The wife and I have a meeting with some local public school personnel tomorrow morning, to decide what to do about DS5, who has spent the beginning of the school year in kindergarten. Since he's been there, he has settled in and made some friends.

He has been doing well behaviorally (after a preschool year where he acted up/out because of extreme boredom), but is really not challenged at all. He reads at least 5-6 grade levels ahead at this point with ease, but the first month's big reading accomplishment for the class was to learn "I", "am", "a", and "little", and to learn to recognize some letters. (I am not knocking the program here, and actually think the reading part is well-thought-out, but want to convey the size of the subject-matter gap we're facing at this time.) He is doing 3rd-to-5th grade math, and they're learning to count, etc. etc. etc.

This afternoon we had a conference call with his teacher, whom I like quite a bit, to prepare for tomorrow's big meeting. She said that our son is absent-minded (absolutely true), and could stand some more training on school routines, of the type they get most/best in K; that skipping him to first won't solve anything, because he probably won't learn a single fact or skill during the normal first-grade year that he doesn't already know; and that she's thus going to recommend that he stay in K.

What she's offering so far:

1. During breakaway sessions, putting him in his own group with advanced material, perhaps with a few of the brighter kids in the class, which he could sort of teach (?). I'm not sure how this will work-- but the way she explained it, it seemed like she's trying to find a way to keep him from being isolated in a corner with fourth-grade workbooks, which means to me that (a) she did her homework, and (b) she cares about doing the right thing. Breakaway sessions are currently used for reading and math, and I'm not sure what else.

2. When other kids are learning about subjects on a basic level, having him work on research projects in the same area. So, for example, she said that they will begin learning about ocean life soon, which will involve reading / being read to about sea creatures, etc. He will be allowed to listen in if he wants, but will be given a project that he can work on at his own pace, to learn on a deeper level about the subject (maybe learning about what marine biologists do, I dunno). She made this sound pretty good, too, although I guess we will have to learn more about the details tomorrow. I'm not sure if these projects will be done on his own, or if his little super-team will be with him.

3. Putting together, with the rest of the team with whom we'll be meeting tomorrow, a special curriculum to keep track of each of his subject areas. I don't understand much about this yet-- it seems to me that one could just string all the parts of the K-6 mandatory curriculum together end-to-end, and track his progress through the list. I think what she's saying is that they will track him separately from the class and grade his work separately, which sounds good, though it also sounds like it's a necessary consequence of giving him accelerated material. Perhaps I'm missing something-- perhaps she means that she will find activities that will appeal to him more than the rote-learning activities they normally give the children. I just don't know.

4. Giving him more appropriate homework (instead of the normal homework, not in addition to it).

This is only the second year that kindergarten has even been offered in our school district, and the vice principal told my wife previously that this was completely new territory for them (I think this may mean acceleration in general, across all grades, which is a little scary to say the least). But so far I have faith in our teacher, who sounds like she is signing on for a ton of extra work just for our son, and who sounds like she is doing her best to think of what's best for him.

Is there anything specific we should ask for tomorrow? Do you think this all sounds promising? I tend to agree with our teacher that grade-skipping is not the answer right now. We couldn't possibly grade skip him multiple grades-- his motor skills aren't up to it, the size/maturity differences would be extreme, etc. Pull-outs would be awkward at best for the same reasons.

What about one grade skip, with subject acceleration in math, or on line math. Let him read what he wants, but develop a very strong phonic background (It may help down the road). Keep writing on grade level of skip. In other subjects allow for epanded material.

That sounds very good, but I think she will be advocating against a grade skip tomorrow. And I think she's likely to win on that, honestly. It sounds like they may never grade-skip in my area. During third grade, they begin to split the children into slow/normal/advanced groups for reading, etc., but that sounds like the extent of the normal acceleration. Besides, she's going to mount some arguments about him needing to learn to fit into a structured day, that no matter what grade he's in he will need subject acceleration (so a grade skip won't solve anything), etc.

Re: phonics, I forgot to mention that she ventured ideas for teaching him word roots, prefixes, and suffixes (which I was already doing, and glad to hear), and even etymology (in which he has already shown an interest). She said she has a book on Greek and Roman word roots written for children; I'm mighty interested to see that book.

"but that sounds like the extent of the normal acceleration."

Your DS sounds like he falls well outside the range of kids who would be well served by "normal acceleration." I agree that skipping may not necessarily make a difference, and sticking with a teacher who is willing to work with you may be the best option, but you are going to need skips sometime soon, so you should start to prepare them for that now.

If they aren't willing to consider a grade skip at least the teacher is willing to establish individualize lessons for your son. Very positive and with some of the projects you described, a great opportunity for him to work on his writing. My concern is next year. Will the school agree to continue this? Because if this is all coming from the teacher with no support from the school they can be setting your son up for a miserable time come next year. Are they willing to revisit the idea of skipping when your son's motor abilities catch up with the rest of him? I would definitely speak to this during the meeting.

Catalana, I know that your statements come in part from some sad experiences. Katelyn'sM om, your kindness in posting here is humbling, and actually brought tears to my eyes. I will keep what you both say in mind, and bring these issues up. Thanks a lot.

If I were in your situation, I'd be agreeing wholeheartedly with the plan for K, with the caveat that 1st grade will be a useless waste of time and he will go from K to 2nd. The teacher's goal for the year can be just the routines, social expectations and motor skills. You could work on advanced material at home with the intention of him going to 2nd next fall.

I share your enthusiasm for his teacher. She's already put a lot of work into this and sounds like she really wants to deliver what's best for your ds at this time.

I'd also be focusing on what happens next year. If they haven't done grade skips before ask if they have composite classes say a 1/2 and 3/4. Our school (who have a gifted stream) have proposed our ds do his K year and then move into the 1/2 class, do 2nd grade work with the intention he come out at the end of the year and move into the 3/4 class. If necessary he could then do another skip the same way. Socially I think this approach makes a lot of sense.

In your discussion, once a grade skip this year is definitely off the cards, I'd also be blunt about how your ds behaves when he's bored and get it documented. First, as agreed warning signs that things aren't working and secondly, as insurance so if things do go pear shaped and your ds is bored and acts up, that it's not held against him when talking a grade skip next year. Too often you read here that behavior problems caused by boredom are used to say the child is too immature.

Hi locounu - I agree with the other posters who are saying that a teacher who is willing to work with your DS is a huge positive. We had a similar experience last year with our DS5 in kindergarten. For us, kindergarten made sense because although DS was reading and doing math grade levels ahead of K, he refused to learn to write and spell, so kindy was a good place. Also, there is a lot more play time in kindergarten, which he now misses in 2nd (yes, he skipped 1st).

It sounds like your school already gets just how far ahead your DS is. We struggled with this for half the year, and our DS didn't start getting much appropriate stuff until January or Feb., when they let him take the MAP test with the 2nd graders. Then, the gifted teacher compacted the 2nd grade math and basically tutored our DS separately. She also came in during our equivalent of breakaway time and worked on higher thinking skills with DS and a few other kids. For reading, the librarian and the classroom teacher helped to make sure he picked appropriate books, and the classroom teacher tried to differentiate throughout the school day with harder questions peppered in. Our DS was still underchallenged, but it got so much better when he got math at his level, which he loved.

Some specifics I might ask for - pretesting out of units and ability to continue working at his level. Regular revisits of the plan (monthly?) to see if things are working. Consider EPGY for individually paced math/reading. Some sort of plan for next year that includes the possibility of whole grade acceleration, with use of the Iowa Acceleration Scale (you could pull that out now too - if they see what a great candidate he is for a skip, maybe they'll reconsider now). (Our school offered 1st grade with pullouts for 3rd grade math and reading. We felt that was too much of a gap and wanted 2nd, and once they did the IAS, they agreed.)

Good luck!

Hope your meeting went well today.

Our DS5, who is still in PreK due to birthday cut off, also has a great teacher who tries to offer challenging material for DS. One thing she has done this year is having DS research a topic and present his findings. He can find the answers either via internet or books. This has helped with reading, writing, researching, and a little public speaking skills (DS can be a little shy).

I am glad to hear that there will be a progress chart and someone will keep track.... because one thing we have learned is that teachers can be enthusiastic at the beginning of the year, then.... things can get forgotten.

DD6 also has a teacher with good intention. The teacher put together a "challenging" folder, but this method is not working as DD does not want to feel left out and prefers to do the same work as her peers. And the teacher told us honestly that she rarely, if any, have time to teach DD separately. So, if you can, highly recommend that on your DS's education plan that the school will assign a specific teacher/aide responsible for each learning task.

Also, once in a while, try to make sure challenging/advanced work is not more busy work.

Good luck!
Mag

I just got to work, after the meeting. I've left my notes at home, so I don't recall the specific names of tests, but will post them later.

Attendees:
guidance counselor
reading specialist
vice principal
school psychologist
special education specialist
kindergarten teacher

We discussed our son's current state of development, which took up much of the meeting. The special ed. person seems like she is super-interested in doing a lot with him (I think this may partly be because up to now they have only had IEPs in place for kids at the other end of the spectrum, and she wants to oversee the development of a new gifted part of the special ed. program). The psychologist was reserved but also showed a lot of interest.

Our K teacher expressed some sentiments a little different from the phone call yesterday, stressing how happy he is and that he is in exactly the right place (!). She didn't volunteer what she had yesterday, that it was obvious that a skip to first, without more, would solve nothing because he was far past all of the first grade material (though she admitted it when prompted). She also flatly said he can't spell (this is not true and I don't know where she got this idea, but he can actually spell correctly the first time most words he can recognize). I asked for them to assess that along with his reading.

The special ed. teacher and psychologist both allowed that K might not be the best place for him, but that a careful assessment would have to be done. We said essentially everything you here said to say, including about how he acts when he's bored. It was agreed that whatever planning was done, it would carry past the end of the year and be reassessed as necessary.

All in all I got a different feel from the K teacher, but overall a good feeling from the team. We didn't discuss curriculum, logistics, etc. much at all. When we were talking about assessment, I began to bring up pretesting and curriculum compacting, but didn't press on when it was apparent that we would follow up on such things after testing.

The plan going forward:

* Reading specialist to do a reading assessment

* Psychologist to do testing, most likely of a non-WISC type (I've forgotten the acronym, but she said she hesitates to use older-child tests on someone so young, though she might make an exception in our case). She will probably do multiple tests.

* Special ed. person to work with psychologist, to determine types of tests and how else to assess our son. She also expressed interest in seeing some of his work (for example, photos / video of a board game he invented called "Shooter Ship" that came up briefly).

* Follow-up meeting, to determine what to do and how to do it.

There are no hard deadlines on when this will all be done, but the testing will begin in the coming week.

In the meantime, the wife and I will do a lot more reading and thinking. I've alreadly ordered "Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented", by Susan Winebrenner, and that will probably be just the beginning.

I want to double-check what the team/teacher come up with for a plan, especially if he stays in K. One thing his K teacher has mentioned is a grouping including lower-functioning kids, with the idea that he would pull the other child up and learn doing it-- this seems oriented at everyone arriving at the same level, which makes me leery.

I'd be leery about the proposed plan too. Cooperative learning is a great tool but used in the way she described can backfire. However, the examples of it backfiring is more in older classrooms. Gifted children feel used and placed into the role of the teacher especially when their own education is not considered can leave with a negative experience. It really depends on your son's personality. Is he the type that enjoys helping others? If he is then he might be okay with it, but I would insist that this does not become his only role within the class.

From the rest of what you wrote I really don't know what your feelings are about the meeting. Did you come away thinking they are taking this seriously and want to help or do you feel that they are going through the motions and you have your doubts? My guess is you are still trying to digest it all.

The fact that they are going to test is a positive but not knowing what kind of test I can't really say how positive. I do wonder about his teacher... she seems to have changed her tone since speaking with her last night. A little to wishywashy in my opinion. Perhaps there was an earlier meeting before this one?

Do keep us posted as they progress. Here is hoping that they get it right.

Sounds like it was a productive meeting.


I had the opportunity to attend a brief session by Mrs. Winebrenner geared toward parents recently. Our school (DS8's 3rd grade teacher in particular), is using Mrs Winebrenner's methods to provide in-class differentiation as there is no formal G/T program at the school. They brought her in as a guest speaker for a recent Teacher Development day. One of the things I recall her saying was that for gifted kids in K, sometimes the best thing is for them to be sent to a higher grade for reading, as the language arts abilities within a K class can be so disparate.

Good luck with your advocacy! Sounds like you're on the right road. I think you're smart to be bringing this above the teacher level. Sometimes I wish I'd done that earlier than I did, but in hindsight, I think it took THIS teacher to bring the admin on board, so maybe it all did work out for the best.

Thanks a lot. You've given me some great ideas and questions to ask about research projects, and management of the process going forward.


He's an empathetic little person and does enjoy helping others, so I guess he might enjoy it. I will have to reserve judgment until I hear more about their plan at the next meeting.



You guessed right. After a little more reflection I feel like the teacher is not our greatest ally, but it's good to know where she stands now. I got a good feeling from the group as a whole, especially since they are all doing this for the first time.


All I know at this point is that one of the tests they are planning to use is the DAS-II.


Thank you. A lot of the credit for pushing so far has to go to my wife-- my function now is to passively-aggressively exploit people's stated positions, and play them off against each other.


Understood, and thanks. I think that this teacher must have little to no experience with gifted education, but at this point has at least done some reading and thinking. Hopefully the team's plan will provide plenty of guidance, while giving her some leeway to be creative-- and of course, hopefully it is the right guidance!

When DS was in K, he too would not have benefited from a single grade skip. Instead the school opted to give him a schedule that resembled that of middle school. He went to 5th grade for math, 3rd grade for LA, 4th grade for science as in our district that is where science really begins. He participated with the K class for art, music, p.e.,library and computer lab. He had separate work in coputers but he was with the K class.

It looks very messy at first glance, but it worked well for him.
Two years later he is in a middle/high charter school as is doing great. When a child is that far ahead you are forced to look way outside the box.

Just out of curiousity, have you asked your son what he wants?

Sounds like it went okay. One area that might still need attention is finding him some mental age peers at school to work with from time to time. The special ed teacher might work here especially as she sounds like she's very interested. I'd load her up with a full portfolio of his achievements not just the video she's asked about. Perhaps she could do a pull out once or twice a week with one or two particularly bright kids in 1st or 2nd. 2nd will probably be a better match but 1st would give your ds some class peers if he does do a skip next year (or later this year).

On the testing front it may be worthwhile talking to them to see if the testing could meet DYS requirements. If it does, and he has qualifying scores, it's a win for both you and the school especially as the school hasn't dealt with this situation previously. If DYS is an option I think he's too young for the WISC and may not have enough headroom on the WPPSI so the SB V might be the best option - the experts will know the answer.

Well, he's off to the first round of testing at the DAS-II.

And apparently he was given a reading and spelling assessment today, and when I picked him up after school he quickly told me about it, and that he'd done great. I was a little nonplused-- how would he know that?-- until he told me that the reading specialist had let him see the marks as he went (0 for wrong answers and 1 for right ones, apparently) and even had nodded and said "good" to each right answer. Weird. Is that a valid technique for increasing confidence? Maybe she just says "good" after every question, to increase confidence? Anyway, the result of that is that he's stoked to take the DAS-II.

Many thanks, again, to all who helped me. I am terrible at tracking replies to my threads... have to get better.

ETA: He says the tests were fun, and he's excited to go back tomorrow. So at least he's not being traumatized.

It looks messy, but it's better than having him sit in the corner with some 5th grade math worksheets, or doing the K math, eh? Yep, I am constantly asking my son what he wants. It's one big reason I'm leaning towards being okay with no skip at this point-- he has some kids in the classroom he likes to play with. I think in the end, if it had to be that way for him to be emotionally happy, I'd be okay with him doing the age-normal stuff all through school and just supplementing at home, but I just would rather that his school time not be intellectually wasted.

Great ideas. I am putting together some portfolio items now.


I had some of these thoughts too, including them being able to learn from DYS if it is available. I held off during the initial meeting on suggesting such things because 1) I don't want to come off as a pushy dad right now (although that wouldn't change his test scores, and I will push nicely if necessary, I want to have as good a relationship as possible, and they've been pretty reasonable so far for a school just ramping up their kindergarten program), 2) they said that if warranted, they would do more testing after the initial round, but that we'd be meeting to discuss things before then.

Anyone who wants to learn more should be encouraged and given help. Uh-huh. Congrats on getting a school that didn't give you the run around. You know he did great. You've done your homework and you know you're not imagining things when you look at your son.

Thanks a lot. We'll see. As my grandfather would have said, either I am or I'm not.

He said last night that a couple of the questions stumped him. Apparently one of them was, "What does the word 'mean' mean?" He had trouble coming up with a non-circular definition, although it's not like he doesn't know the meaning of the word. I told him not to sweat it. He found the first day fun, which was mostly filled with activities like memorizing and redrawing pictures, patterns and sequencing, etc.

Sounds like he'll enjoy the accomodations at least. Hopefully they will give him what you are both hoping for. We are just about to sit down with our school to see what sort of more formal accomodations they can make for DS for our kindergarten year. He is not ready for a grade skip either socially or from a fine motor/writing perspective (they are VERY heavy on writing at our school), but he is FAR ahead in math. I might try to go the EPGY route at school and let him work self-paced (he is really at least at 2nd grade, and in some areas ready for 3rd grade work).

As for "What does the word 'mean' mean?", it's too bad he didn't just stumble onto the idea of "not nice"... :-)

Heh heh. Actually, he did go for that first. Our school is very writing-heavy too, and I suspect that's part of it: though the K teacher marvels at his handwriting, he's still new at it and slow, and doesn't do so well without the three guide lines.

My DS took the DAS-II at 5 and DYS accepted it. That was before it was on the approved list. Last time I looked, the DAS had ben added to their list.

For what it's worth, he thought the test was a blast!

My DS also took the DAS-II lat year and DYS accepted it. It is on the approved list but it was not when I looked the first time (he had taken the DAS-II at 3.5 as well so I was curious if it was an approved test).

It does sound like your school is at least willing to make some accomodations which is wonderful! My son's school last year was not willing to do anything - even after all the testing they did he still had to sit in the K class AND do all the K work though they knew he was reading at a 2nd grade + level and doing 2nd/3rd grade math.

Geez, now I feel like I should have prepared him. Honestly, I feel like "what does 'mean' mean" would have thrown me for a loop at 10, already on the spot during a test, and I got pretty high IQ scores back in the day. Heck, it would probably make me stare blankly for a moment today. But I'm slower today than back then, in lots of ways.

Thanks a lot for the info. I will definitely apply if his scores are up to it. If not, a little hothousing here and Pavlovian food withholding there, and he should be up to snuff before too long.

In case anyone's interested, it didn't go so well. According to the school psychologist and the results she gave us, he scored highly on a number of the subtests, but had a bunch of zeros in other ones, and on some others didn't finish. The written report says that he kept curling up on his chair, jumping down and running to the door, freezing, interjecting off-topic comments at random, saying his stomach hurt, asking if I was there to pick him up, etc. He refused to participate on a lot of the math portions at all, apparently. I'm talking even some simple stuff, like recognizing symmetrical shapes.

The tester said that it's nearly impossible to get an accurate read on ability at this age, and that there is obvious evidence of advancement, but it is hard to tell how much (she didn't give him the whole DAS-II by design, even if he had finished all the parts she did give him). There is some evidence that the tester wasn't good at drawing him out and making him feel comfortable, although it's not important to go into here.

Anyway, at the second meeting, the plan was to give him advanced reading material, and for the teacher to talk to some 3-4 grade teachers to get math materials together for him. Weeks later, when we asked to have input, for him to have better homework (his current homework is still the normal K stuff and he's embarrassed to work on it or show it to us), to get some idea of the progress on the plan, etc., his teacher apologized and said she was going to have to work on it soon.

So I'm not so happy with the local school right now, since for various reasons I feel like even if the whole thing wasn't an intentional exercise in avoiding provision of services, they didn't do a bang-up job, either. (Some of this is explainable by the fact that they really do 99%+ of their testing here to find disabled kids, and so aren't experts on gifted testing, but some of it we feel may be down to the school feeling that we're just pushy parents and acting accordingly. But we weren't pushy-- I really think some of this might be shock that someone would suggest skipping to first grade, as they Just Don't Do That.)

I guess we have to consider several options: private testing and pushing with the local school some more, just letting the situation be, putting him in a different school, or home schooling. We don't want to home school in the coming year, and had been hoping to avoid the cost of a tester. I just can't stand the thought of a full-day first grade where he is learning to read simple sentences and add single-digit numbers. It will just be a big waste of his time.

Meanwhile, he couldn't be happier at home. He is about halfway or more through third grade math, and we will probably finish that up in the next month or two at a comfortable pace. Left unaddressed for the nonce is his performance anxiety. I want him to relax and feel a complete lack of pressure, but I am wondering if he will be able to perform next time he's tested, or if I should just avoid testing for a while (i.e. years or however long it takes for him to unlax).

Bummer. I'm glad he's happy at home, and glad they are checking with teachers of older kids about some reasonable homework. My son was also mortified by the simplisity of some of his homework. When he wasn't mortified by being asked to find his spelling words in word search puzzles.

I think elementary school can be hard on kids.
((shrugs))
I wonder if they would be willing to try some trial subject accelerations?

((shrugs and more shrugs))
Grinity

Ditto to Grinity, elementary can be really rough. I know it's not much of a consolation, but it's taken us three years to get to something that I think it close for our DS7. Each year we'd make incrementation progress at a mind boggling (slow) pace, and it wasn't until about 6 weeks ago that I'd say we're in a good place.

Sorry to not be of more help other than the BTDT variety.

JB

Thanks, people. I guess it will sort itself out somehow. I don't know what the new math work will look like yet, but I think it will be a combination of in-class and homework only. I anticipate maybe some spelling work getting sent home in the short term too. We don't plan to move him this year, so I guess it's "problem solved" on getting more information from them-- we will definitely know more by the time we could potentially move him. In the meantime we will just try to keep him productive at home. He reads what he wants, so I only do some math investigations with him lately and projects.

As I told someone else by PM, I actually mostly feel bad for him that he doesn't have anyone local with whom he could hang out and really connect. Nobody likes building robots and playing games the way he does, or is on nearly the same wavelength imaginationally.

I'm sorry things didn't go so well. I guess the only advice I have is to stick with it. From rereading your earlier post, before they did this other testing, it seems they agreed that your DS was working far beyond kindy level. Hopefully, they will realize that the other testing they did was just a snapshot of what he was doing one particular moment in time.

As for keeping at it, even though we eventually did get a skip to second, we still have had several meetings to try to sort things out (and at one point I'm pretty sure the school staff hated us!) But with persistence, and re-explaining things over and over about how our kid really is different, hopefully things will start to happen.

If there is anything you can do to help - e.g, send in workbooks that you think are appropriate for the teacher to use, offer to volunteer to help in the class to help make up for the time it takes to differentiate -- I'm sure the school would appreciate it, even if they don't accept the help.

Here's something I just learned, which I'm sure others here have known for awhile. It is very important to document everything extra that the school has given your child, so that there is a possibility of continuation of services the next year, when very likely new players will be involved. Preferably, this documentation will be in some official school format, such as an IEP. We found out the hard way that there was nothing in our son's record about the successful differentiation he received and should have continued to receive. Since we didn't know the school didn't know this, we appeared as "those parents" with a sense of entitlement, simply because we expected what the first school in the district offered to continue. Now we know better!

Good luck, and I hope you do consider applying to DYS. There is a great suppport group and they can help you get in touch with other kiddos like your own. Speaking of kids not liking similar things, we just found out that the awesome rocks/gems/fossils class that was offered after school next week was canceled, because our DS was the only one to sign up for it.

I'm glad things are going well at home.

Can I ask a question? If he's doing third grade math, why did you want him to skip into first grade? My husband is in favor of skipping, while I am adamantly opposed and this is one of the things I don't understand. Even if you skip to third the pace will still be wrong.

I can't answer for locounu, but I can tell you my viewpoint. We lobbied hard for a grade skip though our son is still at the top of his class and needs more even after the grade skip. It is my belief that it's a lot easier to differentiate one grade up than two grades up, and our DS has a better chance of finding a few intellectual peers in the higher grade. Our grade skip this year has been hugely successful, except it took awhile to get appropriate math sorted out. No one noticed that he was a year younger - he's blended right in.

May I ask why you oppose skipping so much? My DH was very opposed when DS was young, because DH was very sporty and didn't want DS to be at a disadvantage. As it turned out, our DS is not very sporty, and so that wasn't an issue. There are lots of reasons for and against, and everyone's story is different. Just curious.

st pauli girl, thanks a lot. I am going to document as well as I can; it must have been dreadful to find out that bit of wisdom the hard way. The meeting minutes should help some, and I am going to copy or keep all homework. I am going to volunteer to help out in the class. I will definitely consider applying to DYS when we're in a better position to do it. I want to let our son recuperate a little before we consider testing him again.

Tallulah, it's as st pauli girl says: I am hoping that he will find kids more his level in a higher grade. I don't know if multiple skips would be in his future, but this seems like a risk-free way to test out the concept; he'd only be with kids up to a year older, and would probably fit in all right, especially since he's very physically active. Also, it seems like a beachhead of sorts might be reached; it would be hard to deny after that that he is due some accommodations, as long as he does well, which he easily would.

You're right that the pace would still be wrong in third. I anticipate in our local system that he would face endless drill on multiplication and division facts, which would be boring. One thing that would be very helpful for him, though, is that the cookie-cutter art projects, simple sing-song learning drills informed by Multiple Intelligences, etc. would be replaced by things like grammar, science, etc., which is something. Skipping to first gets him a little closer to the beginning of more stimulating work, where he doesn't have any accommodations at all right now for science, and in the meantime would give him more intensive work on handwriting at a more appropriate level.

Last night, the boy brought home the first run of his new homework. It's not too bad. There is reading aimed at teaching him some beginning grammar concepts (parts of speech, which he already knows past this level), vocabulary, and spelling (again not up to his level, but there are places for him to choose and write his own words). There is a thoughtfully chosen set of math problems, for example a simple permutation problem, basic multiplication (e.g. the number of tails, ears and legs on eight cats), and time duration. It seems like the teacher chose the problems with an eye to feeling out his level, and she sent a note with the homework asking for feedback.

I hadn't thought of that. It makes sense, though that it would be easier to find more people to in a study group if it's less far ahead.

As for why I'm against it. It's mainly that for my timid, young (already with kids up to two years older thanks to redshirting), socially clueless child I don't think it would be good socially, and wouldn't be the fix academically. I won't say never, but it will be hard for someone to sell me on the idea.

Status update: the flow of math homework stopped (it was Sunshine Math stuff from the Florida state system), and when we inquired were told to print the worksheets from the web, have DS5 do them on his own and submit a summary. After a couple of weeks of no reading/writing homework, that's started up again (edhelper.com worksheets). DS5.5 likes going to school as much as he does day care, and basically considers it to be a different daycare.

We have an upcoming TAT meeting toward the end of April. We met with the K teacher, who told us that based on such things as him having a meltdown over his zipper not working one day, and the fact that she observed him acting like an animal at playtime, she feels that he's "right where he needs to be", and she'd be recommending no skip.

I told her that while I understand her concerns, my main problem is that he's not being taught anything, as enrichment worksheets are not the same as lessons teaching concepts. I said that if the school were to actually start giving him lessons for the first time in material he doesn't already know, I'd be happier for him to be with his age-mates all the time. I also said that I'd be all right with him not being taught reading or writing, as he seemed to be picking that up fine on his own, but that I wanted him to actually be taught math and science for the first time, so we don't have to stumble through it on our own at home and so that 8 hours a day at school aren't wasted. I said I'd be happy with buying a math curriculum like Singapore Math and sending it with him to school, if they won't do pull-outs, but that someone would have to be available to teach him. (I think I probably came off as a bit snippy, even though I was guarding against it.)

After that, afraid that the school would rely on inertia and the K teacher's recommendation to give DS5 little or nothing that he needs for next year, we tested him. It turns out that he has DYS-qualifying scores despite extreme testing anxiety that led him to not answer many questions (I hope never to have to put him through those tests again). Now I'm wishing we'd done it earlier, since any advocacy from DYS won't come until after the TAT meeting.

Hey - that's great news! I'm sorry it was hard on him and hope that by the time he's ready to take SATs or ACTs for College that he actually enjoys the experience.

Must be nice to see the confirmation of your son's academic needs finally!

Keep documenting what is going on at the school, and all the conversations with the teacher. I think it's time for an email, cced to the Principle where you review what was discussed, and what the options are, and which option is going to be put in place.

BTW - has subject acceleration already been ruled out? It seems like a visit to an older room for Math and Science would add sparkle to your son's day while allowing him to be 'a kid' for a bit longer.

Personally I think the behavior isn't enough reason not to place him in 1st now and go to 2nd next Fall. What would you rather have: time for him to 'do his own thing' after school and 'be a kid' during his free time, or a change to 'be a kid' during kindy but lack of free time because the academic needs have to be filled?

To me, the biggest question is 'does he enjoy his age peers more would he rather interact with older kids?' The academics have to be.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

I hope so. Our psychologist said that for a lot of the questions he was crouching behind the table, with just his eyes and the top of his head showing. I can just picture it. He is pretty highly perfectionistic, and I had hoped that we were past the worst of it, but I think the testing brought out the worst of it again. I have seen a very recent resurgence of the perfectionism in other areas too... for instance, throwing an absolute fit upon getting one spelling word wrong, on an attempt to remember it from reading without seeing it first. I think he was a trooper to get through the testing, knowing him the way I do.

Yeah! I never doubted MUCH, but there was always the occasional fear of being one of the pushy parents. That's how the school played it before, and they had my wife half-convinced (she's got her "mind right" again now).

Thank you for this advice. The TAT team includes a vice principal, and one of our worries is that we will seem to be giving a vote of no confidence in the entire team, but I agree with you that we may need to go over the VP's head. I don't want to wait until after the TAT meeting to get the ball rolling.

Right now, we've already sent an authorization and request to the school psychologist to discuss the results with our psychologist, and I will most likely follow up after that as you suggest. I want to get a read first on the psychologist's position, and the extent to which the K teacher's statements are a foreshadowing of what might have happened at the TAT meeting if we didn't act, i.e. the extent to which the K teacher is a mouthpiece for the TAT team at this point. (I may make the situation out to be a bit Machiavellian, but I can't help being a little paranoid, though I continue to like this K teacher and think she is honestly motivated by her desire that our son be well-served. She's acting according to her lights, they're just different ones.)

I brought it up at the first TAT meeting, and again in our most recent meeting with the K teacher, but she didn't say anything one way or the other, but that she would have to think about the best way to handle his math needs next year. I think she agrees that he deserves some level of teaching, just like any kid does at the school.

Our psychologist recommended asking whether he could attend 1st for the second half of the day (he's in half-day K), as a way of gauging whether he's a good candidate for a skip and to allay any fears / stuff any arguments that he's not mature enough. I think your suggestion and hers both sound like great options, and I will bring both of them up.

About the behavior, as well as his age and size (he's on the young and small side for his kindergarten class), I agree with you. Would they hold back an age-appropriate first grader who once had a zipper meltdown and acted like a T. Rex on occasion from going to second? I am pretty good at separating the argumentary wheat from the chaff, and will come up with some good ways to point out the logical disconnect. Probably starting with the email to the principal, and certainly at the TAT meeting.

That's the thing. One of our options is obviously home schooling, except that we're not able financially to keep one parent home full-time right now (actually, we could swing it, but it would take giving up a lot). The idea was brought up of having him go to daycare and we teach him in an hour or so a night, but obviously that's not preferable to leaving him in the daycare/school and teaching him at night, except that he would have to do the dull school homework most likely, taking away even more free time at night. We could homeschool and send things to daycare to do during the day, but I am not comfortable with short-changing him that way. He deserves to be stimulated all day long, just like the other school kids.

Another option we started exploring is local parochial schools, but the best fit (otherwise) pushes creationism pretty hard, which rules it out for us completely.

Another option, which I don't want to have to do but will if pushed, is to apply for a hardship determination from the state, based on the town's failure to provide for our son, and if we get one would let us take him to any school in the state that we can drive to. There is one town in particular within 15-20 minutes that is rumored to have quite good programs. I also hope that, since I believe our school district is on a watch-list of troubled ones, the school will offer some accommodations based on the threat of applying for a hardship determination.

He has always liked playing with older kids and adults more; he just isn't averse to acting silly with his age peers. The bit about him acting like an animal seems to be conceived to oppose statements we previously made to the TAT team about his preference for older peers.

Thanks so much for helping us. I've been depressed about this whole situation, and now feel like there's a lot more hope.

I don't have much helpful to offer--I just wanted to say, "Gee, this sounds familiar." In fact, my DD's K teacher started off our first conference about her (which was about behavior!) by saying, "Some people would want to skip a child like DD, but I think it's a bad idea because..." We hadn't breathed a word about skipping! BTW, we still never have. However, we did ask for more work at her level. Teachers have routinely acknowledged that DD is well above grade level while not actually doing much of anything about it and offering all sorts of reasons why not. The best we got was independent reading at her level and a folder full of advanced workbooks we bought that she could work on during "folder time." They tried having her tutor other kids, which was not a success. She was sent to a higher grade for reading for a bit but this was later rescinded for "logistical" reasons. Requests for harder spelling words and math enrichment were denied. For a while we saw an occasional encrichment homework assignment, but those have vanished. Basically, the school acknowledged her abilities but acted like we were a PITA for asking for anything at all. We are moving her to a gifted magnet school.

Ouch. That is what I feel is happening to us. I was hoping that the testing results would be impossible to ignore, but I may be underestimating the opposition. :| Logistical reasons... blech.

It does seem like you have a few good options and tacks to take. It's a long slog, and I hate it when they pit the parents against one-an-other, but this to is one of their tools and to be expected.

Remember Machivelli and ask for twice as much as you would settle for! I think the M has gotten a bad rap. He really was a bit of a champion of the common man, in a way. And I think that he was pretty amazing for his time to see that people's interests were wrapped up in their relation to the economic system.

Let us know how it goes!
Love and More Love (those are fighting words!)
Grinity

Do all states do this? Maybe this would be an option for us. I am another one who feels it is very similar to what we are dealing with. It is certainly stressful. It is sad b/c it seems like the schools are open to helping, but as time goes on it starts to slowly get less and less. Or they seem enthusiastic about something over the phone to have it squashed in the meetings. I never would have imagined getting a education that fits your childs needs could be so difficult, overwhelming and just plain depressing. I just want you to know I can relate.

Congrats on they DYS. I am sure that will be a big help.

Thanks again, Grinity. To battle! I will report back.

landofthelost, I am PMing you. The short answer is that I found the hardship procedure in the New Hampshire Department of Education regulations.

I would not let them deter you. Buy a copy (or two) of the Iowa Acceleration Scale and take it with you. You can fill it in ahead of time to be confident that your child would be eligible to skip. Then print off several copies of A Nation Deceived and provide them to the people in the meeting. At that point, you can confidently assert "I am certain you just were not aware of all of the research supporting acceleration...." It is hard for them to dispute all of the research.

However, I think it is important to be clear in your own mind what you want - full skip, subject acceleration, etc. I know that we want this to be a collaborative process but unfortunately in our experience it doesn't work that way. It usually ends up more like a negotiation, so ask for more than you want. The IAS helps with this.

"first grader who once had a zipper meltdown and acted like a T. Rex on occasion from going to second? "

I was just on a 3rd grade field trip today. At least one third of the boys were playing dinosaurs... In addition, two kids (one boy) cried over very trivial issues.

I don't know where they come up with the maturity stuff, but most of the time it is just a proxy for "I believe that acceleration in any form is bad." You have to battle it with research and then it can be helpful if you use the terms "a free and appropriate education" and also "evidence based practice."

Good luck, keep us posted. And great news on the DYS level scores. Help is always a nice thing.

Cat

Thanks a lot, Cat. I have just gotten the IAS (thanks again, you who shall not be named-- and no it's not Cthulhu) and will bring A Nation Deceived and whatever else I think will be helpful. I was hoping to bring out this stuff at the last meeting, except the DAS II results for DS were all over the map due to his failure to complete or even start whole sections.

I am still trying to decide what we want. I guess if I had my own wish, balancing his academic level with small size and young-for-grade age and handwriting ability, I'd want a skip to second with pull-outs for math, reading and science. That might sound kooky, as I guess not much would be left, but I'd be thrilled to settle for just a math pull-out to fourth with a skip to second.


I agree totally, and will do. Thanks again.

A Nation Deceived
�Acceleration is one of the most curious phenomena in the field of education. I can think of no other issue in which there is such a gulf between what research has revealed and what most practitioners believe.The research on acceleration is so uniformly positive, the benefits of appropriate acceleration so unequivocal, that it is difficult to see how an educator could oppose it.�
James H. Borland, Professor,Teachers College, Columbia University Planning and Implementing Programs for the Gifted

Hi-5 on the testing. Another one checked off your parenting-to-do list. Whoo-hoo! I read on here somewhere that someone mentioned once that a school could pay for a tutor as part of a hg+ IEP. I don't recall if that was fact or a great idea. Either way it's a great idea I would wish for your son. Thank you for the update.

Thanks peeps. herenow, that's one of the better quotes for sure. La Texican, that's a great idea that I will bring up, but I dunno if they'll go for it. NH funding is so scarce that in the larger town next to mine they began shutting down gifted programs last year, and let 53 teachers go. Our psychologist just told me by email that if we homeschool, at least the local school has to provide gym, art, music etc. if we want it, so that's something.

ETA: Thanks, Bostonian. I don't feel right bumping this thread yet again right now, but I tend to agree with you and will keep the language toned down so as not to offend.

Gosh, I'm hardly the person to be giving lessons on tact, but I think directly making the assertion above (even though it is true) is likely to harden the resistance of school personnel. Instead, cite research but don't explicitly tell teachers and principals they are ignorant of best practice for gifted children.

[scores omitted in case Shloim ever reads this]

So we shared the test results with the kindergarten teacher, with whom we're meeting tomorrow, because I didn't want to blind-side her. Within 90 minutes the school guidance counselor called and left us a message at the house (no one was home) and an email to the wife (who was teaching classes) asking if DS5 can take the MAP test in the next couple of days, so that we would "have more information" before the TAT team meeting on Friday. In our school first graders and above apparently take the MAP twice a year, at the beginning and end of each school year.

This sounds like a bald-faced attempt to negate his new scores and deny him needed acceleration. The whole testing was necessary because of the K teacher's statements that he was "right where he needed to be", and now this happens. I have drafted an email response to the guidance counselor, and am debating whether to send it or not:

Hi, Geronimo.

We are attaching the official results of Shloim's extensive IQ and achievement testing, using industry-standard tests, which arrived today in the mail. He is obviously not just gifted, but quite highly gifted.

We are startled by the suddenness of the request for MAP testing. Being highly gifted does not mean Shloim is more likely to do his best cold, with no warning, though he might still do better than most other children his age in a pinch; in fact, with his particular set of issues (extreme perfectionism etc.) he may fairly be thought of as quite fragile by comparison with normal kids.

Keeping that in mind, testing Shloim with no prior notice seems like stacking the deck against him. Do other children and their parents get more warning than 1-2 days that the MAP assessments will be done? Graduating first graders will apparently be taking the MAP for the second time; second-graders, for the fourth time; and third graders for the sixth time. If Shloim passes a certain grade level, will he be allowed to take the MAP again afterward to shoot for the next year, so he has had at least half the same chance and exposure to the test as everyone else? Will he be allowed to take it at the very least twice, with the second testing on a subsequent day, so on the second taking he is as familiar with the test itself, and as well-rested, as an ordinary first grader taking it at the end of the school year?

Also, how would the results of the MAP be used? If, for whatever reason, he scores at less than his actual capacity as shown on the recent tests, will the MAP results be used to oppose his recent test scores to deny him needed educational services? Just as importantly, if the MAP results are good, what will be the result? Can we get a promise that if Shloim passes the requirements for first grade, despite going in cold with his special set of challenges, he will be skipped to second next year?

Will one of us parents be allowed to be in the room for moral support if he takes the MAP? He is still detoxing from the very stressful weekend of testing he just went through (and we just got done promising him, "No more testing"). Does it have to be so sudden, this week, or can we have a little more time to get him psyched up? We are not making up the stress... he is highly, HIGHLY perfectionistic, and testing seems to be almost physically painful for him. Read the results from both the school psychologist and our tester for ample evidence on his stress level. Shloim has been performing fine on his third-grade-level enrichment activities this year, but it is another thing entirely to him to have his intelligence or ability put in question. We wish it were not so, but that's just the way he is at this point in time.

We will call you this morning to discuss our concerns and questions. Thanks for reading. Like you, we just want the best for Shloim, and don't want to put him in harm's way. We're worried that blind-siding him with sudden testing like this is more likely to do harm than good. That said, we're not strictly opposed either, as long as he is given a fair chance to do his best.

Theophilus

(Names were changed to protect the innocent.)

Wow, those are great scores! As for the immediacy of MAP testing, one possible reason is that some schools only have access to the MAP testing during certain periods of time, so the window to take the test may be soon closing. Our school also wanted our DS to take MAP testing the spring of his kindy year, which he did. We are not dealing with the stress or testing anxiety, so take my comments how you will. The MAP testing is a great tool to find out what your child knows now. It is not timed, your child should be given as much time as he needs. He will be able to keep going as long as he answers a certain questions correctly. It is possible that your school finally does "get" it, and they're trying to plan for next year by seeing where he falls. Schools are much more comfortable dealing with testing that they regularly use.

Hopefully, they will take your DS's anxiety into consideration. Good luck. Oh, and apply for DYS!

Thanks. I feel like the achievement scores are hopefully impossible to ignore or explain away under the current circumstances. I found the report very interesting. I hate the idea of slapping numbers on my son, just as I hated it for myself, but if it helps get him what he needs, so be it. I am thankful that we will likely get some services for him from the DYS program. I would have to make it my full-time hobby to learn enough about education to teach him the way he deserves to be taught.

That explains the haste to do the MAP testing, I guess. He says he would like me to be in the room. So I will ask for that, and see what they say. Oh, and I promised him a puppy if he does his best and doesn't quit until the end. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for the dose of reality-- hopefully they are just getting ready to do right by him.

I should warn you that I'm an eternal optimist. But hopefully, they really have some good reasons for the MAP testing and the timing.

Hi,

I am not be in possession of all the details but I don't get the vibe that it's a attempt to keep him from being accelerated. (Perhaps knowing them better you are able to see past face value though). If the MAP is their favorite way of assessing 1st and 2nd graders, perhaps they are thinking that he's kind of like a 1st grader rather than a kindergartener and just wanting to use their own favorite test.

To be totally blunt, your letter seems kind of defensive and long winded (though the actual concerns are valid). Perhaps others on here will feel entirely different but that's my gut response. If I was the guidance counselor I might almost think, "wow, what are they trying to hide, did they prep him and now they want to prep him for the MAP too?".

I do think your concerns are reasonable and in general the idea of responding to the guidance counselor is good -- I might say something like, "Thank you for trying to reach us today and for taking an interest in DSs situation. We are interested in talking with you further about the idea of MAP testing. Specifically what MAP testing entails and how the results would be integrated with the other testing he has had already. He's had an awful lot of testing already and we had actually told him he was done with testing. We do want to make sure though that the school has enough information about his abilities and needs - perhaps there are some holes? When would be a good time to meet with you?"

In your response I would just ignore their comment about wanting to test in the next couple of days. Tomorrow's Tuesday, it's a beaurocracy, by the time you've talked about it with the guidance counselor say the earliest you can meet being Thursday, then there's unlikely to be time for anyone to actually test him this week.

When you do talk with them if you are against further testing you may want to be very well informed about how the achievement testing he's already had obviates the need for the MAP. "So we did some reading on what the MAP is and we're really not seeing...."

Polly

I'm basing my fears on our history with the school. We live in an area where an anti-skip policy is in writing on the school district website. The past assessment by them seemed to possibly be an exercise in justifying their position that no kindergartner would ever be allowed to go straight to first. The last TAT team meeting, in mid-November (that's how long it took them to move on assessing him), ended with the special ed. teacher telling us that not every child was academically gifted, but that our son might turn out to be gifted in the performing arts, based on his status as class clown. This year they've mostly just given him worksheets to do on his own time.

I'm not really against further testing, and it seems like if he will stay in this school system he will have to learn to deal with the MAP. I just don't want a repeat performance of him giving an underwhelming performance with a school psychologist who is frank about her lack of experience testing young gifted children, and whose results cannot be fully computed because of an "abnormally significant discrepancy" among the subtest scores. (Note that in retrospect I think she had a very tough job testing our son, with his avoidance issues, for the first time in his life.) I guess it helps that the MAP is computerized. How hard could it be on him?

Your suggestions are great, thank you. I will see what the wife says (she just got home).

ETA: The wife feels that they're trying to set him up for failure. I guess neither of us are optimists. :| This does feel like a repeat of last time. But I don't know how we can really refuse.

ETA: We feel that they can only be doing one of two things: casting about for a way to shoot down the test results (in which case we may still let him take the MAP), or getting ready to accelerate him using their preferred tools to make sure he has hit all the points on their curriculum. If the latter, they should be able to tell us up front. So we will simply ask what the goals are and play it by ear. Thanks to all.

This thread will never get to 100 pages if we don't post in it. So here's what my wife just sent:

I'm sorry I couldn't respond earlier. I spoke with Theophilus and we'd like to know the specific goal of testing Shloim immediately with the MAP. Is the school now gearing up to accelerate him based on the MAP results?

We're concerned that Shloim would be at a disadvantage compared to all other students taking the test, based on lack of prior experience with the test and lead time. We're actually still trying de-stress him after the most recent testing, and just got done telling him there would be no more for a while.

Can we set up a time to discuss the idea of MAP testing?

After further thought, I think the desire for MAP testing may go deeper than mere comfort. In the school's position, I wouldn't feel good about accelerating someone, grade- or subject-, without some assessment of readiness based on the curriculum, which the Woodcock Johnson couldn't possibly provide. I'm hoping for the best.

DS5 was actually pretty psyched about taking the test when he went to bed. Or psyched about the puppy possibility, anyway. The wife was not.

I think when you work with a school district who makes it obvious they will only do for your child what has been done for every child who came before them, showing you they don't look at each individual case, it is easy to feel they are always looking to negate your info. From my personal expericence, I try to be optimistic that their methods will work, but at the same time I also feel schools can be good at telling you what you want to hear at the time in hopes you go away. Then when you come back looking for more, they rephrase things or change them all together.

I think the letter your wife wrote was great and to the point. I do think from my experience with the map, with a child who is a perfectionist, that the test is low stress for the child. My dd6 thinks it is fun. I do not think it should be the only method of assessment, but can be a good tool. The results come right away so that is good. I hope it goes well for your son and the school opens their mind to more options.

Thanks very much for the input, landofthelost and Dottie. We are meeting with the school psychologist and K teacher this morning, and have gotten confirmation that the MAP testing window closes this week. Hopefully puppy power will pull little Shloim through with no lasting emotional scars. I agree that the wife's email was much better than mine, and it incorporated some of Polly's good advice.

((happy dance and fist pump))
Good Job Lucounu for going forward and getting the testing to quantify the home-behavior you have observed!!!!!!

I do disagree that the MAP testing is a bald attempt to undo the testing data. I think it's more likely to translate unfamiliar language (IQ-speak) into familiar 'we can work with that' language.

For example, if they are going to skip him, wouldn't it be nice to skip him into a classroom that had many kids similar to your son in MAP test scores? Maybe they would look at the MAP testing and decide that a single skip wasn't enough and to suggest a skip of two or three grades - whatever it takes to get some readiness level peers near by.

Well, that does seem far fetched, but, it's possible!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

FYI Lucounu- if you do MAP, get a promise/commintment in advance that it will be untimed for your ds. We were told nothing in advance so it wasn't like we were promised anything, but at our school they did tell dc to guess and get out once the last of the older kids left. It was essentially a timed test, 45 mins, due to scheduling. It clearly didn't hurt dc much as they had pretty good scores, but still. If you think the results are going to be used to translate your ds' ability to the teachers/staff, then I'd be sure to get a solid commitment that he'll actually be allowed to do what he can on it without being kicked out. He'll do great.

Thank you! Anything's possible. Today went very well. We met with the school psychologist about the MAP, and the kindergarten teacher as a pre-meeting for Friday's TAT meeting. I really continue to like both of them, and today almost wanted to hug them. The school psychologist was very kind, and volunteered up-front that the MAP was simply to make it easier to make proper recommendations for acceleration of some type, which was likely to be her recommendation, as our son was obviously more highly gifted than they'd realized before. She also made it sound like even if our son bombed the MAP for some reason, it wouldn't be a deal-killer at all.

The kindergarten teacher was incredibly nice. She started out unable to speak for a moment, with tears in her eyes, and said that after reading our tester's report she finally understood our son. She seemed quite upset at the possibility that she had contributed to any unhappiness for him this year. I told her I thought that given all of the difficulties of teaching our son, and the information she had to work with, I couldn't fault anything she'd said or done; that in retrospect I thought this first year in the school system had gone pretty well, keeping in mind that the kindergarten year is not all about academics anyway; and that I am very thankful for all the extra time she'd spent on him.

I feel a lot better.

Thanks very much for this. I was able to read it on my phone before the meeting with the school psychologist today, and got a promise that our son would be apart from the herd with special instructions not to rush him at all, and that he's to have all the time in the world. I have also prepared him to resist if someone tries to cut his time short.

I have a giddy feeling that this might be happening right now. Thank you very much.


Thank you! I think there's definitely that aspect to it, along with the need to place him in the school's curriculum. My wife thinks that the special ed. director is put out that the school did not identify him the first time, which might be part of it I guess. I can't fault the school for it.

ETA: Thanks, La Texican, flower, Grinity. Unfortunately it does not look like BIQ is in the cards this year for money reasons. The testing was reasonably priced but still a burden to us, especially figuring in hotel and travel expenses (we are on a reduced income lately). Plus, the puppy I promised will cost us extra in the short term, even if the wife's plan, to convince him to convert to two kittens, works. We plan to attend next year for sure.

Good. I really hope so. May reason prevail! Here here!

Just wanted to say congratulations on the scores!

Wow - I had tears in my eyes just reading this post. Those are the moments to savor in life, aren't they?
Hopefully the school psychologist was watching and storing the impressions as well so that your son can benefit in the future at this school.
It is true that once the school 'takes ownership' of the information, you can expect things to start really happening.

I feel better too!
See you and the family at BIQ week after next, yes?
Grinity

(Thanks very much, La Texican, flower, Grinity. We are barely scraping by right now and can't afford to go to BIQ, but definitely are planning on it next year. The puppy option has been converted to two kittens. Hopefully we can find free ones.)

Today's TAT meeting went pretty well. This time, there were nine or ten people in the room besides the wife and me, including (off the top of my head) the principal, vice principal, school psychologist, reading specialist, special ed. director, both school guidance counselors (the second one was new to the proceedings, but used to do GT coordination in the next town over), first-grade teacher, and K teacher.

The MAP results came back pretty decently, though based on the time taken he seems to have sped through both days of testing. I guess he satisfactorily finished the end of the second grade reading/writing curriculum and near the end of their third-grade math curriculum, according to their tests. Not a barn-burner, but good enough to nullify arguments that he's not ready for any acceleration, I suppose.

The plan they had come up with was:

1. For the next three weeks, do a trial period of afternoon first grade after his morning kindergarten class ends. This period will just be to make sure that he can adapt socially and emotionally to the skip, and let him start making new friends. The school will start by having him with a cluster group of what sounded like what they suspect may possibly be MG first graders (which is why they picked that particular classroom, to make that possible). This same cluster of first graders will eat lunches with him outside the cafeteria for the first week, then sit with him in the cafeteria after the first week. This same group will also do first-grade work with him, I guess.

2. Inside the first-grade classroom, they will work on lining up enrichment activities for him.

3. There will be a follow-up meeting at the end of the trial period to discuss how it went and make further recommendations.

4. If everything goes well, the principal will (I guess, since it's required by local school district rules) get permission from the superintendent for a skip to second grade at the end of this year.

5. There will be another meeting at the end of the school year to address any further issues or concerns, and finalize plans.

6. Next year, they will work to add in-class enrichment for him so he's not bored by the reading, math, science etc. available normally. His team of other gifties/high achievers will do projects with him, etc. to delve deeper into subjects; he may do book reports and the like; etc. They also mentioned more problem-solving for math.

We have some obvious questions (e.g. about whether he will be allowed to learn new math topics past the second-grade curriculum, how his need for a faster pace will be addressed, etc.). It was just so nice to hear the school acknowledge finally that he has special needs, especially keeping in mind that this is just the first step, that we didn't want to argue against their ideas, and actually went in with the idea of just being receptive if they offered a beginning along these lines (Grin, sorry, I know it's not so Machiavellian). They are doing their best, this is just the first rough draft, and they seem very open to change and discussion. We are also sending in our DYS application in the morning, and hopefully will be accepted before the next meeting after the trial period, thus might have extra expertise available to help.

One thing the principal said was startling. He said that he had the feeling that, similarly to their policy in the district against double retention, there would be no further possible skip until our son leaves the school (which goes up to 5th). He also said he had concerns about the school's ability to provide advanced enough materials in the last year or so (I didn't mention that that might be a good time to leave for the middle school, which seems like it might get around the no-double-skip rule). I'm unconcerned about such things right now; I just want to improve his school experience next year as much as possible, we can push for further changes as necessary, and we have established a beachhead.

I think that a lot of the school teachers and administrators here are coming from an egalitarian mode of thought about education, which I can appreciate for its basic good-heartedness while not agreeing totally on every point. I do cringe at the idea of other kids' lives being rearranged to help my kid, although I understand the reason for it and am highly grateful that the school cares enough to make such recommendations. I am hoping that out of all of this comes a greater awareness of the differences of gifted kids in my school, and I also hope that this may be the start of gifted services in my town. All of the people at the meeting, especially the person with GT experience who seems really on the ball and very passionate, seem to be focused on doing the right thing.

We're feeling really grateful to the school and everyone here (thank you!). We don't expect everything to go perfectly right away, but we finally feel like there's real hope.

That's great news! Yep, I think a skip brings in all kinds of staff to your meetings.

That is wonderful that they are planning to do something right away. I think the trial is a pretty good idea. It will give an idea if your DS will fit in with next year's group. One thing to remember, though, that even if your child gets paired with a kid who has similar MAP scores and even similar LOG, that's no guarantee that they'll get along. It's possible, of course! Hopefully, though, that will be an improvement to be in a group of kids working at a similar level. When my DS skipped into second, he was grouped for math with another kid with similar MAP scores, and it worked well for the academic piece, even though they were unlikely to ever be friends.

For now, since they're offering something that sounds pretty good and they're starting to see that your DS has special needs, I'd try to overlook some of the stuff about what you'll do in the future. Principals tend to want to do long-term planning, and with some of the HG+ kids, it really makes no sense to do anything than plan for what works in the short-term.

As for math, we had difficulties getting appropriate math for our kiddo after the skip. They seemed to think that skipping to 2nd would be enough. Some ideas: pretests, and if your kiddo tests out, then he can either join the 3rd grade class or do Aleks or EPGY online in the classroom.

Very good news that there's someone with GT experience. While you're waiting on your DYS application, you can let the school staff know that there is a free site for educators, with e-lists and lots of other information about teaching GT kids: http://www.davidsongifted.org/edguild/

I think all in all this is great news. Congratulations on your advocacy!

Thanks a lot! Yep, you're right. DS5 seems to fit in really well wherever he goes, but he's never been in a situation like this. A lot will depend on the other kids.


Thank you for the validation. I am feeling relieved that we will at least get some improvement. I have a feeling that he will still be doing work a bit below his level at first, but he hopefully won't feel so sad and insulted by it.


That's one of my main worries. I really don't think they are going to easily go for a pull-out, but of course I will bring it up as an option. Computer work in the classroom is more likely to be a go. They seem to consistently worry about putting him in a situation with noticeably much older kids.


Thank you. I will forward that one. Our wonderful tester put a lot of links in her report, including to ditd.org, but not that specific one.


Thanks a lot. We feel like we haven't done much advocacy yet. Before, we couldn't fault them for their position, and think the kindergarten teacher did her best according to the information she had; follow-up testing was the only thing we could think of to do. After those results came back, we didn't want to be disrespectful or come off even more as pushy parents, and wanted to see what they proposed, which has turned out to be pretty reasonable so far. We certainly can't take credit for anything. But thank you very much for all of your support.

I have clearly delineated my customary blather, so you can skip right past it to the questions. That box isn't around a quote, but was used to make the text hang together as a tight blathery unit.

BEGIN BLATHER

END BLATHER

1. How do you think it's best to address level and pace problems for a kid who's completed grade requirements in math, where the school seems to prefer not to pull children out of the classroom? We may suggest computer work like EPGY in-classroom, which we will offer to pay for. We also want to bring up the idea of curriculum compacting-- but are afraid this will derail plans to have him work with other kids in the room.

2. We expect the level problems to only intensify over the summer, and his MAP scores to increase, especially if he feels better about taking the test next time. He really enjoys learning math, especially, our biggest area of concern over level. As a fall-back position, should we sink hooks in now that we expect the plan to be re-evaluated if he really blows the doors off next fall's MAP? (Is it realistic to expect them to really address options like subject pull-outs for the first time mid-fall?)

3. My wife has had the idea of asking him to work with a math specialist outside the classroom. I don't like the idea because they pretty obviously want to keep him in a classroom with kids, preferably his classroom (and so do we if possible), and because I don't see it as logistically workable. They have no math specialist here, though they have a reading one. My wife thinks we should ask for a teacher to do it in her spare time. Is that as strange as it sounds to me?

4. He spells at roughly a 4th-5th grade level right now. I can't think of anything to ask for on this except for him to be let out of spelling in-class. If that's done, what is the best option? Let him read quietly on something he chooses, work on his homework, or what? I really don't think he needs to learn spelling at all. He just picks it up, and if necessary he's shown that he can learn a year's worth of normal spelling lists in an hour or so (partly because he gets many of them right without practice, so that pace might slow down as he got to higher-level words where he might need to learn vocabulary). Would you ask for him to be let out of it, or for higher-level spelling, in-class or out? I view it as just so much do-work for him, and there's only so much time in the day for us to spend together, so I'd rather not have him loaded down with spelling homework.

5. How can we make a genuine offer of help, that will be seen as such? Obviously we would offer to pay for extra computer services, though we're already stretched a little thin. What else can we do? This school has no gifted program for us to help out on. We will offer to take part in normal volunteer opportunities for parents. Is there anything else?

6. Should we hold back on letting him learn math over the summer? Or would it be better to teach him wrong math, so that he has something to (un)learn next year? I'm trying to think outside of the box here, having recently watched "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist". My idea is that he could be the Wimp Lo of second-grade math, except it would be for his own emotional well-being and to help him integrate with his peers, not for a joke.

I'm afraid I don't have answers for most of your questions -- your post sounds uncomfortably like a replay of what we went through at the beginning of ds's 2 years in public school. Our only recourse in the end was to move him to a private school that specializes in gifted ed. I hope you have better luck than we did!

But I do have something to suggest about spelling: when dd started getting several years ahead of her classmates, her L.A. teacher suggested that rather than continuing to even higher levels of it, she should study vocabulary via the 'Wordly Wise' workbook series. Dd was happy because it made her feel like a big kid, and I felt it was more interesting and useful than just memorizing how to spell words.

Granted, it's still something your son would be doing alone, which is not ideal. But at least it'd be IMO more engaging.

Iucounu -
Remember that fine line between clever and stupid? I'm guessing that you keep that line around to remind yourself not to go nuts over thinking things.

You have come a long long way already!
In this game, one can't know how a child will react to a given situation until they get there. So give the cluster group and the full acceleration a chance to do what they were intended to do, and then see how your child is reacting and expect this to be a 'work in progress.'

You want your child to enjoy school, to enjoy his classmates, and to learn good work ethic. There are 100 reasonable 'least-worst' paths to that goal. Once the school recognizes that your child is different, getting more needed accomidation does get easier.

So, I wouldn't suggest EPGY for math until it's clear that your son needs more.
You may need to re-evaluate in the Fall after the new MAP, but you don't win anything by bringing that up now.
As for your wife's idea - I think it's better to hire a tutor for homeuse, or volunteer to go into the school and work with the Math Cluster as a group, or hire a tutor to go into the school and work with the Math Cluster group. If your wife is so set on asking, then try and steer her to ask the Principle to work with the math cluster, that way the decision maker gets a chance to see first hand about how issues of pace and depth are going.
Similarly - Spelling can be left as is, or used for handwriting practice, or he can create his own wordlist from his reading, or you can privately work it out with the teacher that after he's spend 5 minutes then a parent markes how far he got and signs it and sends it back in.
No, I wouldn't teach him wrong math, but I might transcribe a book where he 'makes up' his own version of wrong math. Can you hold back on the math over the summer without causing great stress? If you can find something else to work on - such as 'nature' or a second language that doesn't further seperate him from his classmates, that seems like a wise choice - just don't be too suprised when he leaps ahead anyway.

Anyway - it takes time, flexibility, waiting and -yuck- growing inside.

Srry
Grinity

I certainly wouldn't teach him wrong math, but if he is dying for math, rather than zooming ahead in the curriculum, he might enjoy some of the Alcumus problem soling material in number theory (it might be too advanced, but maybe not) or other topics typically given short shrift in school math classes. Math actually has a lot of room to "go wide" if you don't limit yourself to arithmetic and algebra.

I hope so too. I also wish there were a local school specializing in gifted ed.


This is wonderful, thank you! I'll suggest this as an example of a good substitution, offer to pay for it if necessary, and see if they go for it.

It's actually so that I exercise the proper amount of tact in designing album covers.


It's clear that he does, at least to the extent that his time in school shouldn't be wasted, and that's the problem. He won't learn any new concepts in the second-grade math curriculum. Enrichment is fine, but it's not the whole picture; he deserves to learn some new concepts, just as he deserves to practice problem-solving.

I'll hold back a bit and let the acceleration "take", I guess, although I'm not happy that the math problem is not going to be resolved. I don't think the principal has time to sit with a class every day, we don't have money for a tutor, and I would feel like suggesting I pay for a tutor to sit with their group of students would be a little too forward anyway. Thanks for the advice on the specialist.


To me, that's uncomfortably like binding his feet so we don't have to buy bigger shoes. He's started learning Spanish using Berlitz and a computer program, since I figure that's a useful language to know. He already picks up science, and I can increase that along with everything else, but it shouldn't come at the expense of math learning if he's interested. These are my own opinions, but I am very glad to have your advice and will think about it over the coming weeks. Thank you!

Thanks for the suggestions. I recently started hunting up materials in discrete math, and have taken a look at Alcumus too. Maybe that's the best option for now.

That sounds like fun!

Sadly, that are very few concepts in Math in elementary school - you could sit down and teach him the whole curriculum of concepts in a couple of afternoons, because there just isn't much there.
To me, Math before prealgebra is about memorizing math facts with a few definitions and procedure thrown in.

You might enjoy reading http://learninfreedom.org/

Stay away from the 'shoulds' and keep observing your child. You'll have to keep checking his 'twinkle titer' and yes, he will learn all on his own, just by breathing. So if he 'wilts' when you two spend time together learning science at the expense of math, well then yes, it'll be Math time again - hopefully the higher level stuff that they won't get to in elementary school anyway.
This looks potentially interesting:
Online Math Logic Programs, Propositional Calculus, CS ...eIMACS specializes in educational classes for gifted and talented computer science students and children, including online mathematical logic programs, ...
www.eimacs.com/educ_lpcoverview.htm

I've seen a workbook of their about cryptography that looked very interesting.

The reason I give cautions is that you don't want to give your son the impression that your son is 'so delicate' that there is only one least-bad learning path for him.

What if the principle was willing to sit down with the Math cluster once a week? Again, more so he/she has a hands on feel for your son's mind than for anything your son might learn.

There are kids who just want to learn 'a lot' and a 'good pace' and there are other kids who need a particular subject. Go slow enough to see which your child is. There are kids who can become interested in anything, kids who can become interested in anything their beloved adults care to share, and kids who can only learn what something deep inside them tells them it's time to learn. See where on that range your son is as he grows and matures.

I hope that makes sense. In the end you and your wife are the best ones to keep observing and flexibly feeding the flame of love of learning while teaching all of the other life lessons that parents are responsible for teaching. Big job, yes? But I have faith in you.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

(From my phone) Thanks very much, CFK and Grinity. I'm going to take all of your advice.

I'll pile in too - surround everything I say with a YMMV.

BTDT, it's tricky. (You might like to have a look at the thread I started about our experience if you didn't see it at the time - DS was 6 and about to go into the equivalent of 2nd grade already knowing a lot more maths than they'd plan to teach, so it wasn't that dissimilar a situation, although we didn't have the grade skip element.)

FWIW I wish DS had more experience working with other children at maths; that's the one thing I feel we really haven't got right so far. It's tricky, though; there's really no way he could collaborate with (as opposed to attempt to teach!) his age peers, and the age gap between him and the children he might be able to work with would be large. We're hoping he'll have a chance (via school-wide team maths challenge) next year, but I'll believe it when I see it working, really. If you think there's really a chance your DS could realistically get that next year, I'd grab it - it'll get harder before it gets easier if he continues to accelerate away!

Our school was more receptive to our sending in work for DS on paper than to our suggesting computer work for him. We didn't push it so I'm not sure, but I think the issues are practical: there's only one computer in his classroom and it's not convenient to have it occupied (e.g. the teacher may need it to do things on the smartboard with the others) and even if we sent in a netbook for him or something, it might be more disruptive than paper because computer use is generally seen as a privilege and might provoke envy from the other children in a way which harder work on paper doesn't!
I think I'd try to be more general than that: I'd emphasise that the situation can change fast with him and that you'll need to review the situation frequently and not necessarily on a predictable schedule. Certainly, don't agree now on the exact material he'll be doing in the autumn unless you're sure it's currently a long way ahead of him! We had a meeting in the summer in which we discussed generalities, and agreed to have a meeting to discuss details at the beginning of the following year. That worked well. Dunno about the practicalities of arranging pullouts; that depends a lot on the school.
I certainly wouldn't put it like that - it would be work for the teacher who probably doesn't feel as though s/he has much spare time! You might be lucky in that there might happen to be someone unknown to you who has a maths background and is itching to experiment with support a really talented child.

Are you and DW happy to do the actual teaching and planning of his maths? If so, then doing teaching at home and "homework" at school may be the way to go, practically speaking. Don't overestimate the stage at which many elementary school teachers start to feel insecure with maths themselves, by the way.
Why would he be loaded down if learning spellings is quick for him? Is it that they expect spelling homework that involves writing? DS's school recommends a writing-based method, but all they insist on is that the children learn their assigned words (they all have different ones, I think, and part of it is words that were mis-spelled in their own work which by definition they don't already know well!). DS learns his on the bus, tested by reciting them spelling-bee style. Works for us, takes only a few minutes per week. I suppose I see it as memory training; I rather agree that it's not obvious that it's necessary from the POV of actually learning to spell.
You can offer to take on any part of the work involved in setting and marking special work for your DS that you feel happy to do and they feel happy to give up. (This depends on the teacher - last year we didn't do much, this year we've arranged DS's maths in toto.)
Lol, but no.

PS I love Alcumus, but I don't think doing number theory in Alcumus is going to help by leaving lots of third and fourth grade topics untouched! You do pretty much have to be able to do arithmetic to do number theory, and as Grinity (was it?) said there's not really a whole lot else in school maths at this kind of level. (There is *some*, at least in UK maths there is - but it's only going to occupy another couple of afternoons.)

ColinsMum, thank you for taking the time to give such detailed, sound advice. I had seen your other thread before-- I think it might've actually been the first one I added to my watched-topics list. I just went back and reread it carefully. I love the What To Do When Stuck rules, and the thing I like best about your approach to your son's learning is that you strive to keep him challenged with tough work that's just within his grasp.

I think my son will probably need some periodic teacher input, and I don't think he'd be likely to interrupt her to say he needed help with something he didn't know. I don't think they're likely to stick him in a corner with the computer during math anyway, because of their apparent beliefs about socialization, etc. (with which I tend to agree, although it does present an additional constraint that seems to make the situation impossible to resolve perfectly), as well as possible reluctance to have him hog the computer too.

I still haven't had a chance to discuss things with his teacher from next year. She may also want us to assume more of a teaching role with math, correcting homework, etc., but I don't know. I tend to doubt it at this stage, since it sounds like they're not planning to have him work alone. I think I will do what you say, and see how well the cluster group works this year, since you're right that the fit is as good as it's going to get for a while.

I think this is great, practical advice which I will follow. I'll probably start by asking how often reassessments will happen, who we can approach with ongoing issues with level/pace, etc. The answer will surely be the teacher, but these questions will either get everyone in the same frame of mind on flexibility, or at least prompt a needed discussion.

I have been reluctant to do it much, mostly over fear that I'll give him a bad conceptual framework on which to build. So his math "instruction" for some time now has mostly taken the form of me pointing him at a task on the IXL website and turning him loose, and just answering specific questions if he asks them. That's not a good solution, though-- that website doesn't feature any lessons at all, and though it has explanations when you miss a question, they seem to be pretty poor at teaching concepts. I think I'm going to be forced to get over my reluctance.

Because of that, I recently bought Singapore Math for third and fourth grade. As far as I can tell from IXL, he's mastered third grade stuff except possibly for some weights and measures, to which he simply hasn't been exposed much and which I don't care about. I bought third grade because I wanted to make sure he didn't have any gaping holes in his knowledge, and we could just skip the parts he knows. So far he's going through it fast and will be ready to do the fourth grade in short order. Singapore Math seems to be a mixed bag-- I'm not in love with the way some of the topics are presented, but others are great-- but in any event I think it's far better than not having a curriculum or any lessons.

You make good points. It's not just spelling, actually, but vocab too. They seem to do some repetitive reading and vocab stuff in our school. For the next year, I think I will try not to worry too much about his time being wasted in the classroom. He's excited about the skip and it will probably take a while for that excitement to wear off. Time spent on below-level stuff at home will hopefully be minimal, and they might go for giving him advanced vocab work at school.

I'll just make a general offer along those lines. We're happy to do anything.

That's the thing. Sort of the way people talk about learning to read enabling reading to learn, I mostly want to get him to a point where his math knowledge enables deeper exploration of whatever interests he may develop. Right now he shows beginning interests in electronics, robotics, programming, etc. where math may help a lot. In addition if we go too long between math sessions, he asks me for math because he misses it. I just don't want to stunt his growth.

Well, I've already got the squeaky shoes. He will just have to learn to enjoy them, as they are past the returns period.

We went to the end-of-May meeting, where it was decided to skip DS5 to first for the rest of the year, and follow up with a final meeting this coming Friday to make sure everything was copasetic. The decision was made only after some discussion of possibly have him do a month of split 1st/2nd at the beginning of next year, over worries about him being able to keep up with the physical writing.

In addition they said they were worried about his performance on something called the end of year "writing prompt", since apparently he was choosing in class to write fewer words but taking forever to make sure he formed each letter perfectly. After the meeting, the wife and I told DS5 to speed it up and make sure he put as much detail as possible in each sentence for a while.

Apparently they had the writing prompt today. When asked how it went, DS told us that he thought it went all right. We asked what it was like, and he gave an example of one of the questions, along the lines of "What invention would you like to make?" His answer: a terraforming machine, which he would use to terraform Mars, etc. so humans could live there. Hopefully that is up to first grade standards.

The plan for next year is for him to be in a classroom and grouped with the brightest second graders, and to get special problem-solving enrichment for math, and some sort of enrichment for writing, details still to be determined. We have worries about him being bored, but are keeping our fingers crossed that things will work out fine. And it's undeniably better for him than winding up in first next year, learning further how to add single digit numbers.

LOL! Great answer! Hopefully next year is easier on you all!

Best Wishes, This sounds like a good plan 'for now' and hopefully he'll be 'close enough' for a while!

Love the terraforming story. Yes, things really do develop once the typing skill arrives.

Smiles,
Grinity

Thanks, peeps. The meeting went well, and it sounds like he's integrating pretty well, though apparently he has a tendency to wander absent-mindedly sometimes. The blind scoring from the writing prompt seemingly hadn't been done yet. It will take some time to unwind, but it does seem to be going well. Our DYS family consultant will also be offering help to them soon, which should smooth things out even more. Thank you to everyone here.

I couldn't agree more. The first grade teacher seemed to us to be a little skeptical early on, but I don't think that her behavior was based on a desire to see our son fail. It's more that she seemed not to realize that our son might need useful feedback at least as much as he needed to feel secure. So instead of telling him to hurry up to catch up to the class, and that a bit of sloppiness was okay (I've seen some first graders' work and it can be pretty darn sloppy in general), she would give him extra time, etc. Although I appreciate why, she was walking on eggshells to make sure she didn't make a mistake, when all she needed to do was teach.

Recap and update: DS6 was skipped to first at the end of last year, and continued on to second this year. It has been a complete waste of time academically.

His TAT team plan from last year called for this year's teacher to work with us before the start of the school year to arrange enrichment; she was unavailable until after the start of the school year, when she admitted that she had no idea what to do and had no experience with gifted children. She wound up sticking him in a corner with some fourth grade worksheets, which she erroneously graded.

Meanwhile a new vice principal stated several times in meetings that DS is "ahead of where he's supposed to be", and stated his opinion that DS should go "broader rather than deeper". For example, the vice principal suggested that DS, instead of learning new math concepts after mastering old ones, perhaps do a report on the life of a famous mathematician.

We eventually got DS switched to a new classroom in January, and his old teacher suddenly retired around the same time. His new teacher seemed better initially, and promised to give DS work at his level, but then was directed by the higher-ups not to give DS any accelerated work. (As a bit of background, our school district has a no-double-acceleration policy; apparently one year's worth of subject and/or grade acceleration is all one can ever get, and it is extremely rare to see a grade skip. DS was apparently the youngest student ever to be skipped.) For math, the most glaringly ill-served area for DS, he recently brought home a math worksheet where different regions of a drawn pig face from Angry Birds were colored in according to whether a single-digit addition problem for that area resulted in an odd or even number.

We've just fired off a FERPA request for access to DS's entire education file, to gather information for filing a request for a finding of "manifest educational hardship", which in our state of New Hampshire would allow us to send him to any public school in the state.

We also have invoked the New Hampshire parental objection law, apparently passed with religious fundamentalist objections to certain content in mind, to object to material being taught to our son below his assessed grade level. We also have specifically objected to the use of Everyday Math in his instruction, as well as any extra math drills prescribed by the district's math consultant, hired to bring up our scores due to Title I status. The law allows us to suggest an alternative, and the school must avoid teaching the objected-to material until an acceptable alternative is agreed to by us and the school. Our first suggestion is for us to afterschool him on math and send work to school (we're not so worried about the language arts aspects of his school instruction right now, though he's learned precious little there as well at school this year).

There's a charter school opening up in the region which was originally slated to be a gifted school, but due apparently to initial denial of the application was switched to a school without academic eligibility criteria. This school originally looked promising, but I've since heard from another parent, whose DYS child attended a now-defunct gifted school operated by the new charter school's founders, that the old school didn't provide a good environment for her son. I also got a bad feeling about the fit for DS6 when I attended an info session and followed up on the internet, so that's out as an option for us.

It looks like we're headed for homeschooling, although there's a possibility that we can find another district that is more on the ball with (or simply aware of) issues with educating HG+ children, if we're successful in working the educational hardship angle.

One good part of this year, perhaps the only part, is that DS6 has become extremely frustrated with lack of educational support at school. He's excited about homeschooling, and if we're forced to go that route, I think he is poised to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Argh! What is it that goes through people's heads, such that they think this is appropriate? Is it just that they have no idea what maths is? (We've been fortunate enough not to have met it with DS, but it's horribly familiar from my own childhood.)

Although it would be tempting to get it written down as "life and work of" and give him Galois or Fermat... they'd have fun marking that :-)

Good luck with the legal stuff - and enjoy homeschooling!

I spoke to another mom recently whose kid is at a charter school and was grade-skipped twice (in NC). That's helping some but they are doing math themselves and also some Coursera courses. The accommodation apparently is that their DD does her outside math (EPGY?) when the other kids are doing their math class. I think this could work (DIY education in the classroom!) but I think it would also take great behavior on the part of the kid--I am not sure it would work for our DD because she often needs reminders to stay on task.

Also, apologies, lucounu, if this is too far OT, but I have just discovered that there are a number of kids in our DD's Montessori class (she's in 3rd grade) who are doing outside math. On the one hand, I think Montessori is good for the very first steps of learning about math, but OTOH once you get past the whole concrete-to-abstract thing there isn't much there there. What annoys me about that whole thing is that they should just say so (i.e., you should seriously consider doing your own math at home) instead of pretending that each kid advances at their own pace in the classroom (which is the whole marketing/philosophy thing as far as I can tell). What a scam. (Sorry--only included in case you're considering Montessori as an alternative).

Best of luck!

My kids were in a full-on Montessori for two years. "Real" Montessoris do not emphasize memorizing math facts or speed math, which are unfortunately important to master too. I thought it was great for introducing complex ideas like multiplication to very young children, but you really had to work on extra things at home to stay afloat.
I agree that they should just tell you that. The Montessori philosophy is really "follow the child," and I never knew what they did if the child didn't want to read or do math, etc.

Thanks, people. I stated that assigning social studies enrichment wasn't the way to develop a strong math talent, but was ignored by the vice principal. The clueless teacher from the first half of this year at one point told us that the V.P. was a gifted education coordinator for a school district in another state, but we later learned that he in fact had just been cross-trained on gifted issues with the other educators. He likely got lots of ideas then about serving moderately gifted kids in the classroom, which he's misapplying now. I hate busywork for anyone.

The info on Montessori is helpful. At one point last year I reviewed their math approach and manipulatives, and I ruled it out as a possibility then because I'd read reports that Montessori schools may not compact at all, by insisting that a child complete every single item in a unit before progressing. That, plus the emphasis on manipulatives that DS really doesn't tend to need at all, meant to me it might be a poor fit. I agree that they should tell you the details up front about the depth of the program.

At one point computer-based instruction in the classroom was brought up, but they have a program I wasn't too thrilled with (Odyssey Math) and essentially refused to let us provide something better for him, and in any event were suggesting mostly that we use it at home. Er, thanks, but if I'm going to afterschool my kids due to a school's failings, I'm going to pick best-of-breed materials. :|

We the parents also prefer that DS be taught by a human being for his main instruction, which might be too old-school of us. To us early on that meant that we preferred a subject pull-out for math, but knowing what we know now, we are done with Everyday Math as implemented in our district; we wouldn't want him pulled out to a fifth grade classroom or above if it meant he were still stuck doing EM.

Yes, you are right about Montessoris in that you must complete every single item before moving on. It can be very tedious. The child is not allowed to skip things they already know.
For math, we mix and match- we did IXL when the kids were really little; Montessori PreK-first; Singapore Math, and now some other things. My third grader is breezing through a 5th grade math book- I'm happy with that for now.
Our school doesn't do alot of math competitions, which is a bummer; you can't really do that until junior high here. I'm buying a MOEMs book and will just try to work some of the problems with my kids.
Both of my kids are 2 grade levels above where they are in school for math and reading, and that seems good for now. Our school district doesn't skip anyone since we have an excellent full-time G/T program starting in 4th grade. Both kids seem very happy and have lots of friends, etc.
I figure they will have lots and lots of G/T opportunities in high school (over 30 AP courses), they can get into molecular research in nearby labs and try for the Intel Competition, etc. Maybe you can just keep trying to plug the academic holes at home that the school leaves behind.

(From my phone) Got a call today from the principal. They are willing to do a pull out to fourth for math and further if need be after that (he said if they need to send him to the high school they will). That could be a partial solution. They will also pay for an outside educational consultant to do an assessment of his needs, and it seems my wife (a uni professor) will be able to choose that person. "Manifest hardship" was glossed over during the call, as was our offer of afterschooling. More meetings... :[ I am excited about homeschooling, but he does like social aspects of school.

Sounds like good news! This is a good example of what can happen when you state your case effectively and in writing.

I do not completely agree with Anti- Montessori. FYI- I do not work in Montessori or anyway related to it. My DD did wonderfully in Montessori program. Depends on what type of teacher that particular school has (that is of course true for any type of school), her teacher was fantastic. From not knowing even alphabets and barely few words (DD lived first 3 years in a foreign country with grandparents and non English speaking), she was ready to skip K within 2 years. DD use to mentor other kids if teacher was busy with other kids and even parents started appreciating that. DD proudly says even now ( 2 years after she left Montessori) that she did multiplications and divisions in her school. Teacher was very dedicated and did wonderful job. Her teacher still teases her- all she could speak when she started Montessori was--- for How are you? DD used to say fine, Thank you. That was all.

So it not all bad with Montessori

I agree. Montessori schools in my experience are all over the map, with some schools and teachers adhering more strictly to Maria Montessori's methods, and others apparently just using the name Montessori as a selling tool. I think that encouraging an active, seeking mind and interest-led development in little ones is good. I just didn't want to hobble DS6's math development, or have to afterschool him on math, while paying a bunch of money to send him to a Montessori; we'd homeschool him first.

It's at least evidence that they may take us more seriously, in response to a written threat. Actual results remain to be seen. As of right now DS is saying he's "heard it all before" but willing to give it one last try. I'm ambivalent about a subject pull-out to a more advanced Everyday Math classroom. It's bound to be better than a below-level class, but probably still not the best thing for him.

If you don't mind my asking, what is your objection to Everyday Math? I know it's controversial among some groups, but it seems to me that a move away from traditional math's rote memorization of processes and toward a more conceptual understanding of what those processes actually are would be a good thing for gifted kids.

My daughter's small private school uses Everyday Math with in-class differentiation and pull out "extension" groups for the most advanced students and they have one of the strongest math programs in the area. They've also put a lot of staff professional development time into EM and have made a strong effort to reach out to parents in order to help them understand what the program is supposed to do and how they can support their kids at home.

My daughter is in second grade now (going into 4th next year) and has been in Everyday Math since kindergarten, and her recent MAP math score put her at 7th grade equivalency. Yes, her current math instruction is a bit too easy for her even with differentiation and extension, as are all subjects, really (hence the need for the grade skip), but any math curriculum would be like that for her, and I suspect that many of them would have been worse. EM certainly hasn't hurt her, so I'm curious why you feel like it might be such a problem.

I've read many of the websites objecting to Everyday Math, and I'm really not swayed by their arguments.

One objection is that it gives demonstrably poorer results here than you've experienced. Every school in my district is in Title I status for math. This has prompted the hiring of a math consultant, who has instituted months-long drills at the start of every year in an attempt to bring up test scores, detracting from the amount of time spent teaching the new concepts and skills in the first place.

It may be that EDM takes expertise to administer. What I've experienced with DS6 is that when I don't afterschool him on math at all, and he doesn't teach himself but focuses on other things, he stays at exactly the same MAP score for math; the teaching at school does nothing for him. With Singapore Math, he grasps things nearly instantly and actually progresses (quickly).

One reason I don't like EDM as implemented here, which might be different from elsewhere, is excessive stress on the concrete, use of manipulatives, etc. It's unnecessary for my son, but that is admittedly probably due to the fact that he grasps abstract concepts much more quickly than normal. But that's also why I don't think that EDM, at least without discarding a lot of this excessive handholding, would be good for kids with a strong math streak in general (not saying anything about your daughter here, please understand-- in fact she may be compensating for the shortcomings of EDM a good deal by sheer talent ).

I prefer an exceptionally clear explanation of a concept, with concrete and pictorial representations perhaps, but without clutter such as description of things as machines when teaching multiplication, etc. Kids don't in my experience need to be babied to that extent. I've also seen an excessive focus on silliness like drills on constructing whole numbers in a bunch of different ways, I suppose in the hopes of building up number sense; this doesn't constitute problem solving skill development or anything really useful in my opinion. This might be due to how it's implemented locally, though.

DS's MAP test was essentially a nullity at the start of the year, due to the fact he didn't have paper and pencil for much of the test. When he tested in the winter, he wound up with a huge advance, but it wasn't due to schooling. At the time he was showing 50th percentile or above up to the ninth grade. His score went down four points by the end of the year. That's why I say he's learned nothing. This is partly simply a big level mismatch, of course.

I guess, to sum up the things I don't like:
- May take more expertise to administer than is typically found, or at least locally found here
- Excessively babyfied, at least in the early grades I've had occasion to see materials for; cluttered presentation of concepts
- Do-work such as constructing whole numbers ad infinitum makes it very yawn-worthy for my gifted son
- Far better options are available

Hi JM! Welcome! Congratulations on getting a skip for your daughter. I've found that getting a school that prides itself on it's quality to admit that it can't quite accomidate every blessed child in every possible way can be quite the challenge. I hope it was easy in your situation. Anyway, glad you found us and hope to hear more about your family.
Smile,
Grinity

Glad to hear that they are threatenable and hope they follow through - particularly with the 'send him to High School if needed' Good for your DS for being willing to give that one last try.
Smiles,
Grinity

I wrote a long letter to my son's private school about EM a few years ago. What bothered me most about it was/are a foundation of subtle, misleading mistakes. They turn it into a muddled curriculum.

For example, one way the kids learn "concepts of addition and subtraction" is by using a thing that looks like a calendar. They're supposed to learn that moving their finger to the right and down means "addition" and that moving it to the left and up means "subtraction." This is really just counting, not addition. I suppose the idea might make sense to adults who understand what addition is, but to a kid who has no clue what "addition" means, I can see it being confusing. And DS complained bitterly, saying, "Why can't we just ADD? It's so much EASIER!"

Plus, the numbers are laid out in rows from 1-10 (not 0-9). This layout puts the new set of tens on the line with the old set of tens. This is can lead to misconceptions about where a new set of ten starts. Plus, the calendar in my son's book left out the zero. Why no zero?

EM is also designed so that some of the problems have no right answers. Example: cut out a ruler and measure objects at home. There is no way for the teacher to know if the kids actually got the right measurements.

Don't get me started on asking second graders to cut out pictures of triangles/make collages, write about the presidents who are on coins, or write stories. None of these activities are mathematics (well, the triangles might be pre-math for pre-schoolers).

We carpooled with a girl in 5th grade; EM was even more fuzzy and muddled in her course. I remember something about dropping a flimsy ruler you cut out from the book and dropping/catching it as a way of measuring...something. The force of gravity, maybe? The appropriate experiment would have been to drop a ball from a defined height, anyway. I remember her mom complaining about that.

Obviously I've pushed an ideological button here, just by suggesting Everyday Math is not the end of the world.

Yeah, this was my issue with it, too. And the kind of stuff Val is talking about. There seemed to be a lot of blah blah blah and lalala with EDM. A lot of bibbidy bobbidy boo, ooh look, what's over here? Were we talking about addition? Never mind! Now let's talk about squares!

There's still a bit of that with DD's current curriculum, but it's seeming much more straight ahead and just....sensible. They seem to get all the way through a concept before they move on. I am really glad to be rid of EDM. I don't know--maybe it works betters for kids lacking innate number sense? DD has that in spades.

Hi, Grinity! Thank you for the welcome. Actually, I found it to be very easy. I think it's because everyone involved in the decision did their best to keep an open mind about all the possibilities and respect the views of everyone else involved in the process. Our school has a very progressive approach to education and the administration is always looking for ways things can be done better, so there really isn't much defensiveness there. An ongoing dialog with families is part of their marketing. After some of the horror stories I've read online, I'm very glad and count myself lucky!

Err...wow. We were criticizing Everyday Math, not you. People gave specific examples about what we don't like about EM. What's wrong with that, and how does it constitute flaming you?

If you disagree, feel free to present evidence supporting your opinions, but please don't make baiting accusations or use name-calling/flaming (and please don't accuse people of doing what you're actually doing).

I've spent time teaching in the classroom, am regularly invited to review education grant applications at the federal level, and have been funded myself. I do know what I'm talking about. They invite me back in part because of the kinds of criticisms I make.

No, there is a clear difference between saying, "I don't like this and here's why." and "This is stupid and I'm going to make fun of it." Before you made your post, I had stated that I had a positive personal experience with something, and the very clear tone of your post was that anyone who had anything positive to say about it was an idiot. And now you complain about turnabout.

Please avoid personal insults, and keep in mind the board rules (http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/ubb/boardrules/v/1.html), particularly the following. Otherwise I will be forced to close this thread.

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If you're going to delete one of my posts please just delete all of them. I won't be back here.

Holy mackerel. Just tone it down-- no need for a grand exit. Welcome.

We had our next meeting today. I handed the person who'd advocated previously for retarding DS6's progress his head on a platter, and he sat silently through it. The plan is for a pullout to fourth for math and to assess whether that's enough for math. My wife began to advocate for more, in other subject areas, but apparently he's been giving one-liner answers as quickly as possible in writing activities, and hasn't done a lot of his homework. So that's the plan for now. My wife lined up an educational consultant to come in, and she is officially part of the team going forward. She will be sitting in on DS6's classrooms and making recommendations as well.

DS6 and his classmates each submitted a piece of art and a short essay to their teacher, for inclusion in a book aimed at extracting money from parents. His teacher didn't send the order form home to us. Today I saw why: he'd drawn a picture of a sad little calculator person, and his essay began, "My name is [DS6], and I'm an unhappy calculator. Nobody ever uses me, so I just get dustier and dustier..." It went on and on. :|

Wow! Impressive. Good for you guys.

Oh, that is so sad. Glad you are working so well on his behalf.

DeeDee

Thanks to everyone for all your support. Val, I hope you're feeling much better. I feel like I've let DS6 down somewhat, at least to the extent I've reassured him all along that fixes were in the works. It's really been tough for me to face such a long campaign of subtle resistance from the school, after we initially seemed to get over the hump of their denial of DS6's unusual needs. I feel like I would've snapped into attack mode much more quickly if they'd been more aggressive. I hope I never have to go through this with our younger son.

I have no illusions now, including about the new measures adopted today. DS6 will be going to a fourth grade classroom that's sure to have nothing new for him, especially since the Everyday Math as taught here seems to be a bit down-level. Meanwhile the school district is doing away with the MAP test for budget reasons, which will make it harder to appeal to the school's better nature through evidence-based practice; I guess we'll have to get more outside assessments done every time we want a level reset.

One good part of the plan is that another third grader will be doing the pullout to fourth with him, so at least he will be one in a pair of sore thumbs.

Iucounu, IMO, it will get better. Elementary schools are poorly equipped to differentiate math, especially in early grades. When our DS was 6, he wasn't getting any appropriate math, but it's steadily improved as they got to know him and understand that his needs were real. We have seen that through later elementary it became clearer to school personnel what DS9 needs. (Our 3rd-4th-5th grade track record shows a steady increase in appropriate placement, not all the way to his max capacity, but acceptable to us).

Once you're in middle school, it is so much easier, because the kids are typically traveling between classes; it's less of a big deal to place a kid some years ahead. A scheduling hiccup rather than a nightmare. And once you're in the range of things like EXPLORE testing, or Math League, it's easier to provide them evidence of what your kid can do.

Good for you for advocating for your DS.
DeeDee

You've done a great job. Don't beat yourself up about telling your kiddo that fixes were in the works. He knows that you are working with the school and fighting for him.

I know it is frustrating to work with people who just don't get it, but I have found that you can whittle away, and people with preconceived notions eventually do see the light, even if it's a faint light to begin with.

An update, in case it is ever of interest to someone regarding the twists and turns of this particular advocacy:

DS7's school this year has been largely uneventful so far. Apparently there was a rash of requests by other parents for subject accelerations after word got around, but no adjustment problems for DS7. Our educational consultant is being paid for by the school, which is nice, and is slated to meet with his teachers and do some classroom observations in the next few weeks. We had a brief meeting with his two classroom teachers and the principal, which went mostly well. This was prompted by an email from me, after "curriculum night", expressing concern that DS probably had already mastered the fourth-grade curriculum.

The math teacher said at the meeting that she had decided to give him the fourth-grade end of year test starting that morning, and that he had gotten one out of twenty wrong on the first half due to a simple error, something along the lines of misreading an operation symbol as another (ETA: she actually lost his test before he had a chance to finish checking his work, so adjusted his score to 100%). I asked whether DS would be able to take the end-of-year test for fifth grade if he did well on the second half too, and the principal agreed.

We discussed for a while concerns over DS's progress. The principal said that according to his reading, the research suggests that acceleration is not all it's cracked up to be, but that they were already doing their best to make sufficient use of both grade and subject acceleration strategies. (At the end of last year he promised to do whatever was necessary to make sure that DS actually learns new concepts this year, though, so I chalk this up to the same old worries about maturity and not a refusal to provide the right level of work, in whatever context that might need to happen. This school has always been of the mindset that it's best to keep children with their age-mates, and we're in a relatively anti-skip district to start with. The principal did also say however that our case was causing them to re-evaluate their policies, which is nice.)

The principal agreed that if DS shows mastery of an entire year's curriculum, he must be given new concepts to learn, and that it's not sufficient to pad his time with problem solving practice at a lower level. DS's fourth grade teacher said that she plans to do her best to differentiate within the classroom using a menu approach, under which DS will be able to pick from a grid of choices whatever enrichment activity strikes his fancy, including some types of projects that weren't defined in the meeting. I asked if she had worries about giving him the right level of material if he's completely past the planned curriculum, and she agreed that she did.

I asked how he'd be exposed to new concepts, then, and the idea was voiced that he might be exposed to new concepts in the course of enrichment projects. This naturally prompted a question from me about how he would receive instruction on the new concepts, instead of being left to his own devices and essentially teaching himself. There wasn't really any answer.

It seems to me that if he encounters new concepts and needs a quick lesson, we parents can give it to him at home. However, we would need enough information to be able to do that as necessary; the new concepts wouldn't necessarily be introduced in a good progression or in such a way as to build a strong conceptual foundation, as they would be in a curriculum; and as a result this would essentially be winding up with what we've requested before, partial afterschooling, except with a poorer instructional model.

I really want to avoid another year of ineffectual approaches and busywork, or it's back to afterschooling-- but this time with a vengeance, and I'll tell DS to simply ignore the math schoolwork while I reconsider legal measures. I really want to avoid that, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the school honors its promise to do what's necessary, and that our consultant can exert some useful pressure.

If I heard that in a meeting, I would very politely say something along the lines of, " I wonder if you could send me some of those studies? I'm really interested in doing the right thing here, but if there's evidence that this isn't a good move, I'm open to it."

(I would actually mean this, too, although it would serve a double purpose as a possible--more like probable--calling of the bluff. At the same time, it would signal that you were at least paying lip service to their concerns.)

hi,
wow. your ds7 is smart!
may i ask where he was gradewise at 5yrs?
my ds5 is in kinder completely bored and unhappy. expressing now his feelings to the teacher verbally.
he is basically self taught- he comes to me with questions that i answer of course. (he is also a very high functioning aut- not aspergers), he is reading grade 2/begin 3rd, math approx begin grade 2. he loves anything educational. and he wants to learn.

i had the option of putting him into 1st, which i knew the academic material would be more appropriate, even if not challenging, but i was worried about the social aspect. i want him to stay w/ age peers b/c of his social immaturity (he is very quiet, non-assertive, reserved even) and i want him to continue to gain social confidence this year.

this is why i am curious regarding your ds7- how does he cope with older kids in his grade level? how did you cope with it? maybe you have something to offer me that would help me to understand challenges posed with that?

my son prefers older kids but in controlled environment, in learning they seem to include him, but i notice in play- they do not...

sorry to butt into your "saga" ;)~
but i just couldn't get over how you are sort of same situation but WANTing the acceleration i refused....

thanks and much luck to you, i hope the school does do what it has said it will do for your child!

ok, i just realized the beg this thread was when he was ds5!!
i'm so excited.
what you describe of your then ds5 is my child rt now except mine has autism. and also your son is much more advanced at age 5 than mine is now...
which is also one reason i have been opposed to supplementing him, because if i do? he's already ahead-- he will really rocket forward. he is like a thirsty sponge. i just really didn't want to be his 'teacher' and again, as i mentioned my focus all these years has been recovery and now finally all social skills.
so i have many pages to read of this thread but again, i'm so thrilled to find it. it is like an answer to my prayers right now. honestly! thank you

Hi! He's pretty smart. Maybe smarter overall than me, though maybe less driven to learn than I was at the same age. Everything's on a continuum.

That was his kindergarten year, and I recall afterschooling him some that year because he learned absolutely nothing at school. I do remember that the school did some reading and other assessments, but that those didn't generate grade equivalents. The WJ-III Ach he did that year yielded some grade equivalencies from mid-2nd (writing) up through 5th, but I don't put much stock in those numbers based on conversations with his tester. (I'm not saying he was higher than that, just that I don't think they were fully accurate, especially since the test wasn't mapped to our state standards. From what I've seen, the math here is a grade or so behind what I'd expect in a higher-performing state.)

That's the problem we've found. I think that the material here is not very challenging at any level, due to a focus on basic proficiency and fact memorization. His acceleration hasn't resulted in providing challenge for him. I don't think the acceleration is necessarily worthless, just that it hasn't borne fruit yet. Our advocacy has finally made the school system notice our son so that they're working on providing real learning opportunities for the first time. And at least he knows we're trying, and he's not as frustrated as he would have been in his originating grade, where he was one of the younger ones to start with.

That's not a bad goal. Eventually I think you may face a choice between keeping him with kids his age 100% of the time, or looking at least into subject pullouts or some other arrangement for things like math. What I've come to realize is that I want my son to be taught, and I won't stop trying to accomplish that until it happens. With math, there's just no way to have him sit in a classroom with kids his age and be taught properly. Sure, he could teach himself from books or a computer, or I could teach him at home, but this isn't the same as what the other children get: a classroom environment with an engaged teacher, with whom he can interact.

He appears to have had no problems. There was one bigger child who physically bullied him a little, but he stuck up for himself.

I have had more of a problem with some of the parents, though most have either not noticed or been very understanding. It's just very hard not to give offense, since everyone wants to see their child as doing well, and even if it's often unspoken I think parents of bright children tend to think of their children as being top performers, due partly to competitiveness but also to hoping for the best opportuntities for their kids.

For example, there's a child in his third grade class this year who is one of the better math students, and was picked for subject acceleration as well-- but just so DS would have a companion going with him to the other class. (I think this is bad from a couple of aspects, personally-- the other child should get what's appropriate for him, whatever that is, not because of someone else's needs; and if he needed a subject pullout they should have been considering this before.)

This boy was invited to DS's summer birthday party, and his mom came along. I gather that she told my wife that her son had suddenly been picked for a math pullout (almost literally unheard of here before we hit the school), and that she was glad that they had finally noticed he was good at math, but that she didn't know why it was only because some other student needed someone to go with him. My wife made some comments that I think didn't go over perfectly well, revealing that DS was that other child in a clumsy way (she is a sweetheart but can get flustered in the moment), but the point that bothered us later was that this mom shouldn't have been told that that was the reason for her son's pullout. Things didn't improve much when the massive "7" Mylar ballon my wife had bought was unveiled to float above the tables.

You're not alone. There are some recent threads here where this topic has come up. I think it's a perfectly valid choice not to accelerate. Though acceleration can work great, no one can tell in advance whether it will work perfectly for a certain child. Some children don't want acceleration even when they're academically frustrated, and in those cases it's certainly a bad option aside from any developmental concerns.

I think, again, that it's also true that inadequate acceleration doesn't fix the academic mismatch it sets out to resolve. In a perfect situation, with a fully invested school and a child who's a great candidate, accelerated to the proper level and taught at something approaching the right pace, though, I do think that the unavoidable downsides of acceleration are just known evils. Having an advanced child means an academic level / age mismatch with normal children; the only real way to avoid tension in one area or the other would be to find other similar children, but that's not an option for us right now.

I wish I could hug you. I think you're in for a set of very tough choices, unfortunately. I think that your # 1 goal has to be to keep your son's love of learning alive, and to do that you have to try to feed the sponge. You can't ration learning for a fast learner; you'll just wind up with someone who has never been challenged and has an inappropriately low idea of his abilities. He'd only be a stunted high achiever, not a normal one, and that would be a tragedy.

In my son's case, I don't regret advocating for accelerated learning opportunities for him. I regret not advocating forcefully enough, and not supplementing enough at home in the meantime.

I'm a bit late here, but I meant to comment on this. I think there are three things that might be in play here:

1) new concepts: good

2) problem solving practice at a lower level, i.e., not introducing new concepts and not using problems that are genuinely hard for him: totally pointless

3) problem solving practice that doesn't introduce or require new concepts, as such (i.e. he isn't going to have to say "what does that word mean" or be unable to make progress because he doesn't know how to do X) but which is hard for him.

(3) doesn't seem to get a look in in what you write, and I hope you/the school aren't conflating it with (2). There are plenty of maths problems whose statements he could understand now but which are unsolved problems, to give an extreme example. Our experience is that although the ideal would be to introduce new concepts by means of hard problems that motivate them, this is really hard pedagogically: it really needs one-to-one support. We've sometimes managed to have both (1) and (3) in school by having parallel strands of work going on, but I think if you have to choose between getting (1) in school and getting (3), (3) is actually far more beneficial. Either can be provided in afterschooling, and if you have time for an hour or more of maths afterschooling every day, it might not matter which it is, but for us, significant amounts of time afterschooling only arise outside the school term. A few weeks spent without learning new maths concepts, but working on hard problems, is fine (you just get a bit of an itch to learn something new, but you're still getting better at maths in the meantime); a few weeks learning new concepts but never needing to turn your brain on when it comes to applying them is much more stultifying, IMO.

Yeah. The danger is that you get new concepts that way, but only ones that are so easy they didn't need any explanation!

Yes, I do think that's a danger. You can end up with weird gaps (although IME weird gaps are easily filled when you do discover them, so it's an oddity more than a real problem, provided systematically introduced new concepts are coming in somewhere). I forget what it was, but there was some problem type DS had met a few times for which there's a standard solution method he didn't know. Being resourceful, he was managing to get the right answers by some kind of trial and error method, and it was quite a while before anyone noticed that he had a gap.

What we currently have, fwiw, is (3), with a good teacher who has time to explain concepts that come up, but without as far as I can see any systematic plan about what concepts to introduce. I'm thinking to have DS work through a couple of ALEKS courses at home during the holidays this year (as he did last year) to make sure he has a tangible forward step in what he knows; acknowledging all the failings of ALEKS they do work quite well in this role, with the non-routine problem solving and the writing out of solutions being handled elsewhere.

The other thing I do, and have had as a habit for a few years now, is to have text files of the detailed syllabuses for things he might be following, if he were following a syllabus (iyswim: for us this means the maths syllabuses for A level and Pre-U, but ymmv). I annotate it by adding notes next to each phrase in the syllabus e.g. [DONE April 2012] or [SHAKY May 2012] or [DONE except needs more practice in...] as I notice that he can/can't do things listed in the syllabus. I find this quite useful as it lets me have an overview of syllabus areas in which he's got most of what would be expected at that stage (bar a few gaps which I might then fill in) or where he's got hardly anything (in which case I might look out for an afterschooling resource in the area), or where he hasn't learned anything new for a while, etc.

colinsmom- what you posted made sense to me.
my ds5.11 (w/ aut) is at begin stage of the current ds7 discussions saga... so i am learning a lot.
it's like a roadmap drawn out for me!
i am bumping my son from kinder up to 1st gr at science magnet where he will be placed in their gifted program to differentiate and cluster him w/ his academic peers/and agewise peers, all in 1st grade.
i am quite excited. this doesn't happen until jan 2013. and only IF he can get in via lottery...
still it is something to try for!
in meantime after reading this whole "saga" i am going to afterschool him with singapore math and begin to push phonics and LA. (they don't teach phonics in school! but that is how my son taught himself to read... beg age 2, and i firmly believe in phonics myself
anyways thanks to everyone on this entire thread for all the insight and knowledge i now feel armed with- armed and ready for battle with the principal, IEP folks- you name it!
happy wedsnesday.

(I'm sorry I didn't reply to this earlier.)

I'm not conflating them. I think there's a ton of value in letting him work on tough problems, and I have at home when we've done math. I'm even somewhat on board with the idea that he can progress in problem solving ability at this stage without a tutor, just by cutting his teeth on problems that he finds hard. I just don't think that it's the whole picture of math development, and I want him to be taught something at school. I don't think that the sorts of math teachers at this school, from what I've seen, are going to increase his ability to think mathematically by coaching him on problems; I'd settle for their not artificially limiting his progress through new concepts in efforts to keep him closer to his current classmates.

I've thought about just doing AoPS and teaching him at home, but that would involve giving up on getting something out of the school day. I agree with you.

Same here.

Good point. I've been keeping him engaged lately more with computer programming while we decide what to do.

I agree totally with you in general. What I've found with the local school system is that some of the school admins and teachers are so anti-acceleration that they will seize upon any seeming gaps at all in an attempt to deny the need for advancement. At the most recent meeting, for example, DS's third grade teacher (who is not supposed to be taching him math) was present, and said that she had decided to give him two "math minute" speed drills on basic addition and subtraction facts, and that while he had gotten 50/50 on the addition, he had only gotten 40/50 correct on subtraction, so would need some practice that she'd be giving him. (Not. And it turned out that he had simply gotten bored or tired and stopped writing, but had perfect accuracy. I told him to refuse all such drills in the future, at least in that classroom. It's disheartening for him to plod through such stuff, especially when he's bored plodding through long division and other sorts of arithmetic practice too, but at least it's not so insultingly below his level of skills development.)

I think what I might do over the holidays, if this isn't resolved by then, is have him finish fifth grade in Singapore Math, then just start on Age of Problem Solving and ask again to send work with him to school. Partial homeschooling might also be in our near future. A lot depends on what happens in the next 1-2 months with our educational consultant. It's just a rough fit even with the school trying to do their best.

I like your method for tracking your son's progress. Thank you for all your insights; as usual they are very valuable to me.

This thread is parallel to my newer mess on the Certainty among educators thread.

My eldest got to the point where he is now primarily through afterschooling with me. His only true math instruction in school was for two years at a wonderful defunct private school.

I've been thinking back to DS12's experiences. He was held back by the schools. He should have finished algebra 2 last year but didn't. He should have started algebra 1 years ago but didn't. Etc. No amount of evidence or parent-teacher conferences was able to change that.

I realize now that my daughter won't get what she needs unless she gets it at home. The vast majority of schools simply can't or won't see past their own preconceptions and we are truly living in a Dark Age of education in this country. I can't fix it (though I can make contributions through grant app. review). So I'm going to do two things:

1. Continue working with DD on the wonderful puzzles in the Beast Academy books (see end of message).

2. Accelerate her into algebra using the Brown textbook. We'll just backfill anything from 5th or 6th grade math that she needs as we go.


Beast Academy: These are new books from AoPS. They're for younger kids. They teach basic ideas like multiplication and division but go into real depth. They only have books for 3rd grade right now, but the problems are a lot of fun. Examples:

• Here is a list of numbers (one list has 16 numbers). Order them so that adjacent numbers add up to perfect squares.
• Write the following number as the sum of four perfect squares....
• Three congruent rectangles are laid out to make a square. Each has a perimeter of . What's the area of the square?

These problems are great. They're fun puzzles and make my DD think. Even DS12 and I enjoy some of them!

(I have no connection to AoPS apart from using their books and the class DS12 has enrolled in).

Val, I just now bought a used copy of that textbook, and am eager to check it out. I fear DS7 is headed in a direction similar to your son's, if we leave things up to the school system.

A minor update:

Despite the agreement that the third and fourth grade teachers would make appointments to meet with our educational consultant to plan and implement, no appointments were made. DS7 took the end-of-fourth math test and scored 100%, but he has not yet been scheduled to take the end-of-fifth math test yet. NECAPs were taken by DS7, but results will apparently not be in until February 2013, and DS7 hasn't been given the fall math MAP test.

I and my wife sent an email asking about the status of the "math menu" (a group of choices for DS to choose whatever learning activity strikes his fancy) and the other outstanding items. We also asked that he be excused from all third-grade math fact drills (granted in an email response afterward), be excused from fourth-grade math homework to free up time for afterschooling instruction (granted), and that he be free to bring work from home to do during math class (not granted, though his teachers did agree that he could bring work to do during bits of math time in his third grade class). I think, regarding the last request, that the teachers are still reluctant to look like they are throwing in the towel. DS is stuck in class twiddling digits while the class learns about multiplication, place value and averages.

We also asked that one menu item be hard-coded to always represent a math lesson next in his curriculum, whatever that turns out to be, but that request was completely ignored. Our math consultant is now of the opinion that afterschooling/partial homeschooling and sending work to school is the best approach, and also doesn't think that the rest of the work in the third grade class is at his proper level either, though she hasn't been allowed to sit in on any classes yet.

For now DS7 is excited about learning algebra from the book Val mentioned, and I also highly recommend it after having had a chance to go through it. Eventually we plan to do Age of Problem Solving, but for now he is loving this book. When he hits a new topic in passing he always has to know more, so we just do an ad-hoc mini-lesson and move on. For instance, early on there was this question:


He found the answer quickly, I suspect by the numbers just popping into his head, and couldn't easily verbalize how he'd done it. That prompted a short first lesson on factoring polynomials, which he loved, even though it doesn't first appear until a bit later in the book.

Thus there've been some improvements, but he continues to have his time pretty much wasted in school. His first "book report" was to read a biography-- cool, right? He chose "Maus", read it twice and loved it. However, the report itself turned out to be to write ten sentences about the biographee on strips of paper, then put the strips inside a coffee can decorated to look like the person. Math class time is wasted until further notice. He advances in reading on his own time as well.

hi val,
would this BEAST ACADEMY be ok for my ds6?
he wants to learn multiplication, and i don't know how to make it "fun"... he's not ready for actual algebra, he's still doing add/subt but knows mult 0,1,2s haha i knw the easiest of all. but he is asking and doing on his own.
or was.. now he has shut down m ostly but i plan to make learning fun again for him and i agree with you re schools-
and sadly it is reflecting on our entire country,
schools have been in dark ages as you say for so long, of course it all catches up with real world.
many of those kids are adults now.
our kids will be soon enough... at least it seems everyone here is really making an effort to help support their kids learning...
there is hope...

To cc6 (sorry, very much don't want to derail the thread, so please ignore at will): one game that worked for our DD was "multiplication war"; you just play regular "war" (i.e., dividing a regular card deck in two and each player putting down one card at a time; higher card wins) with this variation: each player puts down two cards at a time; the player with the higher multiplication product wins the round (you can do face cards = 10 points, or whatever). This is a great idea that came from my DD's wonderful Montessori teachers (as opposed to her awful ones), but of course you can see it can also be used for all of the basic math facts with just a few changes. I hope that helps; I'm not sure what to suggest re the shutting down. Best of luck!!

thx dbat, that's a great idea!
yest i got out the disney monopoly version and he loved it.
he is a real estate mogul lol
but i thought what a great way to work with 'money' etc
also yah i sorta highjacked the thread rt there.
sorry.
re beast academy- no my son not quite ready, the site she gave has an easy assessment test to take, it was very helpful and i will hold off on beast route...

luc-- how is your child doing almost a month later?
does he continue to feel his time is wasted at school?
how is he doing psychologically?
all the best to you guys

Hi, cc6! Sorry I didn't see this before, and I wish you all the best too. DS isn't learning a lot right now at school. Our educational consultant is meeting with his teachers for the first time without us on Friday, and hopefully some differentiation will begin to flow from that.

I also got a nice call from the principal today, who asked for permission to test DS with a screening program used in the middle school here. The program is called Star Math by Renaissance Learning, and seems to be a quick 15-20 online assessment tool. He said that the results of that would be looked at by the middle school math coordinator and one other person, and that possibly DS might go to the middle school at least one day a week for a gifted pull-out they have there for advanced math students.

At this point I'm keeping my fingers crossed either for the go-ahead for us to partially homeschool him with support at school, or for him to get a mentor for math. I am also hoping that he gets some serious differentiation, at least, for language arts work.

My husband thinks the kids are supposed to learn at school. I don't think they're supposed to learn anything much at school, just have fun and behave. If they are supposed to learn anything at school I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that- quit teaching them at home until their school catches up? It's nice seeing at least your saga's similar. It really does make me feel better that y'all are here.