Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Does your district not offer periodic pullout?

I'm trying to get an idea of how common periodic pullout is in America. In other words, an educated estimate on how many states don't offer pullout. Our kids are young adults now but our town, comparatively monied, has a gifted class and also offers 3 twenty-min pullouts a week. Thank you for answering. This teacher I was interviewing said that our town used to imitate the trends in Calif. but now looks to Australian trends in education. Interesting. --San

No pull out in our district in NJ. Only in class differentiation until 6th grade where there is an honors math class.

We don't have pullouts here either. Our district offers a gifted program from 3rd to 6th grade (6th is still elementary), but some years we don't have it because of budget cuts. In middle school and onwards we have an honors class, and a brand-new "theory" class for 8th & 9th grade math, which is one level above honors.

No daily gifted class until 6th grade, and then only in math. 1-hour a week pullout starts in 4th grade in both math and language arts. (The LA pullout continues in 6th, but doesn't become a daily class like math does.)

Too little too late!

And there's a GT class in middle school, but to take it, kids have to sacrifice one of their electives. (It is a pretty crummy class from what every one of my GT babysitters has told me. ) Obviously, many GT kids do not take it so they can take drama or band (or whatever) instead. There is no other grouping or honors or anything in middle school. Nada! All levels of ability are in all classes.

We have no pull-outs either.

We live in a school district rated "excellent" by the State of Ohio Department of Education. Our school offers a "gifted" program from 2nd-5th grade. The first graders are given the CoGATs in January and the ITBS in March. The school uses these results to determine the gifted class for the next 4 years. Once a child tests into the class in first grade they remain in the class regardless of future test scores. My daughter tested in the 99% across the board for math (both locally and nationally)on the ITBS, received a perfect score on the nonverbal section of the CoGAT, and scored in the 96% overall on the CoGAT.

Despite the fact that my daughter is considered gifted by the State of Ohio Department of Education, the school does not include the nonverbal score when determining the "gifted" class and my daughter was not one of the 24 children selected.

The state of Ohio requires every school system to test and identify the gifted kids, however, the state of Ohio does not require the school system to provide any additional services to their gifted students.

In my opinion, this is a classic example of why the United States is lagging other nations in math and science.

We are now homeschooling.

Our district has inclusion gifted services (I think enrichment for the whole class, like music or art) for K and 1 for 1 hour every other week. At the end of 1st all kids are tested. Those found gifted may be offered a place in magnet school. All gifted kids who don't go to the magnet school (and those suspected of being gifted - I think they test high but not quite high enough) are placed in "gifted cluster" classes. A gifted cluster class has up to 8 gifted and suspected gifted kids, and the rest of the class is average-performing and above. Those classes get gifted inclusion services 1 hour once a week. Nobody gets pulled out. I don't know if it's a good system or not. My ds goes to the magnet school, and I think it's been good for him overall.

I always fail to understand how this can even begin to be considered GT services. We used to call this "art class" or music class."

*sigh*

Our district does testing in K and 2nd grades (CoGat and ITBS). Then, there is a pullout of about 1 1/2 hours a week (assuming the GT teacher is not busy administering state tests, helping the special ed teacher, performing hall duty, or a multitude of other tasks). There is a theme and the kids do arts and crafts and watch movies and read some books. Last year in 1st it was Ancient China and they made a Great Wall, a Chinese Dragon, ate rice for Chinese New year, stuff like that. Pud loved going but it didn't do much for him academically. I think the time increases a little each year after 2nd until they go 3 hours a week in 6th grade. I think it is a miserable way to address GTness. The problem with pullouts is that kids are gifted all the time and these programs really just entertain the kids and help keep them from going out of their minds with boredom in the regular classroom. Our 1st grade teacher actually resented the GT pullout and sometimes "forgot" to send the kids.

I don't know what our middle school has. High school has AP classes and an agreement with the local community college for joint courses.

If it hasn�t changed since I looked into the public school offerings a few years ago, our elementary district offers minimal pull-out enrichment beginning in 4th. I guess the grouping aspect and temporary boredom relief makes it better than nothing, but my preference would be accelerated academic instruction which is against district policy.

Honors classes start in middle school and continue through high school, but they are not very challenging based on comments from parents whose children had attended one of the two private K-8th schools. The regular (non-weighted) high school classes sound remedial based on course descriptions. Unfortunately, AP or IB courses haven�t yet found their way into our district.

Our district does a weekly 1 1/2 hour pull-out for kids in 2nd through 6th grade who test out as GT. It is enrichment oriented - they do things like go on field trips, see concerts, build stuff, create poems, etc. It's definitely the highlight of DS6's week. Any kid, GT or not, would benefit from this pullout given the lack of enrichment stuff in the curriculum now. Lots of parents are resentful that their kids don't get to participate and I don't blame them - their tax dollars are paying for other kids to go on field trips! IMHO, I think the district uses the pullout to placate parents of GT kids so they don't have to differentiate the curriculum on a daily basis.