We have definitely had the experience of nominally "gifted" personnel (not that they themselves must be gifted, of course, but that they have an implied specialty or training) who were pragmatically anything but.
I'm not sure what sort of training some of those people have had, but it clearly isn't much, since most of what I was saying to them left them responding with bafflement.
I'm recalling the summer program director that didn't understand why my child wouldn't be "just fine" with MG same-age peers. They wanted to place my child chronologically in spite of her public school's placement (GT programming and +3 acceleration). When I attempted to ascertain whether or not there were any children like my daughter enrolled in the program by asking for a ballpark distribution of scores in typical enrollees (ie-- roughly what percentage of children in the program are 95%+, what percentage are 99%+, etc.); I was informed rather crisply that there simply aren't any functional differences between kids at the 90% percentile and those at the 99.5%+ one. It was implied that I was being elitist and obnoxious for even asking. I was told that my child would probably find one of the Aspie children in the program to be a reasonable peer because they are generally a little awkward, too-- and this was supposed to be reassuring to me. (Amazing... in so many ways, really. Not the least of which was this woman's assumptions about Aspies.)
What a rude surprise that was; the director clearly had a chip on her shoulder about kids like mine and felt that they were merely the result of hot-housing and needed to be 'cut down to size' or something. NO WAY was I going to leave my DD with her, because it wasn't hard to figure out that she was going to make it her mission to "show us" that we were wrong. (Of course, I still can't quite wrap my head around why someone so obviously hostile to HG+ people would be in such a position...hmmmmm)
It turned out that the regular "summer program" offered by the science/engineering schools was a better fit for my gifted child. They were willing to do ability- and interest-based placement with little fanfare about her age.
Anyway. Long story-- but just because someone has a certificate on the wall or a title on their e-mail doesn't mean that they have some basic level of proficiency, I have discovered. Even with teachers, we've found that there is a tremendous amount of variability. I'd say that only one of them (of more than 14) has been anything like a true 'partner' in crafting solutions for DD educationally.
