Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How imporant are exclusive gifted schools for PG?

Sweetpeas - I would try to ask the schools if they:

1) have experience with profoundly gifted children or those who are working at x grade level in reading, writing, math or whatever subjects; schools may question what you're saying, but it's still worthwhile to ask.
2) can accommodate such children and how.
3) are children in mixed-aged group setting - your child may not want to stand out like a sore thumb in a setting with her chronological peers who are not functioning at her level
4) is the curriculum flexible and fairly unstructured/structured - this can make a big difference
5) I would ask what happens when a child exceeds a grade within a matter of months and whether they are bumped up a grade or provided with the next grade level material or not.

Of course, some schools may try to fib, but you might be able to get a better idea on whether a school is willing or able to accommodate you or not.

I don't know if you've seen this link on pg kids or not, but I found this useful - http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10115.aspx

I found that most gifted schools are still based on a traditional classroom (subject-based, teacher-driven, one-size fits all curriculum where everyone is working at a similar pace) and not aimed at pg kids. More often gifted schools can accommodate when a child is advanced in reading, writing, or math but not when it's all three or more subjects.

I did have a discussion with the assistant principal of our local public elementary school just this morning. It was rather disheartening. They do not allow students to skip grades. They say they differentiate curriculum for all students, but I imagine all schools would claim this. When asked if they have worked with other very gifted kids in the past, she said that they have had many students will "accelerated skills" go through their schools and the parents have been pleased with their progress. So, just using the term "accelerated skills" told me that she wasn't quite understanding what I was describing. I mean, when my son was two he had already almost mastered their entire Kindergarten curriculum (but he wasn't potty trained - LOL!) I have no way of knowing if my children would need to skip grades or not, but the fact that this school is unwilling to do it I think just illustrates that they aren't very flexible.

Through this website, I learned that a neighboring school district was easy to work with for one parent of a PG child. I checked them out and spoke briefly with their district office. They have pretty large gifted program in place which includes accelerated coursework and (maybe daily?) pull-outs, AND have a policy of allow children to skip grades. They are actually an award winning school district - great numbers, low student/teacher ratios, etc. So now my husband and I are thinking about it as an option. It would require a move, but just about 10 minutes from where we currently live. (They won't allow out-of-district students, unfortunately.)

So that is another option, perhaps. I think the flexibility of the district is what is going to be most important. This discussion with you all has been SO helpful to us in narrowing down exactly what we should be looking for. A flexible public school may be more accommodating to our kids than a private "gifted" school - and that is a concept than never really occurred to me before discussing things here.

While I am open to homeschooling them, my husband is less so. He wants them to have the "school experience" - at least to some degree. I understand this point, and I think we won't know until we try it if school will work for the kids. My husband is supportive of the idea of part-time homeschooling. So I can supplement the kids school education by exploring more advanced subjects with them at home. (If that seems to be what they desire- I wouldn't want to force a bunch of stuff on them.)


ETA: I have a tour scheduled of the gifted school at the end of next week. You all have given me some good ideas of what to ask, let me know if you think of anything else I should look for on this tour. With the cost and the location, there are two big strikes against this school so it will really have to impress us to make us think it is the right school for our kids.

A lot of schools will say they differentiate. When they say this, you need to ask for specifics about how they do this. What does it look like? What are the more extreme amounts of differentiation they've done, and what did those look like? How specifically do they differentiate for a child working three, four, five, or more grade levels beyond his age grade? Do they provide extra work or different work (important difference there)? Do they have a way to provide actual instruction at different levels? Or do they just toss the kid a workbook and call it good (and this is actually better than many schools do)? If the school can't give specific, detailed answers and examples for these questions, or if the staff become defensive or dismissive, those are important clues about how the school will deal (or not deal) with your child. If they do provide strong, detailed answers, then ask if you can see some of these situations yourself.

I would also ask what the school's policy on clustering is. Does the school cluster the highest kids together in one class, so they can have academic peers? With a PG child, even at a gifted school, there may well not be any real academic peers for many or all subject areas, but there may be one or two who are close enough to be a good social and/or academic fit for your child. Be very, very wary of a school that says they don't need to cluster or that all of their kids are very gifted!

Everyone has given you good advice, but I'll reiterate that a private gifted school is often not the panacea that we all hope for. Our own experience was that our local private gifted schools felt that they were for the gifted, so what more could we want? They said all the right things, but they did not put any of it into practice. I now wish that we'd asked much more careful questions and listened for the specifics--then we'd have known to avoid the school!

I have recently learned that DD's gifted magnet school will not be differentiating in-class reading instruction. Yup, you read that right--at least in DD's class, all 18 kids are reading the same books for in-class reading. They also get individual silent reading time of whatever they like, but I am fairly gobsmacked to learn that this is the practice in a school that talks up differentiation. So....what Nan said.

It sounds like sales and operations aren't on the same page.

If this ends up as a double post, I apologize in advance. (Don't ask! LOL!)

First, thank you CDFox for the link to that article. I finally had the chance to read it today. I could very much relate to much of what was being said, and I know the advice given is something I will need to keep in my mind for many years. I've bookmarked it!

My husband and I have been learning as much as possible about our local school options. We've spoken with teachers, parents, read student manuals and policies online, etc. etc.

In the midst of all of this, I get another reality check from my daughter. She loves books, and can read quite a large number of words. Today she was looking at a book that had some tally marks - thirteen, actually. So I told her it was a way of counting or writing a number. You know how tally marks look - the number 13 had two sets of 5 and one set of 3. So I asked her (really just out of curiosity because she often surprises me) "what is five plus five?" and she said "ten!" Then I asked "what is ten plus three?" and she said "thirteen!" Yeah, that was a serious WTF moment.

We don't "work with her" on math, as you may be thinking. There are no math flash cards or anything like that. Her three year old brother really loves numbers and may have introduced the idea of addition to her, I'm not sure. But, anyway... seriously... WTF was the only thing that came to mind, crass as that sounds.

So I say all of this to illustrate the sort of toddler she is. She is only 17 months as of today, I can't even imagine where she will be when she is 5 and ready to start kindergarten.

What school - private or public, gifted program or not, could have the resources to inspire/excite/motivate a child who is PG. I'm not saying my daughter is PG, of course. I can't know that at this age, I guess. But it wouldn't surprise me if she does eventually get categorized that way. It just made me think - what's the point?? Is there even a such thing as a good school for PG kids?

I spoke with a mom at the neighboring school district I talked about before. It was really just a happy accident that I ran into her and we started talking about local schools. Her son was allowed to skip a grade, and he is also taking math with kids 2 grades ahead of him. So they are flexible and accommodating, not just on paper but in real life. This mom said she never had to ask of any accommodations - everything, including the grade skipping, was the school's idea.

We are still going to go and tour the private gifted school next week. I will post back here and let you all know how that goes. You've all be so helpful.

Sorry to ramble on so long again. It's so nice to have an place to unload all this with people that can understand and not think I am crazy or bragging or both.

I agree, WTF is a reasonable response! I assume from what you say that she was answering these particular questions in the presence of a tallied 13 written down where she could see it, which slightly reduces the WTF quotient, but not much!

As you say, you really don't know what she'll be like when she's 5, and especially, you need to avoid the presumption that she'll necessarily have more extreme educational needs than your DS. Depending on how much he talks to her about numbers it could well be that what you're seeing in her tells you at least as much about him as about her! But yeah, it's sensible to assume that you're going to need something special in a school. There are PG children happy in schools, so don't give up. That's a very hopeful conversation you had the other day - exactly what you want is a school where the staff will pay attention to what each child needs educationally and work out how to provide it without you needing to force them. Such schools do exist!

Hello Sweetpeas,
I just arrived on the forum and your topic caught my eye. That's probably because, in our own experience, placing our two children in a gifted private school was the best decision we made for them. Your two are still so little, which is wonderful; you are starting armed for the journey! If anything I write can be helpful as you forge your road, you�ll be ahead of where we were as we began!

We did not arrive early at our conclusion to send our children to a gifted school � it was a year-by-year, trial and error process, unfortunately. We had them in a very small, private school first. That was good because 1) it was personalized to each child 2) the Headmistress was an extremely broad-minded individual, who was not afraid to allow children to progress at their own rate and in their own style of learning. I consider admin. and staff perceptions/understanding a fundamental indicator of where a gifted child might fit. Our daughter had some similarities to yours, started talking at 6 mos, continued to a vast vocabulary, and early reading. She spontaneously read and loved the whole Narnia series between ages 5-6 � I just helped her through the last book. The first problem we ran into was when she was 6 in 4th grade (plus, it was a school that worked 2-3 grades ahead). Most of her peer group was 9-10 years old, and the greater social maturity in her friends became noticeable at that point. For example, their pre-teeny-bopper music phase was beginning, and also some girls were beginning their periods, etc. - we felt she didn't need to be going to those places yet!

We moved when our daughter was almost 7; our son, 5. We looked at the exclusively gifted school then but, in the end, decided to put them in a larger, more traditional, academically rigorous school, with grade-age peers. It was the �safest� choice, I think, and nothing had gone wrong yet! The first year for our daughter was fine, both socially and because she had an amazing teacher, who I believe now, understood giftedness. Again, I think this is key. But from 4th grade up, we began to hit obstacles. The hardest one was trying to explain to subsequent teachers, who had no training in recognizing differences in gifted kids (and how that presents in different situations/personalities) that something was not working. We gradually found that situations were being misinterpreted and we were being given a negative rather than a positive angle. We grew used to seeing a blank stare across the table during parent/teacher conferences, and we saw ourselves turning into two of the many parents advocating for their darling children! If I could go back, I would have changed things from this point.

Long and short of it, we stuck with a school system too long that kept promising to work with our children to provide �accommodations" to help them succeed through school! Oh boy. And this was a school with a great reputation for teaching smart kids! So again, keep assessing your situation and realize that what you perceive is probably correct. Watch how your children behave and respond over a period of time. Gradually, we became aware that giftedness (when it means �different� and not just super smart) was actually more of a handicap to our children than a benefit. We, as parents, in the thick of everything, were really quite slow at realizing just what we needed to do for the best. It's pretty much an extreme situation at home and school when you have intense intelligence around!

All changed dramatically in 10th grade when our daughter just stopped. She was exhausted from trying to fit a model of learning that was hindering her. She just could not go on jumping through inane hoops. We pulled her out of school for her own health and finally placed her in the gifted school, with teachers and admin. staff who finally understand giftedness. She literally came back to life over the next couple of years � but from the very first day she came home and said, �Mum, I LOVE these kids!� She'd found her soul mates. All gifted students are different to each other, but they all have a common bond in their difference from the norm. They enjoy each other enormously, whether they are moderately or profoundly gifted. In fact, I would suggest that it is beneficial especially to the profoundly gifted to have a mixed range of gifted students together � they help to balance and socialize each other, as well as finding a place of acceptance, and they all respect each other's differences. We placed our son in the same school the following year. Personality-wise, he is completely different to his sister, he managed his environment in the traditional setting much better � not because he was thriving but because he is extremely sociable and everyone loves having him around. So, you will also have to balance who your children are in terms of their personalities. As a parent, I love watching how gifted education allows the students to develop in a more protective atmosphere while they are young.

Thank you, Mumhere! That was very helpful to read - thank you so much for sharing your perspective.

ColinsMum - I seem to get a lot of those "wtf moments" with my daughter. Yes, I think maybe the visual of the tally marks was surely helping her make those calculations - that is the only way it makes sense. I think we do often assume our daughter is going to need more educational interventions than our son just because of how utterly shocking she is to us and to anyone that encounters her. My son is definitely very bright as well, but being less verbal and a bit more shy he isn't quite as "outloud" with his gifts perhaps. His math and reading skills are certainly at least a couple years ahead of his age. I am trying to shift my thinking to focusing on HIS educational needs, as he is the one that will be entering school first.

Well, we went to the private school today. I think both my husband and I were almost hoping there would be some red flags or that we wouldn't like the general vibe... but it was actually really great. The classrooms were wonderful. Many of the questions I asked, I got from you guys - so thank you very much for sharing your wisdom on what to look for. They answered every question the way I would have hoped, and with sincerity and "proof" to back it up where appropriate.

The commute would most certainly be longer than we thought. Well over an hour. This is much too far to commute every day. So if we wanted to send our kids here, we would need to move. We aren't sure we are thrilled about that idea, although it is definitely possible to do. It is a much more densely populated area, which means lots of traffic - something we definitely don't like. We are sort of more rural/small town types. But then we wonder if it is selfish of us to not want to move... work doesn't tie us to this location as my husband works from home. He can work anywhere.

I am also thinking about when the kids are teenagers... there is a lot more for them to do in a more populated area than in a rural area. They may enjoy living in the area, and honestly I'd probably get used to the high population density too.

Another good thing about moving closer to the gifted school is that the public schools in the area are much better than our local public schools. So even if we decided to not continue with the private school, for whatever reason, we'd be in a pretty good public school district that may be able to accommodate to some degree.

Our son would indeed have to get tested in order to be admitted, even for the pre-K. Part of me feels weird about that, although I know I shouldn't. I mean, if we want a "real" gifted school where people don't simply pay for admission but instead must truly be gifted then we have to expect testing. Part of me thinks "what if he isn't really gifted at all?" I worry what would happen if our son wasn't qualified, but our daughter was and "needed" their specialized education.

We are going to meet with a local public school too and hopefully get to see their classroom and learn more about how they handle gifted children.

In the meantime, my husband and I are taking a week off from researching it or even thinking about this stuff. (Er... starting tomorrow! haha!) We need a little mental break from it and we'll see if it gives us a new perspective.

It does seem like a move should be seriously considered for all of these reasons. It is scary to contemplate testing your son, but remember if he doesn't qualify (doubtful) then the move also provides -

It often happens that sibs need to go to different schools - sometimes because of a flat IQ difference, but more often because of personality and interest. Some kids need a larger population for friend selection, music program or afterschool activities. Sometimes one homeschools and the other doesn't. I've seen it work. Just like you are willing to move to a more populated area because it is closer to what your children need, (and what you used to prefer becomes very dry indeed once you see it isn't working for the kids) you will - over time - become aware of what each child needs and you will be happy if you can provide it no matter how strange it looks.

But please - don't price yourselves out of the homeschooling possibility. Even if it's never more than an escape plan, the piece of mind that come with it is - as they say on TV - priceless. Also - if your husband can truly work from anywhere, I wouldn't make any move that inhibits your ability to move to Reno in about 10 years. Talk about putting the cart before the horse - still my son is 15 so this is how things look from my part of the path.

Yup - get your son tested. You'll have no idea where your DD is in the ballpark until you see where your son actually is. My guess is that if he doesn't qualify for Davidson YSP, that he's quite close indeed. If your son doesn't wear his giftedness on his sleeve like DD, that's all the more reason to test him.

And you are very correct when you say that if the school is going to be 'less heterogeneous' that the community surrounding it, testing will be needed.

The tests are designed to be fun for the kids - he'll probably like it. My son's test day when he was 8 years old was the best day of his life up to that point. Gosh!

Grinity