By their rubric, he misses the gifted cut-off by 1 pt (needs 9, he got 8). Report didn't really mention knowledge acquisition and retention, so when I asked about that, they informed me that he hadn't even had a year's worth of academic growth in reading, so clearly there's not sign of accelerated acquisition (are you kidding me, he didn't have a year's worth of growth????? What are they doing???? He scored in the 98% on the WIAT in reading comprehension for goodness sake and his independent reading level at home is way beyond his instructional level at school...) When trying to give evidence of early language and development (from way back in the toddler years) it was dismissed as just because I'm educated and paid lots of one-on-one attention and likely all the rest of the kids will be caught up by third grade anyway (really, you think the third graders are all going to know their presidents by sight, because my 2-year-old did!! He's been arguing semantics with us ever since he learned to talk, so don't tell me he's only good at decoding and not the other aspects of reading/language use....)
When we asked about the discrepancy between the visual tests and how well he did, and the auditory-based tests and how they were significantly lower, and asked if there might be an underlying auditory processing problem, they said he's still doing above average and if we want to pursue that we have to do it on our own. Which, now we know apparently there's a gap between ability and achievement, since he didn't get a year's growth in reading, so we just might have to...
They reiterated how he doesn't want to do the math worksheets that he's given the option of doing and that he doesn't get the in-class independent assignments for his reading group done because he'd rather sit and read his own books. So they said they are offering him enrichment and he is choosing not to take it and that needs to be his choice and not something he's forced to do. Then I asked if there was a kiddo that needed remediation, if they could just choose not to do their work too and it would be acceptable? They said that was completely different. I asked what they were doing to help him organize and get the work done if that was an area of concern and that said that wasn't a gifted issue so we wouldn't be talking about that at this meeting and the goal is to be developing independence.
Overall it was just frustrating... They did agree to have him monitored by the gifted teacher and she would be meeting with his teacher next year and giving him some Jr. Great books to read in second grade and continue to give him enrichment papers to do on top of the regular math work.... And they said we can meet at any time if we have concerns that need to be addressed, and said that's all the GIEP would provide anyway, just a yearly meeting and nothing more.... We're basically just watching and waiting how things go next year in second grade, and they said they'd get good baseline measurements at the beginning of the year so we could monitor growth in second grade and how he probably just needed to mature a little bit more and then everything would be fine... I could go on, but it was just frustrating.
Where to go from here? Besides banging my head against the wall. I just want ds to be learning at his level and not hating school.
