Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Need advice to ensure son is placed correctly!

Hi all:

Before I launch into my saga just want to give you a bit of background on our district. It was out of TAG compliance for 15 years. Most teachers (& certainly the administration) don't "believe" in TAG and only somewhat comply under threat of a state audit.

Now on to our story:)

Despite a grade skip, ds12 is only working at his level in one class this year - Algebra 1, where he's getting an A. Another class - science - provides him with new information and he enjoys it, even though it's not at his pace.

Since he'll be going to the high school next year for math, we plan on approaching the school about other subject acceleration for next year. Our concern is that we aren't getting a full and truthful academic picture from two of his teachers.

The problem is two fold: How to get an accurate picture of where he is in terms of benchmarks ( this is how the district measures their "sucsess")
How to get the powers that be to understand that learning new information isn't acceleration?

The 7th grade social studies teacher not only is a denier but a hater. Since history is a special interest of our son, he has learned nothing and spent the 1st quarter in the library researching and writing a paper that never was returned. 2nd quarter he chose not to test out of the unit because he liked the teaching assistant. He spent class time talking Civ games with the t.a. and chatting to a friend.

Ds has a much better S.S. teacher this quarter. He will find something for ds to do - but he will be back to the denier/hater the final quarter of the year.

His advanced language arts teacher told me at the beginning of the year that his placement showed he was right with the other kids. I seriously doubted her - based on ds' academic testing and the teacher has a history of fabrication. According to ds only about 4 of the 30 kids in this "advanced" class are gifted.

When pressed for more details about her syllabus, teacher says that her class will provide new information for ds, and will fill in some grammatical holes that no one in the lower grades seem to be teaching. This sounded reasonable. Since September he has learned 1 new concept and he's written 2 papers. No grammar has been taught.

We prefer he take freshman english and history next year. How do we make this happen?

Thanks!

Some suggestions:

Does your district use MAP scores? If so, ask to have him placed with other kids who are scoring in the same score band.

Have him participate in one of the national academic talent searches, and take the SAT or ACT and share those scores with the school as evidence that he is ready for high school work.

Get a copy of the IOWA acceleration scales, and fill it out, if it would support your position. Objective data is hard to argue with.

IF none of these work, don't be afraid to go higher up and keep going until you get some results. If they were found out of compliance and are now being forced to provide gifted services, then someone up the chain of command will either be very interested in making sure that the state doesn't find them out of compliance again, or if you get high enough up, will be very interested in making sure they do, KWIM?

Thanks aculady. I'm not familiar with MAP scores. We had him ds tested privately this past summer. The psychologist used the Stanford and the Wechsler.

The school has a copy of his report so they are fully aware of his ability. It's ridiculous to have him twirl his thumbs in this "accelerated" class. I've been doing some research on compacting and may try that route.

The thing about MAP scores is that they are not ability scores, they are achievement scores that are aligned to curriculum, so they can tell the school in a way that makes sense to them what concepts your child is ready to learn next and what they have already mastered. This can be really important when the school might not fully grasp the difference between say, an ability score at the 98th percentile and one at the 99.9th percentile.

NWEA MAP

Edit: If MAP is not an option, curriculum compacting would be great if they will allow it.

Only if your district uses MAP. Otherwise, it's just one more meaningless number.

(Ours doesn't, and other than here, I've never heard of it. If the OP has a 12yo and hasn't heard of MAP, I'm guessing their district doesn't use it, either.)

Even if the district test with MAP, doesn't mean they use that information for placement. Many districts use it to identify kids for RTI and for gifted testing but not placement.

What exactly are the Iowa Acceleration Scales? Is this something I purchase?

On the plus side, his math needs are being met. It's his language arts and social studies that are lagging behind. His current curriculum is 6 grade levels below his capability.

Thanks for the link AlexsMom. It appears that the Iowa is used for whole grade skipping, which he did this fall. Would it be helpful for subject acceleration?

I reread my post and I realize I didn't make it clear that ds has completed academic testing and we do know where he falls based on grade level and comparable age.

The school has this report as well.

I'm having difficulty getting a clear answer from some of his teachers regarding what benchmarks he still has to hit. 7th grade is still many grades below his potential. I would like for him to learn the concepts he needs and move on to more stimulating material.

I came in at the beginning of the year with both 7th & 8th grade state benchmarks. I highlighted those that I thought he had probably hit and asked if we could move on from there. I was pretty much ignored.