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    Joined: Jul 2018
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    Kale77 Offline OP
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    Hi, all � I�m brand new here, and, seriously, I am sorry to start off in a minor key, but am frustrated today because I can�t seem to get my daughters what they need.

    Our kids (DD10, DD7) attend a small rural public school district of around 200 students, K-12. The teachers are generally nice and some of them are good but they all have limited resources. There is no gifted program here, one class per grade, and little in the way of individuation or enrichment. My husband and I have fulfilling, but low-paying, careers. Moving is not an option.

    My DD10 has been pinging out at the top of the assessments since she entered school. She�s in the 99th percentile on the state tests, in both language and math. Her intramural assessment never changes over the course of the school year because at the beginning of the year she is already achieving the highest levels they measure, 3 grade levels ahead. Early on I asked what the school could do to challenge her, and was told she could help the other students. We considered asking to skip a grade but I don�t think it would be any more stimulating and she�s got a good group of friends in her own grade.

    We found her a tutor who meets with her every other week, to study ancient Greek and ancient history. She�s besotted with Herodotus. This has been wonderful, and she looks forward to it, but it�s also not enough.

    I don�t think we can home school. My husband and I both work extremely long hours and just don�t have the bandwidth to give her what she needs at home full time, academically or socially. We are in a sparsely-populated area.

    This summer, I started exploring online enrichment options for her and encountered CTY, TIP, etc. She tested into CTY, but I can�t afford the $800 tuition for the class she wants to take. We�d certainly qualify for financial aid, but I was told this morning there is no more CTY financial aid for her session available for 2019. (?!) (Aside: It would have been nice for CTY to post that info on the financial aid application and save people with limited resources a lot of expense, time, and disappointment.) Even if I could scrape it together, I don�t have any sense of the value of the class, and can�t see risking a huge chunk of limited budget on it when that money might be better used elsewhere.

    I don�t know if she would qualify for DYS (I�m just getting my bearings with all these programs) but it looks like the IQ testing alone, at several hundred to thousands of dollars, is a really high stakes option for a family with limited means. After reading through some threads here I�ve written to the closest university to see if they offer low-cost testing, and am waiting for a final answer, but the initial response was discouraging.

    I also have DD7 who has dyslexia (privately, expensively diagnosed, because it was obvious something was wrong, and the public school wouldn�t test her). She has been denied accommodations at school, and has been denied a 504 plan, because she�s achieving at grade level. According to the evaluation, she is highly intelligent and should be soaring through school, but she struggles to keep up. I see glaring gaps in her understanding, but as long as she is scraping by at the low end of grade level, she is not guaranteed anything by our public school system. Because of this, I have an online tutor for her, and pay for it. Again, it�s not enough.

    I feel terrible that I can�t seem to meet either of my kids� needs. I�m angry that the school can�t seem to, either. And I�m also sad that the whole rural system seems so broken. Add to the above that 1) We are paying tuition and providing transportation for our kids to attend this public school, because it is better than our home public school district, where smart kids and those from �outside� are systematically bullied and, 2) despite a 6 million dollar budget for 200 kids, the district my kids are attending is financially unstable. They had to eliminate 3 teacher positions this year. Enrollment is shrinking, and the school has infrastructure problems; its future seems economically unsustainable. At which point, what? Drive to an even worse school even further away?

    The really depressing part is, my kids are the lucky ones. My husband and I are both well-educated (thanks in part to functional public school systems), and have intellectual and social, if not financial, resources. The children who are really losing are rural kids who don�t fit the norm, and don�t have advocates.

    So, hive of wisdom and hard-won experience, I have some questions.

    My goal, for DD10, is to keep her intellectual curiosity alive, allow her to develop to her capacity, and prevent her from becoming bored or complacent in the small pond (puddle!) she swims in. For DD7, it�s more urgent and clear cut: I need to keep her from sinking.

    1) What would you do if you were me? Are there quality programs for kids like DD10 that don�t cost an arm and a leg? What about DD7?

    2a) Has anyone had success getting public schools to pay for online courses?

    2b) Also, any advice on getting accommodations for bright dyslexic kids who manage to achieve at grade level?

    3) Has anyone here spearheaded the creation of a gifted program in a small rural district? Do you think there is any real hope for that in a district that has financial problems, in a state where nothing is mandated for gifted education? (New York)

    4) Any other ideas? Should we consider starting a charter school?!? The thought of starting something controversial, from scratch, makes me exhausted, but then I think of what I could do with the $30,000 of public money being spent on each of my children every year, and the exhaustion turns to nausea.

    Thanks, everyone. I look forward to hearing any thoughts or ideas. And I promise to post brighter things in the future!

    Kale77

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    1) DYS does not require IQ testing anymore. Talent search tests (which are much cheaper) can be used. If DD10 qualifies, joining DYS would be very helpful because your family consultant can help with resources. Some free resources that might be helpful are here: https://www.davidsongifted.org/Young-Scholars/Free-Guidebooks

    I can’t help with the rest of your questions, but you might want to search the archive.

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    Welcome! smile

    You are in good company here. Unfortunately the forums tend to be quieter during the USA summer months, so there may not be as many responses.

    Originally Posted by Kale77
    ... DD7 who has dyslexia... denied accommodations at school, and has been denied a 504 plan, because she’s achieving at grade level...
    For DD7, it’s more urgent and clear cut: I need to keep her from sinking...
    2b) Also, any advice on getting accommodations for bright dyslexic kids who manage to achieve at grade level?
    You might want to check out Wrightslaw website.

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    Please check outschool.com, They have shorter cheaper courseworks in all subject areas.

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    I am one of the parents who could never figure out how to make the school system work for my child!
    But, I have after schooled my child extensively and have come across some very useful resources.
    These days, it is easier to provide the highest levels of enrichment, learning etc because of the internet. I suggest that you check out AOPS online classes, Alcumus, Udemy courses (they have multiple sales every year and are affordable), MOOC online courses, programming resources for Java and Python etc. You can cobble together enough resources to prevent your kids from being bored and also to experience being challenged academically.
    You might have an easier time if you offered to run afterschool enrichment clubs in the rural school - you can offer to run Mathcounts teams, robotics clubs, lego clubs, chess clubs, math circles etc. There may even be other families that would be interested in pitching in for these type of activities.
    Apart from these resources, there are many excellent video based courses from Coursera that are very convenient to watch and learn from. They are also reasonably priced if you shop around for them online.
    Do your kids learn a musical instrument? You might even find a good teacher in a neighboring college town or city if you are living in an area with no one to teach music. Learning musical instruments challenge kids in ways that school academics do not. They also learn the associated music theory, improvisation, composition techniques etc that keep the brain engaged and challenged. And there is daily practice requirement as well that keeps them learning all the time.
    Assign your kids appropriately challenging reading content in addition to what they are reading. Assigned reading is as important as reading for pleasure. If the rural area has no libraries, you could try to use a kindle or audible for downloading the books.
    Good luck.

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    Kale77 Offline OP
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    Huge thanks for all these good leads. I'm very happy to have found this group and I'm grateful to you all for sharing your experience. I've checked out outschool and DD10 is going to pick out a class today - thanks for that, ss62. I also ordered the advocacy book from Wrightslaw so I can be more help with DD7 at school, and am reading through the online resources from DYS. Thanks! Today, I'll check out ashley's suggestions.

    Flyingmouse, thanks for clarifying the testing for DYS. Any suggestions on which achievement test to focus on? DD10 is stronger in verbal than math.

    Thanks again everyone.

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    Kai Offline
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    There are two books that might be helpful in this situation. But both require cooperation from the school/teachers.

    Teaching Gifted Kids in Today's Classroom (Winebrenner) has suggestions for how to differentiate instruction for gifted children in the regular classroom in a way that can potentially include all children. I am not a classroom teacher, but the suggestions seem pretty doable to me, though I think it would probably take a teacher a few years to get up to speed on all of them.

    The other is Beyond Gifted Education (Peters, Matthews, McBee, and McCoach). This one is about how to organize schools so that all (well, most) children are placed so that they have access to intellectual peers. The fact that your school has all grades in one building aligns well with this method, but the small number of students will present challenges (possibly insurmountable ones).

    I am going to be honest here. Institutions move very slowly. It is unlikely that you will be able to get any sort of program going in time for your children to benefit from it. At best, you're probably going to have to work year to year by feeding the teachers materials for your kids to use independently.

    Someone else here can chime in on the 504 situation, but I think it's possible that what the school is doing is illegal (civil rights violation). A 504 plan will specify accommodations--like extra time for assignments/tests, permission to use a keyboard, the ability to have questions read aloud, etc. An IEP is what will specify any extra instruction, and this is what they can legally deny if your child is on grade level.

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    Others have already made good suggestions, more specific than I could give!

    I do want to chime in on one point. You mention that your DD10 is stronger in verbal than math, however, you had also mentioned initially that she tested 3 grades ahead -- was that in math too? If so, I would strongly recommend that you keep some focus on the math side of her education, even if it's not her primary area of strength, because strength in math will keep open (and indeed open up) additional doorways. Will she be going into 6th grade in the fall? I don't know about NY state math curriculum specifically, but generally in schools, and now with Common Core math curriculum in particular, 6th grade tends to be *the critical year* to get a kid placed into an accelerated (or in Common Core, "compacted") math track; with Common Core especially, the math class/track your kid is in in 6th grade tends to determine what math classes and science classes your kid will be able to take in high school, (which then impacts how strong of an applicant she is for college).

    This being your oldest kid, and in a small district that may only offer one-track-for-all in math so you don't see anyone "ahead", I expect it sounds ridiculously early to worry about math vis-a-vis college for a 6th grader, but that's why I'm mentioning this: the level of math studied in 6th grade math really matters, IF you're going to be sticking with the public school system! (If you're going to home-school, after-school, summer school, go to private school, or do dual enrollment in college classes during high school, or other not-sticking-entirely-to-standard-public-school approaches, then there are more ways to solve issues of suitable math placement later in a kid's school career.) Getting onto at least a +1 math track merely puts your kid on a par with fairly good students in strong school districts -- though still behind the +2 (or more) math track that really good math students in strong school districts, or international kids -- will be at when applying to college.

    So if feasible at your school, and if your DD10 seems ready, I'd suggest pushing for single subject acceleration to have her take math with a higher grade next year.

    It's not that math is more important than humanities, or necessarily even the acceleration your DD will immediately most appreciate -- rather, it's where getting acceleration matters most for the public school curriculum. English and social studies aren't taught in as sequential of a fashion, and differentiation by the teacher and enrichment at home are (for most people) a lot more manageable -- e.g., the exciting thing you have going with the Greek and ancient history!

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    You may want to check out nurturedbylove.ca for inspiration. A mom raising 4 gifted kids in the middle of nowhere in British Columbia, somehow making it work with a combination of brick and mortar schooling, homeschooling, unschooling and lots of music practice.

    Disclaimer: the mom is a full time mom/unschooler/homeschooler (dad works as the only physician around) and of course it’s a different country, so you may not find the situation comparable to yours at all, or only a little bit. But it’s a fascinating blog by a fascinating person, worth checking it out at least.


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