Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy First meeting with teacher/IQ tests validity

Hello!
Our son, who is about to turn 6, was identified as gifted last year, but we decided not to share this information with his teacher, as he (our son) seemed to be happy and his school was mostly play based.

He's now about to begin formal school and I guess it is time to tell the teacher, so that they can make some adjustments. Maths is the subject that worries me most. My guess is that they will begin doing easy addition with manipulatives, and my son has been adding and substracting two and then three digit numbers in his head for more than a year and is now doing some multiplication and division, as well as showing interest in fractions and negative numbers. I guess this might be normal with gifted children, but we don't usually have to explain anything. We tell him what a concept means and he is inmediately able to use it.

However, I am very nervous that the teacher perceives our concern as a sign of entitlement and thinks that we are bragging. In the same group there will be at least one child with a pretty severe speech disorder, so I can easily see how they could think "your son doesn't have a problem, this other child does". I am also concerned that they see IQ testing as elitist and deny their validity altogether.

I would appreciate any advice and also some links or literature about the validity of IQ testing. Thank you very much!

Before meeting with the teacher, you will want to become familiar with your applicable laws. This may require a bit of research. If you are in the US, these links may provide a starting point:
- State Laws for gifted
- wrightslaw (disability, special education, advocacy)

You will also want to become familiar with your school's policies for education of the gifted. These are often found online, at the school's website.

Because laws and policies can change over time, you may wish to print your local laws and policies and keep them in an education advocacy ring binder in a safe place at home, as a part of your personal collection of documentation organized by date.

Many links, resources, approaches to advocacy and meeting prep in this old thread.

Arguing the validity of IQ tests may not be helpful in advocating for appropriate academic placement and pacing for your child. Placement and/or access to advanced curriculum is not based on IQ, but rather on ability and readiness... how the IQ has been applied... what a child already knows and needs to learn next in order to continue growing.

Also be aware that in the US, under Common Core Standards, schools and teachers are evaluated on achieving equal outcomes among students. This has typically made schools and teachers less open to advocacy for appropriately challenging curriculum and clustering with intellectual peers, for the gifted.

Thank you very much for your help. This first meeting went really well. The teacher asked for a copy of the test results and said she will try to allocate a trainee to give him some individual attention. She has a lot of experience working with children with behavioural issues, some of them gifted, so she was fully aware of the importance of keeping him challenged.
We still have to see how things go, but right now we feel really relieved!

I'm glad the meeting went well! I hope you will update us on how things continue from here. I am wondering about similar issues. My son is 5 and just started K and he sounds very similar to your son in his math abilities (although unlike your son he has not been IQ tested, so I feel I have even less of a leg to stand on, although we do have sky-high achievement testing results). Good luck, and keep us posted!

I will gladly keep you posted. We had our son tested because we were planning to enroll him in a school where he would need to prove an iq over 130 if he wanted to do more advanced work. In the end we changed our minds and he will be attending a small, Montessori-type school where some of his classmates will be 7 and 8. They won't be able to accelerate him, but they are very flexible and don't use worksheets or textbooks. Let's see how it works...

Anyway, even though we had him tested for educational purposes, for us it had the positive side-effect of confirming our suspicions. Before having the test results we were always second-guessing ourselves and thinking that perhaps what he was doing was normal after all, so I would say testing was useful because it helped us understand what we were dealing with.

Very similar to our story. We wanted to confirm (to ourselves somewhat) that what we were seeing in her wasn't just us looking at her through foggy lenses. I read somewhere that most parents do indeed know if their child is gifted, but how do you convey your belief to teachers without evidence? Our suspicions were confirmed, and we've been actively seeking schools, or at least teachers, who can deal with gifted or highly gifted kids. We're very happy with her first grade teacher. It remains to be seen what second will be like. She was granted a seat in our local HG school (Metrolina Scholars Academy), but we found something closer that actually has a couple of HG kids in her class. We feel like peers are very important too. (We were a little disappointed in MRSA's outdoor policy. Our daughter really likes to run and play for hours outdoors. (not 15 minutes here and there)

By the way, we found all Montessori schools are not alike.