Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy WWYD - SSA test prep or wait another year?

Follow up on this. He took the test. He missed 3 problems and ended up with 94%.

He failed because he didn't get a perfect score. We tried to appeal it and they said he wasn't close enough to perfect to even appeal it.

I did prep him... he came to hate the practice tests we did. We did them every week for a month or two on Saturdays. He always missed one problem, though not the same one, on the same test week after week. Really he was learning to concentrate and take a test, not learning to do math.

Now I have to tell him he didn't pass and he doesn't get to take 2nd grade math next year. I'm nervous about how to handle it, but he's pretty resilient.

I think he could probably pass the 2nd grade test for next year today (he only has to get 80% to pass it). However, in order to make sure, we will have to spend a month or so next spring preparing for it again too. Already kind of dreading that!

Do I regret trying? A little. But I think we had to. He's so frustrated with the pace of math in school.

One of the things he really didn't do great on was reading clocks. You know, I try to get him to study these topic type things covered in the early grades and it can be a struggle to encourage him to master the breadth of the material when he just wants to zoom ahead deeper on certain topics. He has to think to read a clock, but is fairly quick at figuring out prime numbers right now. So disorienting for me!

He's going to do a class at an after school math academy. I'm hoping this will keep him distracted from how much he dislikes school math. Hoping for the best!