Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment test results make me unsure of how to proceed

After a long fight with the school, my son was finally declared gifted. His curriculum was adjusted but it still seemed to be too easy for him. We had a meeting two weeks ago and his teacher said that his advanced work was too easy for him. She also said he was reading on a second grade level (he is in first). School decided to do some cba's based on the second grade curriculum. He scored an 81 on reading comprehension, a 100 on math concepts, and a 90 on math facts (but they felt he took a long time on the facts and said he used his fingers sometimes). He also only scored a 53 on a writing assessment. We have another meetingon monday and I am not sure where to go from here. The school is very difficult to work with.

Curriculum based assessment. They were looking to see how he would do in the 2nd grade curriculum

Have you had any ability testing done as well (IQ, etc.)? What type of assessment did they use for the gifted identification?

Sorry to have so many questions, but I am also wondering if you are in a low achieving area. In general, I'd say that it is not unusual for a good 25% or more of 1st graders to be reading at a 2nd grade level which makes me wonder why they are having such a hard time accommodating that. Advanced math isn't always as well accommodated in my experience and slower calculation isn't uncommon among younger children with advanced conceptual understanding of math.

The processing skills like that, simple calculations, etc. might hold him back from significant acceleration like subject acceleration for a bit, though. I wouldn't consider anything major like a grade skip until writing skills are rather advanced and you have IQ scores to support it.

What are they doing so far and what more might you want?

He and my daughter are the only two gifted children in their elementary school (out of 450 kids). It's definitely what I would a low achieving area. The teacher has him in the advanced reading group but she says that is too easy for him. He doesn't even do they math homework anymore. He does do a computer based math prgram for enrichment a few times a week.

He has been tested using the wisc-IV and WJ-III and scored very well. The school is very anti- gifted. I had to fight to get my daughter identified several years ago.

I'm concerned right now that they are going to use his low writng score to say he doesn't need any changes.

The scores appear to support subject acceleration in math. However, the 81 on reading comprehension is borderline while the 53 writing assessment would really make me hesitate about accelerating in reading/language arts as the writing expectations jump substantially from grade to grade and there is a wide gulf between "average" writing level and the "top students'" writing level.