I'm getting ready to request formal testing from the school for my daughter. It still makes me uncomfortable to write this, but I've always known that she's gifted and I never saw the need for testing until her frustration with school increased this year. When i began researching how to help her Ii realized my mistake.
DD is enrolled in a charter school that considers "leveled" reading and math classes gifted accommodation. However, I just learned that the local school district has a gifted program for elementary and middle school and one of the participating schools is very near us. She only has one more year in elementary school and socially she is very connected to the school so I'm conflicted between changing schools or pursuing accommodation. What I would like to do is keep our options open since it's the end of the year. Ideally I would like to request the testing that the public school district uses for placement, provide the school with the state literature on accommodating gifted students, and see how much the school will work with us. I don't want to be confrontational by directing them to this information but I already asked about how they handle gifted testing and accommodation and the special ed director basically said they level classes and there has never been any need for anything else. I know from DD's disdain for the month spent reading "Sarah, Plain and Tall," this is not truly the case. IMHO, she should have been allowed to read the book at her own pace and when she finished it in one day been given a more challenging historical fiction book from the same time period, or at the very least assignments with more depth regarding the book.
We don't have a lot of testing currently but the outdated L.A. testing I remember placed her in the first percentile in the state, and the grade levels were in the upper middle school range for reading and spelling. She testing several grades above in math back in 2nd grade so they skipped her to grade 4 math for 3rd grade, but then that year they changed the state standards so it was messy. She is at the end of 4th grade now.
My goal is for her to be challenged in language arts, specifically reading material and depth of writing, and for her to work at an accelerated pace in math rather than skipping grade levels again. Last time she managed keep up but during the summer I found holes, and she masks these well enough that it's posed a problem.
I'm also unsure about how to handle this because she also has ADHD so I think she's underestimated. I worry a little about being taken seriously, but I tend to be like that so it might just be me. That's not to say that her teachers don't suspect how bright she is - I mentioned in another post that her teacher really tries, but the school and teachers don't have any training on how to help her so they are trying to keep her busy, the goal isn't to keep her engaged in learning. I guess I feel pressure to prove that she is gifted before actually testing in order to justify my request of the school.
I felt so much better about where to go next a couple of weeks ago! After approaching the school I'm just feeling insecure about whether my plan is the right approach. Advice here always seems to clarify everything for me, so thank you in advance!
