DH thinks that while some gifted kids do better with more challenging material, she won't; that her behaviors will not improve with a different educational approach or environment. He thinks she has to be able to do all the work put in front of her to the best of her ability, without complaining, or arguing with the teacher, and have good classroom behavior before we can consider giving her more challenging work. He thinks I put too much emphasis on the giftedness and not enough on the deficits.
My DS has a slightly bigger gap in processing speed and verbal. He also has an LD dx (written expression).
We ran into several teachers that refused to differentiate until he behaved and/or academically looked what they thought a gifted kid should look like (ie more high achieving). It was painful for everyone involved. In grade 4 we moved him into an HG(ish)+ program where he's thriving (currently in gr 5). I don't have sources at the moment but most of the research I did at the time seemed to agree on focusing on their strengths while accommodating for weaknesses. In our DS's case that was definitely the case. Our first PTI at the new school we thought she must have been talking about a different kid - it was a shocking contrast to his previous 5 years of interviews.
We were at the point where we were considering anything and everything. We were looking into private schools and homeschooling if he wasn't accepted into this program or if it didn't end up being a good match. We still might in future years. The one thing I have gained in this adventure is more trust in my gut and less tolerance of waiting and hoping things will improve. I will add that DH was not supportive at first of the move but within 3 weeks he was 100% on board. Even my mom who is a retired teacher who strongly believes in the do what you're told philosophy has become the biggest supporter of our decision. She visited a few months in and made several comments about how he was a whole new kid (this is quite a shocking turnaround from her previous stance on gifted kids/education).
Obviously, that is one kid and YMMV. I would also suggest "The Explosive Child". It really helped us on our adventure with DS.
