The woman I spoke with was actually the Vice-Pricipal of 4th and 5th grade, so I could go to the Pricipal of 4-8 grade.
This is an excellent idea. A friend of mine used this approach:
Write down and circulate all the good ideas,
pretend you didn't hear the bad ideas and keep going higher up the chain of command until you get what your child needs.
BTW - it seems to me that what your child needs right now isn't nescessarily a 'math subject acceleration' but perhaps a whole grade skip (the kids were acting up in PE for Pete's Sake!) but surely a WISC IV, either from the school or privately.
IF my daughter COULD in fact do the 5th grade book in her 4th grade class, I would be satisfied, but I don't know if this is really going to happen. At least she was placed with a great math teacher, according to the vp...
I dont' know why you would put up with your DD being given a 5th grade math book all by herself in the 4th grade room. Would they let you partial homeschool her and do the math at home with you? If not, then why would they be willing for her to be by herself with no peers and barely a teacher in the 4th grade math room?
She told me that she "hears me," cause her son could make change for a $5 in kindergarten...SOOOO? Aren't we talking about MY kid...who received an acheivement score of 99.6% overall on the WJ?
Here's a stragagy you might find helpful. It's the
1-2-3:
1: smile and give lots of postive body language
2: Act like something terrific is happening - 'so you know what it's like to have a child who doesn't learn in one subject in school!'
3: Add the twist, "I'm so glad that you son was able to be challenged overall and things turned out well for him. Can you imagine if all of his school interactions were like that, in every subject, every single year? It's so great when the other kids catch up, just a matter of waiting, but can you imagine what it would have been like for your son if the other kids never caught up?"
or "It's great that kids from this school have gone to Harvard. But even amoung kids who have the ability to go to Harvard, there is a tremendous diversity of what the child needs at any particular stage. I'm really glad that the child was able to be successful through out their years, and go to Harvard, but I know other children who were just as smart but decided that it was better to fit in and pretend to be just like everyone else than to go to Harvard. And I know kids who just gave up on school and did poorly, even though they were smart enough to go to a school like Harvard. I am concerned that my daughter might be on a different path, and I believe that (insert intervention X here) might really make a key difference.
Then you follow up with:Thanks so much for your time and sharing so many stories with me, and I can see that you are very interested in helping my child grow and develop. I feel that without an IQ test such as the WISC that we do not have all the tools availible to build a good future for my DD, so I will be contacting the Principle to request a WISC test as the next step.
That way you haven't burned any bridges with VP, and can move onto the P, asking for 'more data.' I would email it to both and yourself to save a copy, and print it out and snail mail to both and keep on copy for your 'timeline.'
Your daughter might well be able to recieve proper Math instruction in the regular classroom with the very good teacher. But you really need to be able to relax and say 'she is one amoung several similars' or 'no, she has special educational needs, and need interventions that haven't been tried before.' At this point you just don't know as much as you need to know.
If it helps, I see WJ as a measure of where she is now, and WISC as more of a 'crystal ball' to see how different she is in her thinking from her peers. As you know, there is no such thing as a crystal ball, which explains why all these tests don't always provide all the answers, but, very often, they really help everyone understand that child that is in front of them.
And if that doesn't work, sit her down for an SAT and start waving those scores around! When my son was in 4th grade, I happened to mention that I was planning for him to thak the SAT in 7th grade. My very lovely elementary school principle almost fainted! I was sad that she hadn't even heard of the talent search programs. I think that so often the gifted parents and even excellent school folks are just living to different worlds.
Smiles,
Grinity
