I will of course work to have my youngest special needs child mainstreamed as far as possible, but I am perfectly aware that among those regular healthy kids, there will have to be those who could turn out to be the super qualified neurosurgeons my child needs to maintain his quality of life, and I would not want to disrupt their education in any significant way,
At what point would you consider the disruption to their education to be significant?
Well, my personal frame of reference so far is a child with a major physical disability and (so far) an expressive language delay, but clearly bright and with an easygoing personality, so if I felt that a high achiever or even a gifted program was the right fit for his academic needs, I'd expect a program to work around the minor inconveniences a wheelchair or a walker and the need to catheterise himself at fixed initials would bring. Some of these children with language delays develop little speech, necessitating an iPad, some slurred speech, necessitating more time for oral contributions, which might make quick thinking and quick talking gifties impatient. I would not consider that a significant disruption, other parents might.
Locally, there has been a huge debate about a child with Down syndrome whose mother insisted on mainstreaming him into a high achiever program in middle school because that was where most kids from his high SES elementary school happened to be moving on to. The kid would throw backpacks and crayons, lie down on the floor and snore when not adequately stimulated, and was reading and doing maths at about a first grade level, which necessitated an aide in the classroom (30 kids) teaching him a differentiated curriculum at all times, except for the times when the aide wouldn't be there (roughly for one period a day) when the middle school classroom teacher would have been expected to come up with something on their own. The school refused, saying they were not adequately resourced and the proposed plan would be too disruptive. The debate went all the way up to prime time national television. I think in this instance the school was right.
In DS8s classroom, there is a kid with (diagnosed, but unacknowledged and certainly untreated) ADHD and most likely unacknowledged dyslexia, who has turned into the class bully. He was almost expelled in first grade for vandalizing school bathrooms, is disruptive every single day and influences other kids as well so that the whole class now has a reputation as a troublemaker class and occasionally shares punishments, even though there is clearly one ringleader and a few followers who manage to disrupt the whole classroom. DS happened to have to do a science presentation with him because on the day the teams were formed, DS was away sick and this kid was away doing detention. DS freaked out every morning while they had to do the work saying F never focused, never did a thing, making him prepare almost everything (poster, cue cards) himself, and when the were supposed to practice, he'd do things like throw down the cue cards, saying they had broken their legs or needed to go to sleep, when actually reading, reading so softly or badly that DS couldn't tell where he was at on the cards, or just run away saying he'd rather do maths now. Because of many disruptions, their presentation was moved up 6 (that's six) times, they were the last to finally be able to hold it to the class, and DS says no one could understand a word of what he read.
DS was a mess the whole time. They got a B for the teamwork part, DS got a B for his presentation part, kid F got a D, so DS got a B overall out of it, the other kid a C. I am sure DS learned a lot about how hard it is to work with a kid with ADHD, and I am sure the other kid could raise his science grade, but I am sure DS learned next to nothing either in academic content or in actual teamwork management or presentation skills. If I didn't need that teachers goodwill for subject acceleration and hadn't been in and out of hospital with my special needs youngest, I might have interfered. (All the work was to be done in school, no parent input, so we could nt have interfered without raising a major fuss).
That's what I think is unreasonably disruptive to the little learning even an HG+ kid can expect in an elementary classroom.
DS now says he wishes the boy were removed from the class. I am not that far, but think the parents must be forced out of denial.
