Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Approaching school with new private test scores?

Long story short: DD is 8, 2nd grade, public school. She has ADHD and SPD. She has trouble with transitions, high anxiety, and is a huge perfectionist. Before she was medicated late last spring, we had a ton of behavior problems. Poor social skills, for which she gets spec ed. She is the kind of bright kid is notorious with everyone she's ever met.

Accomodation for academics at our school have been, to be kind, spotty. Her kindergarten teacher would send home 5th-6th grade reading comprehension stuff. In 1st grade, the school was too busy obsessing about her behavior to do anything: "When she's better behaved" they'd say. 2nd grade, she's on ADHD meds, better behavior, her teacher would send home 6th grade spelling words. Before our last IEP meeting the school psych did the RAIS IQ test on her, but happened to administer it the very same day DD came home with a 101.5 degree fever. Nonetheless, she scored a 147 on verbal and a 99 on non-verbal (which I would guess is about when the fever kicked in), but the school was disinterested in this 48-point variance and declined to do further IQ or achievement testing. "Gosh," they tell me in IEP meetings, "She can't possibly be bored with 2nd grade work. And why shouldn't she have to read the textbook twice like everyone else?" Granted, we're in a very high-performing school in a high COL area and I know there are other kids working beyond 2nd grade level. But that doesn't mean that DD shouldn't get work that's actually a challenge for her.

So I paid to have the WISC-IV and WIAT-III done privately, and every single composite score is at or above 99%. Ironically her reading comprehension score was her lowest, but she's still really high for her age.

DD's original 2nd grade teacher is on maternity leave; the new teacher has been a teacher for all of 4 weeks. She's youngish, has minimal experience, and no tenure, and if her teacher education program was like the one I completed last year, I'd bet she got maybe 15 minutes of instruction on teaching gifted kids.

There is a 99% chance we will be at a different school next year, but the end of the school year is 3.5 months away and the 2nd grade is completely wasted on DD. Now that I have test scores on hand, I really want to talk to the school and try to get academic accommodation again. But historically they've evaded and avoided every prior request. Should I start with the new teacher? Should I send the scores to the IEP team and ask for a meeting? WWYD?

Having test scores is great. Did your tester provide any insight for academic accommodations? Knowing what specific academic accommodations you are seeking for your daughter would be helpful. Putting your request into a short, positive presentation which pulls it all together may provide the highest likelihood of achieving what you are seeking.

Information at the following links on the Davidson Database may be of interest, in learning about some of the best approaches in advocacy...
1- Advocacy - Working with your child's school http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10558.aspx
2- Choosing the right school for your gifted child http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10511.aspx
3- Basic educational options for gifted children http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10270.aspx
4- Guidebook - Advocating for Exceptionally Gifted Young People, plus lists of other resources http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/browse_resources_165.aspx

Does your child like school? Friends? Teachers? Curriculum placement and pacing?

You mention that your child will likely attend a different school next year. If your child's school is resistant to positive, well-prepared, unemotional advocacy, is not open to discussing well-presented evidence, and does not seem like a good fit, you may wish to visit other schools, have your child shadow, and work toward choosing the learning environment with the best (or least-worst) "fit".

Regardless of the school your child attends, you may wish to read up on advocacy... those skills may be needed again, as your child is in second grade, with another decade or so until high school graduation.

Wishing you all the best.

One of the reasons I'm taking advantage of my impending divorce to move is because the school is so resistant.

I actually HAVE identified an ideal public school placement for DD, in the school district where I have made an offer on a house. The school houses the half the self-contained gifted classes for the district, and DD's therapist has worked with their IEP and special ed teams, and everyone I've talked to says the principal's fantastic. But, to get DD into that school I have to move into it's zone (too expensive and makes my 2-hour round-trip commute worse) or get her admitted to the gifted program. But it is apparently easier to break into Fort Knox than get a PG child admitted to a gifted program here, even though I've put an offer on a house and produced for them buckets of test scores.

They require the CogAT and ITBS for admissions and rank candidates for admissions based on test scores. Our current district will be happy to send these scores, when they have them. But the new district will only look at scores if she's already admitted to another district's gifted program (even if their requirements are vastly different, whcih they are) and even then, they will "have to" re-test her on the CogAT, because, I don't know, they're too paranoid to trust our current district can do it right??

This is all so incredibly frustrating, I just want to tear my hair out.

Moving to a private school is not financially feasible, and anyhow, all the private school application deadlines at recommended schools have passed for this year. And it's pretty much impossible to move to a public school if you don't live in their service zone.

It's possible that if DD is admitted to the current district's gifted program, we could manage to stay here. But it's incredibly expensive, I haven't found any houses I can actually afford, and the rentals are worse than the mortgages.

Oh, and I realie that I didn't actually answer the other questions...

Does your child like school? Not anymore.
Friends? 3 of her 4 best buddies from K and 1 got sent to the gifted program last year; DD wasn't mediated for ADHD yet and couldn't hardly sit through the test, and scored a mere 97% on the CogAT last year, which disqualified her. This year she has the 1 actual real friend. She's oddly popular for a kid with poor social skills, but she wouldn't really miss any of the other kids.
Teachers? Eh, they're not bad teachers.
Curriculum placement and pacing? The curriculum placement and pacing is exactly what every 2nd grader gets; it is too slow and far too easy.

Aufilia,
I'm on my phone so I'll have to be brief. The CoGat isn't the best test for the gifted. It's a blunt instrument often used because it's cheap. I will try to find an article for you.
My DYS ds scored a 97% on the CoGat on verbal, an area of strength for him. On the Wisc IV he ceilinged the verbal subtests.
I think it's fine to use CoGat to identify a large group of kids but the cutoff should be much lower and the gifted team should understand the limitations of their tool.
One thing you could do is ask the school you're entering to administer IQ testing--which test would depend on which private test he had and how long ago it was administered.
Welcome to the boards!

I'm so tired of hearing everyone's problems with the CogAT and wish that test would be eliminated. All of the districts around here that use it seem to be quite rigid about it. The g/t coordinator here went so far to say that every subtest on the CogAT needs to line up with the computerized math/reading achievement testing. So if a child qualifies for a g/t program based on an achievement score in math of 98 percent, the cogAT quantitative section would also have to be 98 percent. If they are flagged for a reading score of 98th percentile, the verbal CogAT score would need to be 98th percentile. A high non-verbal score on the CogAT? What achievement test aligns with that? I don't think they thought that far. And in fact they pretty much seem to be making up bizarre rules as they go along. They told me that they would accept outside testing like the WISC but they would need to look at the WISC to make sure the math section of the WISC is at least 98th percentile. DD did "arithmetic" in the working memory section instead of digit span. I can see these geniuses looking at that and saying "Aha! Here's the math section of the WISC! Enter that in the computer!"
I symptathize--it's all very frustrating.
AS for your original question, I'd probably try to show the teacher your outside test scores and say that your DD would appreciate work above grade level. If that doesn't work it's probably not worth the effort at this point just for a few more months of school. I don't know about sending it to the IEP team unless IEPs there address gifted issues. Here none of that is addressed in an IEP and they don't care.

Honestly, I've had the best luck with "young" teachers. The most "experienced" teacher DS ever had, the one who was the G/T teacher, in fact, was by far the WORST teacher he ever had, and nearly led to him being committed. For some teachers, the longer they teach the more rigid they become and the more they feel they've seen it all and know how to handle everything. The younger teachers, in general, are open to suggestions, are willing to admit when they are dealing with something new and are interested in learning how to handle new situations.

The teacher probably won't get much out of her WISC scores, but I'd definitely go ahead and bring her the WIAT scores. I mean, worst case, things continue on just as they are. Hopefully, she sees the scores, and at the least gives her some more challenging worksheets/vocabulary words.

Amy, you have a point, I met with our young teacher and she was very open to working on a way to accelerate DD. Sadly, this was promptly nixxed by the principal and I have now been told via the teacher that they can't grade her on 2nd grade math, she can't skip the worksheets even if she passes the pre-test, she can do some 3rd but can't be graded on it, and, oh yeah, "the district" doesn't allow in-classroom acceleration because you don't need that unless you qualify for the gifted program.

Trying to decide if I should meet with the principal, meet with the IEP team, or call the special ed person who's above the principal, or calling the gifted program (but they really do seem to be mainly concerned with the top 2% per their tests only). There's a line in DD's IEP about providing opportunities for academics at her level, but "opportunities" is so vague that getting some 3rd grade math worksheets could be considered meeting that requirement.

We had the same experience back before we took DD out of her neighborhood public. Only it was the principal who said YES YES YES and the district who swooped in to say NO. I wonder if this is some kind of "good cop bad cop" technique schools use to stonewall requests for accommodation.

That hypothesis assumes a conspiracy. It is likelier that there is a lack of professional development (or uneven PD), some people in the picture don't understand the problem or the possible solutions, and the process gets derailed by those people.