Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy acceleration

Does the goal have to show what he will do (i.e. - growth he will show) or what specific actions the school will take?

I'd try for something like, "[ds] will show at least one year's growth on [x] measure(s); [school] will support [ds]'s growth by grade accelerating [ds] into 2nd grade on [date] and by meeting with [ds]'s parents at the end of the first semester to evaluate the benefit of the acceleration."

Me too, especially if a later need for further acceleration could re-gift the student. Maybe what's going on is just somewhat of a conflation of high achievement with giftedness in the softer criteria, and maybe it also wouldn't work that way in the real world (one hopes).

I agree that good GIEP goals would include some criteria for growth and success of the acceleration.

I don't pay too much attention to what is in the GIEPs, but it doesn't really matter. I recall goals such as get a 92 or better in math, 95 or better in language arts, etc. It didn't matter if they achieved those goals or not, though perhaps it would have if they were way off of the goals.

They could write in goals like the above, and it wouldn't matter if the kid was grade skipped. We are in PA too, so these are perfectly acceptable goals for a GIEP.

This doesn't make sense. If a GIEP is anything like an IEP, the bottom line is that you don't have to sign off on it until it reflects what you want. It would appear to me that the school has incentive to skip your DS (cheaper/easier for them) so that if you condition your acceptance on keeping the GIEP, it is likely that they will acquiese eventually.

In my state, nobody is required to sign an IEP. Consent for evaluation, consent for initial services, require a signature. Everybody signs off on eligibility for Specific Learning Disability, and teams reach a consensus on an IEP without controversy most of the time.

But eventually, a school sometimes has to say, "Here's the Free and Appropriate Public Education we're offering. Take it or leave it." And if the parent feels the school has done wrong by them (which sometimes happens, but usually out of ignorance rather than maliciousness), there are several legal options from that point.

I am very intrigued by the idea of appropriate goals for gifted plans. I think that what I needed in elementary school and middle school was something like, "Student will be required to perform tasks that are sufficiently challenging that she will sweat a little bit over whether she can make the grade just like everybody else has to sweat, and is forced to develop organizational skills."

But we would never write a goal like that for a disabled student!