I didn't think the parents were painted in a bad light at all. They were working with the system to get a good educational fit for their child. Everyone seemed to agree the hoops you had to jump through were ridiculous . Bronxmom - I loved your honesty about the whole process, and your son is adorable. We are homeschooling also, and it has been a great fit for my out of the box son.
We live in an urban area, so we have some of this (we probably have 50 eligible schools within 15 miles of us ranging from public school to 20K a year). There are wait lists and lotteries and some interviewing for private schools. At least the public schools don't interview I don't think! For gifted public, either you have the test scores or not and then it's by lottery. None of the HG+ schools are near us. We have probably toured or visited about 20 schools.
I'm still glad we don't live in NYC! It seems so completely wrong that so many kids that would test in the top 1 or 2% would not get the gifted services others would get based on their classroom behavior one day at the age of 4 or 5. I can tell my son would have never made this cut.
