I thought others might be interested in our story. I have a profoundly gifted child in the 6th grade in public school.He is particularly gifted in math, but does superlatively in everything else. After several years of trying to get the system to accommodate his needs, the district math supervisor just told me to stop calling him, "We can't provide an individual education for every student." Actually, he's right. In our state the law does not require any accommodation or special instruction for the gifted. Several years of "enrichment" haven't done much for him. Most of the enrichment he gets is from me, but although I have an advanced degree, math is not my strongpoint.
So fortunately we can afford to hire a tutor, and we think we found a good one, a person who is a post-doc at the local university and has a PhD in mathematics. Our plan is for our son to work his way through at least algebra 1, algebra 2, and geometry so he can take advanced courses in high school. K-12 is the weak link, but our public high school has a full complement of AP classes and an arrangement with the local university so you can take classes there. It's getting such kids to the high school in good shape that's the problem.
We are very excited, actually, about giving up the struggle with the school system and taking control of this issue ourselves. We still hope that the school will allow him to integrate his independent math studies into his school day, but, if not, we reminded him it takes him about 5 minutes to do his math homework so he can do both. We're not happy about the message of saying to him don't take what's going on in school that seriously, but what's the alternative?
