1. What's the gifted program like in your district? ...
@binip may know these answers, or maybe not, but I'm familiar with the gifted program she's considering and it's like this:
Kids are in gifted classrooms all day every day....
Critical thinking is a keystone of the program and they do work hard on critical thinking as a theme across all areas.
It's a reasonable program in most respects.
Thanks! Yes, this is pretty much what I've seen. The main thing that I like is that they challenge the kids more--that's the critical thinking aspect, with higher expectations. They also do a lot of enrichment and link kids to camps, after-school activities, etc. To be honest, the whole district does, but this school in particular is great. The school-wide focus is on literacy and writing this year and you can tell.
It's good because it's so reasonable... almost as if it was designed by someone who knew what they were doing.
Regarding the other posts, thank you! Some answers:
To me it always seems a bit like saying to a kid "you run too fast so we will tie your legs together to slow you down" rather than "you run very fast so we will look for people who can also run very fast for you to run against".
If only my IQ had dropped when I learned my first foreign language, or my second, or if bilingual children around the world were somehow being slowed down by being dumped into English and French immersion international baccalaureate programs by their affluent, multi-lingual parents, I could see this.
For me, immersion education is a window into two worlds. It's like getting to try a triathlon instead of a marathon. Or rather, running a marathon in the mountains rather than on flat land (they say the Seattle, Denver and San Francisco marathons are among the hardest "conventional" marathons in the world... mainly because they are hilly or high altitude).
Runners in Kenya train in the mountains where oxygen is harder to come by and then kick butt in the lowlands. To me, that's what immersion is like.
Not tying their legs together, not at all. Learning a language frees your mind from the constraint of mono-lingualism. Sure that might slow computation time, but it's far more freeing and you learn to compensate.
am also in the process of choosing which school (middle) to accept for DS & DD. Given their age (10), I am giving them the final say but have provided all the pros and cons as well as encouraged them to compile their own pros and cons. Too bad there isn't a crystal ball so we can see where they will be happiest!
Oh, middle school, yet more dilemmas! I wish you the best. Do they have to go to the same one?
I guess the thing that I have noticed and seems to be common across children on this board is not the area of talent as much as the obsessiveness.
My older daughter is a perfectionist and does obsess, but only over socially acceptable things. She is emotionally obsessive, not intellectually obsessive, although it does bother her a LOT when she gets an answer wrong at school. So far she has gotten one computation problem wrong (after DST switch, natch) and one explanation wrong (you know the kind... Math Expressions, not a bad curriculum, but sometimes kids who know the concept a little too well can't explain why it is true).
Still, your DD sounds more "gifted" than mine. My little one, well, definitely not verbally gifted (unless you count her sense of humor and knowing two languages, but again keep in mind she didn't teach herself, it was immersion), though both my daughters have been said by their music teacher to be extremely talented. She's really the only one to say anything, though. But then, again, we live in an area where we know a lot of very high performing children.
Why do you want to leave the first school? If staying is a possibility, how open is the school to acceleration?
The school houses part of the district gifted program, so if she does get in, there's no move, and I believe she'll be interested because she likes to be in the top groups. I just thought she'd benefit from immersion, but as this thread goes on, and as I talk to her, the more I think she'd be better off with extra-curriculars and staying where she is.
Can you get the test scores sooner? It seems reasonable to ask about them as a way of making an informed decision.
I
can certainly
ask, but I believe there is about a -.000000000001% chance of them saying yes.
It says on the website that scores will not be released until a certain date, why they won't be released, and then in bold letters,
do not contact the district regarding your child's test scores.
Of course there will be attrition, but they want to prevent extra attrition from strivers who will move from program to program. I think this is reasonable. Their thought is, probably about 10% of these children will be 145+ because it's a special pool of kids: striving, aware parents in a high-income, high-achievement area. So they will lose a ton of kids to that program if they don't ask you to make that decision before accepting. Sure they might lose profoundly gifted little ones...
The gifted school was one of the most expensive private schools in the country (top 10% tuition), and there was no public gifted education available to DD in her grade
Oh, ugh. I'm sorry. These are both public schools I'm looking at.
