Allow me to vent a bit, but as a so-called professional in her field, she should know the answer to these questions....Sorry, but I can't imagine a special ed. teacher saying something this rude about a kid with an IQ of 65. Americans are getting good at discriminating against intelligent people. <end of rant>
Three cheers, Val. The eloquence of your rant is sublime!! Can I rent you out sometime to rant at my DS's school for me, if the occasion should occur???
I think that the points that you make are terrific, Val. It boils down to the discriminatory belief that all gifted kids will be just fine on their own, and that they can make their way without any additional help from anyone. I would be tempted to buy a copy of Genius Denied or Karen Rogers' book for the teacher, if you think she would spend time reading it. Remember, that if a teacher teaches for 30 years, with 28 kids per years, she might never see a kid with IQ<= 145. (28x30=840, and kids with high IQs are 1 out of 10,000). So your child's teacher and the school may not have ever seen a child who needs more educational resources than the typical kid.
That is where the need for testing begins. After the testing, you have to educate the educators on what the test results mean. Then you have to sit on their doorstep and refuse to go away until they do something about the test results.
As a parent, stop and think about what the perfect school would give to your child. Think of that as the utopia of education... unrealistic here is our underfunded world. But it is a good exercise to see how far away your child's current education is from that utopia. If it is not too terrible far off, i.e. if your child's school is open to subject accelerations or other enrichments, then learn to maneuver quietly in the system to get what you want. If it is very far off from what you child needs, then you are going to have to roll up your sleeves, dig around for what you school is required to provide, and start having a lot of friendly chats with the school.
But you need to know 1) what you want for your child, and 2) what the school will provide for you child. And until you get some data that shows the school that your child is different from most of the ordinary kids that play on their swings and read their books, those conversations will not happen easily.
