to succeed there. Additionally, it's been our experience (in my family), that our 2e kids make the greatest gains in remediation when they are appropriately challenged intellectually.

That said, for us, it was impossible to get to that place where we knew what our kids needed without thorough evals. Sometimes in some school districts parents are able to get a thorough eval through school, in our case we had to get a private eval in order to fully understand what our 2e kids' challenges were. You've mentioned an upcoming 504 meeting - has your dd been through an IEP eligibility process? If not, have you considered requesting one?

One thing I'd recommend doing right away - look up the definitions for each WISC subtest, and look for correlations in the discrepancies among subtest scores - are there any trends such as lower scores for subtests that are timed, or require written output, or where the question was read vs listened to etc. That might clue you in to whether or not you're seeing discrepancies based on the actual ability being assessed or another ability that's holding back your dd's ability to express her full knowledge.

The other thing I'd suggest - make notes of what you observe when you work with your dd at home. Talk to her about what's frustrating at school. (You may already have all of this down.. just making the suggestion in case you haven't). Look for any patterns you can find re the type of work she struggles with or dislikes. Don't assume that her issues with math are all due to under-challenge.

Re state testing - this will vary from state to state, but fwiw, in my state, relying on state testing for any meaningful info is very difficult for intellectually gifted students. If this was my state, I wouldn't be surprised that a student who is placed in a gifted classroom program for instruction is scoring two grade levels high on state testing - state testing is typically achievement testing, and grade level expectations are (at least here) focus squarely at the middle achiever at best.

My last piece of advice, try not to worry about whether or not your dd is somewhat held back (re keeping her in the gifted program math she's currently in, vs whole grade acceleration etc).. at this moment in time.. and first try to figure out what the issue is that's driving the challenges with glasswork you've noted. There's enough that you've mentioned here to suspect that it's something beyond simply being bored with level of challenge. Figure it out, then you'll be able to come up with a plan for accommodations and remediation if necessary, and then your dd will be ready to succeed and you can make an informed decision re where to place her. I suggest not overthinking the gifted placement first based on my 2e kids' personal experience - it was tough having to deal with the difficult e first, but they each benefited greatly from it and in turn were able to be successfully placed where they needed to be intellectually in middle school. If we hadn't taken the time to understand their diagnoses, placements in intellectually challenging classrooms in middle school wouldn't have worked.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - Self-confidence has been a huge issue for both of my 2e kids along the way - not being able to produce the work they see peers producing or that they feel they should be able to based on their innate intellectual abilities was really tough on self-esteem until they had their diagnoses.

This is a very late reply to your extremely helpful reply. 4th grade got worse, better, worse, better, etc. Some meds, OT sensory supports have been helpful. We are waiting to see what happens next year after tweaking small things slowly. Sigh.

When you asked if we had had a full comprehensive evaluation, I started to say yes, but I am not sure that is really true. We had a long one day eval with a psychologist (Behavioral checklists, WISC, WIAT, etc). What I don't feel like we got was good evaluation around executive function, working memory, etc, and I am not really sure why. It sounds like she was not cooperative during the testing. We cant re-test within a year, but I think we will do another eval this coming year if possible.

As for 504 vs IEP, I don't think the diagnoses that came out of the eval made her eligible for IEP, and with a lot of pain and struggle (emotional and behavioral rather than academic) we were getting by. We are seeing an OT, a counselor, a psychiatrist, etc now.

DS is around the same age and has dysgraphia and hypotonia. Standardized hand strength testing showed his hand strength to be around the 2nd percentile. He looks incredibly awkward when he writes and it looks like preschool scribbling. He has an IEP. He is accelerated 3 years for math and will be skipping another year. He shows minimal written work for math and does what he can in his head. The school is supposed to be teaching him AT (assistive technology) for math, although this is not really happening as far as I know. But the key is to get people to understand the challenge (and understand it yourself) and then get the appropriate accommodations/modifications. The more flexible the teacher is, the better she will do. This could include reducing the amount of problems, giving extended time, using a calculator or cheat sheet for the math facts and all the computations, typing or speech to text, etc. Work with her and see if you can figure out what the challenge is. Handwriting? Fluency? Attention? Is she automatic with the math facts? Then go from there. My experience is that testing does not necessarily give answers either, because gifted kids tend to score at least average even if they are massively struggling.