Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy reasonable amnt of time for placement test results

DS7 took a placement test last week. He's been twiddling his thumbs in his non accelerated class while we wait for results. How long would you wait until you started pushing the school for results? (We already politely asked. No response. At all.)

I would wait one month.

Wow! One month! A little background: his placement test was just the end of year test that correlates with the textbook that they use (so maybe 4 typed sheets, one sided). He did that for 2 grades. There are only 4 children in his class of 20 kids who are taking this test.

I was thinking it should only take them 2 days at the most. Maybe I overestimated here?

What does anyone else think?

I would think a week or two. Chances are that they won't agree to discuss the results with you until they have their own plan about how to deal (or not deal) with the results, and that will be the part that is taking time, not the grading of the actual papers.

I think somewhere in between. But zero reply to your email--after a two days, say--that's not cool. Hopefully someone's just waiting to confer with another and dropped the ball on a quick reply. It really is amazing how much hugely time consuming work teachers can have, especially at the start of school. I'd say a week or so is very reasonable. Hopefully they are conferring about placement and will update you soon. Of course you could have a teacher who is taking her sweet time--what's the goal with the test? Subject acceleration? A whole new class he'd transfer to? Or just an accelerated group? I know they teach routines for a few weeks at our school and then really differentiate, but are all doing the same easy stuff as they learn classroom routines. It seems like forever but after seeing the whole class in action I get it better now.

The time it takes can vary from district to district and even from school to school. You might try checking your school's and district's website to see if you can find their acceleration policies (often under "gifted" or "special services"). Generally, the more bureaucratic steps in the policy, the longer it takes.

They have no formal policies. They were supposed to test him before school started. It was pushed back to after school started. Depending on results, DS will accelerate 3-4 grades up (just math). Probably won't join a class because of scheduling. They are just trying to figure out which grade level textbook to hand him. DS iis incredibly frustrates because he is doing the 2nd grade work while figuring out if he will be doing 5th or 6th grade. They had him doing single digit addition today.

Will they allow him to work out of a workbook you provide in the meantime? We did something similar in the past for reading time - nothing the teacher had was appropriate, so I sent stuff in.