Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Advocating for twins

Anyone have any advice on advocating for twins. We believe both would benefit from our district's gifted program. Both missed the cutoff for the program by a very narrow margin and on their own would be strong candidates for appeal.

In appealing the decision do we highlight the unique challenges for twins or do we treat the appeals as separate.

One of their teachers is appealing the decision and has asked us to also write a letter.

Thinking ahead, anyone have thoughts on sending one twin to a gifted program and not the other? Our thinking is to not separate them (gifted program is at a magnet school). One is not significantly more gifted than the other but as expected their testing scores are not identical and if we advocate separately one might get in and the other not.

Welcome, theyanswered!


While every student, learning environment, and family is different and therefore I do not have clear cut answers to your questions, three things come to mind which may be of interest:

1) The view of IAS regarding siblings is rigidly in support of birth order. While a gifted program is not necessarily whole-grade acceleration, there may be strategies such as single-subject acceleration involved. https://www.hoagiesgifted.org/iowa_accel_scale.htm

2) There are some schools which intentionally separate twins. Other schools may treat them as any two random individual students within the classroom. In my observation and experience few schools make an effort to bundle twins together.

3) Here is a link to a thread which is a roundup on Advocacy (http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....y_Advocacy_as_a_Non_Newt.html#Post183916), including important concepts of:
- family discussion and agreement on goals to make sure all are on the same page prior to advocating at the school,
- appropriate "fit."


I'm looking forwarding to reading others' posts in response to this topic.