Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Switching schools and having to advocate...help

My ds has been attending a virtual public school last year and this year. We have decided to place him into the local brick and mortar public school. The virtual school had not only given him a 1 year grade acceleration but also allowed him to move at his own pace in Math, Language Arts and Literature. Well, this year he is a 4th grader and was working mainly on 4th grade except he just finished 90% in Language Arts and was in 5th grade math. After an achievement test given at the beginning of the school year the virtual school decided to move him into 5th grade for Language Arts and Literature and Pre-Algebra for math. Now we are putting him into the local school all they have to do is to put him into 4th grade for all subjects.

I would like to advocate that he at least be given 5th grade math because he has 100% finished that subject and I don't want him to digress in his learning. However, the school only goes up to 4th grade. The 5th/6th grade school building is a few miles away.

Any suggestions on advocating? Ds was really looking forward to starting Pre-Algebra.

Kathy-TX

Could he continue the virtual school for math? You might see if the school would let him do math on the computer while the class has math lessons. That's what my DS8 does, with the ALEKS math curriculum. While his third grade class is doing math, he's online doing his own math in ALEKS. Hopefully the school would give him an assessment test to find his placement levels and be willing to do that once they see how far ahead he is. Good luck!