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.
