DD8's school has made some effort to get on track with a gifted IEP this year (although it may not be a coincidence that the gifted coordinator finally called in mid-November to arrange the IEP the very same day that I was scheduled to speak to a school board meeting re. gifted special education policies and our district's general non-compliance with the statutes in our area).

So since then there have been several weekly sessions with the gifted coordinator, who sets the kids up on a computer program. But here's the thing--my highly verbal daughter, whose IEP calls for enhanced language arts, writing, etc. has been receiving only math enrichment. Three times a week. No in-class differentiation in any subject.

She's okay at math--it's not really her thing--but we've been puzzled about why the school has taken this approach, so we had a meeting scheduled today. Turns out, the "gifted" math is to provide language enrichment, because she and a classmate "talk" each other through the math problems on a shared computer. The other boy needs math enrichment so it's a kill-two-birds approach. When we asked for reading/writing activities, like a novel study or independent research project, or even just a tougher weekly list of spelling words (she's currently exempted from studying the class spelling because the teachers think it's too easy for her!) we were told no-can-do. On the other hand, if we'd like, they could increase the number of math enrichment sessions...

The sad thing is there are a handful of kids in her class who would really benefit from some challenging math, but our kid's just not really one of them.