Warning - this is long and at times incoherent. I am sure many of you have felt this way at one time or another.
For those of you reading my posts this past week, you know how excited we were to have our son who is almost 5 in a private, gifted school. We were sold on the school that said all the right things and were supportive of their suggestion to assess our son to decide if the proper placement was 1st or 2nd grade. We have had or son tested both on the WPPSI II and the WJ and WIAT II achievement tests. He scored extremely high in all of them. We agreed to have him assessed by the 2nd grade teacher today. The school made a special point of telling me they don't test but assess.
The problems started last night with new parent orientation. This orientation, for students and parents, was to begin at 7:00 p.m. It actually began closer to 7;30 and for 45 minutes we were all tormented with an extremely boring presentation about proper uniforms, car stickers, drop off times and lunch. I can assure you everyone was bored, including my 4 year old. It was after 8:00 by this point.
The presentation was finally over and we got to "explore" the school. One of our first stops was the 2nd grade classroom and the teacher who was to assess him today. When our son entered this classroom it was if his head would explode from excitement. He has never been in a formal classroom; his only frame of reference was pre-k. And as he whirled around the room he squealed with delight at all the things he has learned. There were antonyms on he wall, the water cycle and the food chain. He was "amazed" to see a chart describing an ant's life cycle and started debating whether pupae was singular or plural. You get the picture. Sheer enjoyment. It was truly heaven for his father and me to watch. Then we went down to the 1st grade room with his assigned teacher. There was clearly a problem from the beginning. It doesn't surprise us her room was devoid of any personality, so was she. And she clearly had an issue with our son getting tested for 2nd. The clincher for us was this comment - when our son said he loved science she asked him if he knew what science was. He said he didn't know and she tells him, not what it is but that is what you will be learning in 1st grade. How many of you could come up with a good definition of science? Moments later he recovered and said, well, I know it is about how the body works, the bones, blood and cells and nature. A pretty good answer if you ask me.
We left with an ominous feeling that perhaps the assessment today was only an exercise and that this teacher had made up her mind.
But we still came hopeful for some honest input into whether our son would fit with the 2nd grade. It was already clear from his off the chart scores on the WIAT last week that his core reading and math skills were way above 2nd grade. I figured she would assess him on his compatibility overall.
The assessment was to last one hour. It lasted 1.5 hours.
Then we were called into a conference room with the principal and the 1st and 2nd grade teacher to get the results.
The results were of a written exam that was given to our son. There was no verbal assessment. They started out that this is what 2nd graders should know and he got 45 out of 90 correct. They then went on to criticize that he didn't know how to draw the arrows in a clock (he tells time great, we never used a clock drawing), that he doesn't know money(which he has been comfortable with for over a year) because he didn't know what a circle with d,q, n etc was. He has always dealt with real money. I especially liked the one where he couldn't get the fact triangle. Since he has never been exposed to that expression, it seems unrealistic that he would know how to answer the question. They also criticized his measurement abilities. They took issue that he didn't know which line to measure. (when he read the question it said how many inches is the line) but there were two lines, the one to measure and the line to mark your answer in.
My husband and I took great offense to this clear display of trying to diminish our son's abilities to dissuade us on placement. I would have a lot more respect if they said they just wouldn't consider a jump this far. The one thing they complimented on was his vocabulary tested at a 5th grade level, but then chimed in that it was ONLY site words though. And, the favorite handwriting criticism. Oh, he made his letter beautifully but he didn't make spaces between the words. They gave him no more than 3 inch space to write an entire sentence.
MY absolute favorite criticism was the one where the principal observed him the night before at the boring assembly. She said they she determined he only had an attention span of 10 minutes, which is inline with a 6 year old (and my husband's). She gave him nothing for the fact that it was 8:00 pm. at night, that it was an adult presentation or that we were ALL bored.
When I started to protest that I didn't feel this assessment was accurate and it was more of the test she promised she wouldn't do, they got defensive. Surprise, surprise. The principal then stood up and told us that we didn't have confidence in her and her educators because we were questioning them the meeting was over. She would be returning our check!
Whew, what a shock. My head is still whirling. We went on to smooth things out and ultimately we agreed that she would review the test result and call us tonight with their final recommendation.
When she called to recommend 1st with a pull-out for reading for now, we respectfully took her option to withdraw from the school.
Our son told us he was not disappointed that he would not go to this school. In his own unprompted words he said that the school was unfair. When we probed more he said that he didn't understand some questions and when he asked the teacher to explain, she told him to skip it!
So, here we were 48 hours ago feeling so fortunate to have an ideal situation for our child. Now, we find ourselves facing the same kind of opposition and negativity so many of you have identified. We will not allow our child into an environment that won't support his unique talents but most importantly one that discourages him or finds unwarranted criticism. I am all for criticism when it teaches.
So, as of tomorrow it is home schooling. This is a major life adjustment for us since we both work full-time at our careers. We just don't see a choice.
I am so upset and so angry.
