Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Moving to Seattle

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone in Seattle could give feedback as to good gifted public or private schools in the Seattle/Bellevue/Tacoma?

We're from Chicago, but moving to Seattle next month. My husband and I both work from home so we can pick where we want to live. My family lives in University Place near Tacoma that seems to have a good gifted program (servicing top 3% going through 2 yrs of curriculum per year according to the director), but after going through 4 schools I'm always weary about what a school promises.

These are the schools we're looking into for our 4th and 6th grader.

If you have any experience or feedback, they'd be greatly appreciated!


Seattle Country Day
Seattle Academy of Arts & Science
Seattle Public School APP
Bellevue Public Gifted
Seabury School (Tacoma)
Charles Wright Academy (Tacoma)


Thank you!

I'm afraid I don't have any info, but I'm bumping your post to see if anyone can help.

We live in the area.
I have heard excellent things about Charles Wright from alumni and parents. Our testing psychologist had good things to say about Bellevue Public and Seattle Country Day.
My only experience with Seabury is that my husband worked near the middle school campus and would see the students out and about a lot. He said they always seemed like nice kids.

I wish I had more information to share but I our son is only four so we haven't been looking too long.

When we lived in Seattle we knew several people who had kids at or were alumni of the Evergreen School in Shoreline. It is a private gifted k-8 school. Everyone we knew who went there was very happy.

-chris

I thought I had posted a response here, but apparently not.

My daughter goes to the Bellevue public schools, in the gifted cluster program (Prism). I think the program is a good one, even though she's had a lot of struggles this year. Of course, you can't beat the price. :-) However, they are making major changes to the program for next year, and the changes have not really been thought through very well before they embark on them, so I am pretty worried about that. In the past, they've had Prism for the top 1%, and a pull-out enrichment program for the top 3%. They're getting rid of the enrichment program and clustering all the top 3% kids in two cluster schools. Within each school, they will group the gifted classes by their verbal CogAT scores. It sounds like a reasonable program, but the proof will be in the pudding.

Thanks everyone for your input! I really appreciate any information since we're kind of moving there blindly!

ElizabethN, we decided to try look in Bellevue thanks to your personal experience. It seems like they have the best options as far are public schools are concerned. I think clustering top 3% could work as long as they did group the classes by the CogAT scores. Sometimes the top 1% can be so intense mixing in the other 2% helps balance out the intensities. May I ask what type of struggles did your daughter have in the Prism program?

Can any of you recommend a good gifted psychologist in the Seattle/Bellevue area?

My daughter's handwriting is pretty poor (even though she is good at other fine motor skills), and we had some big blowups over it. She is *very* intense, and her teacher seemed not to be able to handle it. There were a number of screaming crying carrying on meltdowns over minor issues, mostly someone else taking her turn or her place in line or whatever. We seem to have those settled down now, but I still think that she's not participating and learning in class much. The writing load is pretty demanding - if your kids don't know how to type yet, learning would be time well spent.

Oh, and I'll give you a tip for before school starts in the fall - they give the kids a math placement test on the first day of school, and they are then tracked in math for the year with no possibility of change. So make sure your kids are "up to date" with what they know of math before school starts. DD had forgotten how to "borrow" in subtraction, and I think she ended up in a lower level of math because of it. She's pretty bored with math. I noticed that she was getting problems wrong when her first week of math worksheets came home, and reminded her how to do it, which took exactly one reminder and she's been fine ever since, but she's in the math track she's in, full stop, end of story.

Thanks ElizabethN for all your tips! I will definitely have them practice math and typing this summer.

I'm sorry to hear about your daughter's struggles at school. Do you think the teachers are trained in gifted education enough to handle the intensities of gifted children? Can I ask what grade your daughter is in?

My daughter is just finishing second grade now.

State law says that the teachers have to have either training or experience in gifted education, although they are still scrambling to keep up with that to some extent. But my daughter's teacher has been teaching gifted students for 26 years. Nevertheless, I think that she is not particularly well-equipped for the overexcitabilities of my daughter. I think that a lot of her students are heavily coached into high CogAT scores, and she didn't quite know what to do with "raw" intelligence when she saw it. (DD took the CogAT completely cold, and pretty much blew it out of the water.) We had a very rocky midyear, but it seems to have mostly settled down now, at least for the moment. DD has started seeing an OT regularly, and I think that is helpful for her.

Will you be at Spiritridge or Cherry Crest in the fall?

ETA: DD will be seeing Elizabeth Smith in Bellevue in July (neuropsych). She has a very long waiting list, but is also highly recommended by our pediatrician and DD's OT specifically for gifted kids. I can't give you a personal recommendation, since we haven't seen her yet, but her qualifications seem to be very good, and she immediately asked all the right questions when I called to make the appointment for DD.