Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Gifted programs for limited English student

Hi,

I am planning to move to US with my son this summer with my HG son who has limited English. I want to make sure we find the right school for him that can accommodate his limited English and at the same time serve his gifted needs. He will need ESL/ELL services at school. He was tested using a Turkish adaptation of WISC-R last year (identified in 99.9 percentile), and that along with his translated school records will probably be the only documentation I will be able to provide to public/private schools for him during admissions, since due to his limited English proficiency, he would not be able to take the standard achievement/cognitive tests used in US (probably not even WISC-IV since that also is sensitive to English literacy). I'm not sure how ESL/ELL classes will work, whether gifted + ELL/ESL program mixture would work/possible. Not even sure if schools in US (we will move to Seattle area) would be willing to consider his WISC-R result acceptable.

I was wondering if there are parents or educators out there who are familiar with a situation similar to mine and who could share their experience or thoughts.

Cheers

How old is your son?

He is 11 and in 5th grade this year.

Reading and writing is such an integral part of gifted programs that it would be difficult to find an appropriate fit for a student with limited English. On the other hand, once you get to middle school, math, science and reading/language arts tend to get unbundled so that you can probably still have him assigned to a GT math class notwithstanding his limited English.

On a more positive note, he is HG and already has some English so it is quite conceivable that his English will catch up within a year or even a semester. I immigrated as a child a couple of years younger than your DS but with almost no English yet was able to transfer into the advanced reading/language arts track in about a semester.

I am sure you have him using English as much as possible in the meanwhile and he will likely make huge progress once he is surrounded by English this summer. Good luck.

Welcome! What brings you to the US? A job? An educational opportunity for the parent(s)? It is my understanding that the contacts who arrange for the family to come to the US may sometimes point to resources for translation from the native tongue, lessons in English, and cultural support. You may also wish to look into securing English language lessons for your child before coming to the US. There are online programs. As you will see from reading online forms such as this one, there is a LARGE gap between the needs of gifted children and the programs/services which may be available; Please do not feel slighted or develop a mistaken belief that other gifted children are well-served while yours is not. Parents work very diligently to fill the gaps; It is not left to the system.

I would think that you may have problem placing him in an appropriate program initially - unless you can start some intensive English training program right now. Our limited experience was with our 4.5 year old, whose third and weakest language is English...A private school who saw his report said that because of his English problems he should be amongst the oldest in his class, rather than amongst the youngest (his b-day falls just after the cutoff here) - as their students are very verbally advanced. Even though our son's Verbal score was at the 96th (!) percentile (only some supplemental vocabulary scores were quite low). And his GAI was high at 99.9 percentile. So if I were you, I would expect a fight, arguably even more so at your son's age where writing will be much more important! But on the other hand, being immersed in a newer language will stimulate him in new and different ways, which may help for a little while.

Research very carefully because the Seattle Public Schools have their own crazy complicated system going on to qualify for the gifted programs.
It seems like they require both meeting the IQ threshold, which your ds will easily do, but also achievement testing with the Cogat.
Have you already discovered this? It is called APP. You can find a lot of parent discussion about the testing, the appeals process and the school choices online.