Dear Master:
So sorry to hear your meeting was discouraging. For what it's worth, I've found the best summarized blow-by-blow account of a mother's ongoing negotiations with schools over her child's whole educational career in the beginning of DEVELOPING MATH TALENT. You might find some comfort (or not!) and ideas there. In essence, she concludes that advocacy with the public system is a time-consuming, effort intensive job that continues through all twelve years of the conventional curriculum. For this reason, we are trying to have a home-school system set up as a fall-back.
I'd like to mention again the rich resource base the Davidson institute offers in its Davidson Gifted Database pages - I know there are specialized articles there on dealing with handwriting and suchlike, if you haven't read them already.
When I think this process through, and try to see the public school administration's side, I assume about 80% of their parents believe their children to be gifted and deserving of 'special' attention. For this reason, I've concluded it's essential to have third party data (test scores) and analysis (articles and research) to make the case I want to present. With this approach I'm hopeful we can maintain the dialog on the plane of what is best for the child and consistent with the school's mission, rather than the plane of what we think versus what they think.
I have my fingers crossed that this approach will get us where we want to be.
Hang in there!
