Thanks for responding, I had a meeting with the coordinator and the school will not grade accelerate him unless he can hit 98% across the board on the achievement testing for first grade. So he would have to start in K and be tested and hit 98%+ on the first grade curriculum, plus IQ testing and then a team would decide if he could skip. My concern is if he does qualify for this then it means he is 98% proficient in the first grade curriculum already, so why would he need to be in first grade if he knew 98% of the curriculum? Also maybe I am wrong but don’t a lot of kids have uneven profiles at that young of an age anyway. So a very gifted child could ceiling out the test in one subject and be just under in another and not qualify for a skip, but might still benefit by being in a higher grade. He is pretty even but there are so many variables.
We are going to start him in very half day K this fall and see what happens. There are other younger siblings of kids in the program some go to other schools and some go there. Some of the older boys in the program seem a lot like him. Most of them went somewhere else for early elementary or several other places before going to the HG program. Maybe I just have not gotten to know the other families well enough?
They are going to ability group the kids that assess higher with him in the fall. It sounds like the gifted coordinator really has good intentions but is somewhat limited by the school. It also sounds like DS will have some time with the coordinator in reading and math in the fall. Then if we want to subject him to all the testing we can see about skipping mid-year although it sounds unlikely.
There is still a part of me that is concerned he will not test well and they will say he is not gifted, and give him nothing, and he will hate it. I am interested to see what other people think of this plan. Any major problems or anything I am missing that I should ask for? What are other people doing for Kindergarten next year?
