I always end up reading the "great schools" reviews. It seems that private gifted schools, while nurturing for some, sometimes have a good concept but lack the experience and organization to keep on top of things (leaving some of the best & brightest behind). Some private schools seem to put more effort into recruiting students than engaging them.
Public Gifted Charter schools have a bit of a reputation of wanting bright kids they can push into high achieving, rather than gifted kids necessarily, especially 2e. I don't know, personally it sounds like at least it's a culture where kids think, "you go to school to learn". It seems like they should be able to get funding for special needs services, but if I were the guessing type I'd say they wouldn't get those funds and they would risk loosing everything by trying to make accommodations. Cynical, much?
I'm not the one who gets to decide. I keep reading that the best answer is to block schedule classes, accelerate, remediate, and subject accelerate right in your local public school. Turn "no child left behind" into "all children can learn".
The broader definition of giftedness -- encompassing characteristics such as reasoning, energy level, attention span, moral sensitivity and "excitability" -- has gained ground with some local parents at the same time that public schools generally have pulled back on special offerings for gifted children.
This part is why (like I've read here) if they ask me what class I want my kid in I'll ask "which teacher wants him"? Because to an extent the teacher's opinion of the kid matters more than the content of the lessons.
"We're not talking about high ability across the board," said Anne Beneventi, a founder and current co-director of Helios New School.
Helios organizes children loosely by age but forms ability groupings in subjects like math, where some students are working far above grade level.
See?! Subject acceleration. It doesn't take a private school to be able to do that except for by the legislation made just to be a hinder on kids from learning.
"They often have asynchronous development and sometimes they can have a learning disability. What our kids have in common is they need more depth and complexity and need it connected to something (like a project or theme) instead of it being just based on skills."
Which your regular old public school can do more if they were allowed to group by ability rather than birthdate. (according to ability using the MAP test scores, from what I've read here). It's the red tape that's not letting the kids get taught.
