Our local elementary school's 5th grade class has about 25-30% of its students in the gifted program....
I am wondering how do you know this? Is it listed somewhere on the internet or something? I'd be curious as to what our school's number is...
IN the case of my own district, YES-- the percentage of students identified in each school in our district is publicly available information. Right there on the website.
Just like Nutmeg's situation, our "GT" is pretty much a network of cronyism, TigerParenting, and the small-town/big-fish phenomena inherent in a community like mine.
Similar numbers of identified students, too. Now, while the local demographics (many faculty brats, and a terminal-degree rate hovering near 15-20% for the ADULTS in town) support the notion that the local IQ is probably around 115, that's a LONG way from saying that 30% of the students in our district are IQ>130, I think. Statistically, this is just an impossibility.
In addition, there is STAUNCH denial that there is any difference whatsoever between a student at the 90th percentile and one like my DD (and other kids on the forum here) who are at the 99th+.
Which brings us to "we don't need to do anything more. ALL of our classes are rigorous and challenging... because we have 30% GT students in our school."
Uhhhh-- but-- er-- oh, just-- nevermind. <--- which is how we got to where WE are. Homeschooling/virtual schooling and 3+ accelerations later.
Actual school administrators in town recognize this problem for what it is-- entitled helicopteritis-- and privately admit that the situation makes it virtually IMPOSSIBLE for them to do right by HG+ children like my DD. They see a handful of them-- perhaps one every five to eight years-- and quickly send them packing either to homeschool or accelerate the heck out of them and push them into the local community college ASAP.
Local HS counselor all but admitted that he's encountered exactly THREE PG students in-district in thirty years (and he's probably seen ~30K students in those years, so that math seems about right to me). My DD is one of the three. So they
know that what they are doing isn't right for those few kids, and they feel bad about it-- but they also know that they are skating on thin ice with a population much like the one referred to in Ashley's post. That population of parents who are 85th-95th percentile and 'striving' is a deadly force to be reckoned with, unfortunately. They want "the label" for their own kids, and frankly don't even stop to think about what it does for kids like ours. If they did, I'm not so sure that it would matter, anyway.
But I'm pretty bitter over this. I've paid a TON of property taxes into a system that is useless to us.
