Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Woe is DD

The retest uses exactly the same test as the original - apparently, the school possesses exactly one official test for each subject / grade combination.

Having been overconfident following the first administration, DD was understandably underconfident following the retest. They again scored her test (but did not tell her or us the results!) before she left, and she said she saw a -2 at the bottom of one of the pages, which she interpreted as two wrong on that page but I think may just as likely have been one wrong for two points off.

Assuming that she again missed the non-word-problem stuff she didn't know the first time around, and made the same number of careless errors, and made no more than one careless error on the 4 word problems she'd misunderstood originally, she passed. That's a smaller assumption than if they'd had a second version of the test, but still an uncomfortably large assumption.

On the plus side, schedule pickup is next Thursday, so we have to know the results before then.

OMFG. 88.

Schedule pickup is tomorrow, so I may be able to talk to the counselors at the school and see if we can work something out, but I hate being at the mercy of strangers. And being That Mom.

Oh dear - that could hardly be more awkward, could it? Good luck tomorrow.

Yes, indeedy.

Tomorrow I anticipate picking up the schedule, then having to ask:
1) DD would like her school records to be changed to Last Name 2. Why? Because her full name is so long that her teachers for the last two years have wrongly called her by Last Name 1, and she would rather be Last Name 2 than fight that fight with six different adults. Plus she self-identifies with the ethnicity associated with 2, rather than with 1.

2) DD would like to be placed in second year Orchestra, not first year Orchestra. We know the teacher had to hear her and determine the placement, and we're fine with that (fingers crossed that the teacher is a "let them rise to the challenge"person, not a "make sure they have a solid foundation" person). Is that process likely to happen before school starts, or is her whole schedule going to be redone in the first week of school so she'll end up with entirely different classes / teachers and coming in today was a total waste of time?

3) My kid who has not made the cut for a subject acceleration two years and three tests in a row really needs a subject acceleration. Any chance we could get one?


Man, I am going to need to do my best impersonation of a competent adult. I ought to put on grown-up clothes and everything.

Ouch.

Well, you can let your inner tantrumming child come to my house for a play date.

Good luck!

So how did it go today?

I can HEAR the eyes rolling as you walk out the door.

Seriously! I can hear the eyes rolling and I haven't even walked in the door.

Haven't gone yet, because I'm sitting at the imaging center, waiting for my wife to be MRI'd as a follow-up to Tuesday's CT as a follow-up to Saturday's office visit. No one has told us anything, but from the paperwork, we think the CT was triggered by something unrelated to the main point of the office visit, and the MRI was triggered by something unrelated to what they were doing the CT for, and the upshot is likely to be "you paid $1,500 to clear up an asymptomatic UTI and to learn that if you take enough pictures of a healthy body, you're going to see normal variation."

OOOo. Yeah, been there once with my spouse. Led to several neurology consults and a very scary visit to a brain surgeon in a neighboring large city before we finally got told "Look, I can't say FOR SURE that this isn't going to kill you, but here's what I think about this..."

Of course, it's a great way to take one's mind off of school advocacy struggle for a bit. Just not as much fun as pina coladas on a beach somewhere.

0 for 3. Alas. And yes, plenty of eye roll.

1.) "We'd need a court ordered change of birth certificate to do that." On the plus side, the very nice counseling secretary copied DD's schedule, wrote the preferred name at the top, and said she'd email all her teachers to let them know. So that one was a win for practical purposes.

2.) "We actually have a lot of kids with prior experience in into Orchestra." They also have a well-defined process for working ahead, and changing would require a total rework of the schedule. Plus some horror story of kid with years of experience who could not play as part of an ensemble. I'm actually okay with this one, because DD needs ensemble experience. Would have asked for the change if we needed to rework for #3. Time will tell whether this is a win, but I'm not going to assume it was a total loss.

3.) An extremely polite and not-quite-sufficiently veiled "I'm sorry your kid isn't as smart as you'd like her to be." This from the principal, after the counselor said it was above her pay grade.

4.) I had a chance to ask the bus people (not the same as the school people) why DD's bus schedule appears to involve nearly 2.5 hours on the bus each day. "Oh, no, that would be against the law." Further investigation reveals that she actually has a 46 minute ride in the morning, and gets to school 25 minutes before school starts. She has a 50 minute ride in the afternoon, preceded by a 35 minute wait in the hallway.

On the plus side, DD's BFF was just leaving as we arrived, and we snagged her from her parents and made her hang with us. The girls roamed the school independently while I went around with my hat in hand.

I think I'd have been rolling my eyes about point four, as well.

I'm pretty sure that it wasn't you rolling your eyes, and that it was at points one, two, and most particularly three, but I'm glad that it wasn't a total loss, even if you didn't get what you went for. At least you didn't get the dubious pleasure of doing it all with your DD looking on.