Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What is processing speed and how do I explain it?

I'm unclear on what harm they anticipate if they accelerate your DS even though he can't pass the timed tests as designed. If he's getting NO instruction at all, wouldn't SOME instruction be better? They seem to have acknowledged he needs no instruction at the current level, so why NOT try him a level up and see what happens? Are they saying they worry about him in some way? ...or that he might slow down the kids in the accelerated class? I would be pushing for a trial period of a couple weeks or a month of subject acceleration, and see 1) what the new teacher says, and 2) how he's doing.

Please do let us know how it all turns out. We're with you in spirit!

Thanks everyone- I have my good spirited little voices on my shoulder for our meeting! It's this afternoon so I'll post again tonight.

The teacher isn't providing instruction because she doesn't have "time." He was doing ALEKS in class for about a month but she found that too distracting for the other students. Then they switched to Accelerated Math (which is a total misnomer and not accelerated- it's just a worksheet maker.) He gets sent home worksheets for homework but isn't supposed to do them in class because it's "disruptive" because other students want to know what he's doing.

They won't subject accelerate him, partly due to our protests. The only part of the day my DS truly loves is Spanish class. He would have to miss it to go up the next grade level (4th). I asked that they test him and see if he could go up to 5th (which is what both ALEKS and his MAP scores say) but the principal was unwilling. His take is that a 7 year old does not belong in a 5th grade class.

Hence the giant meeting today- everyone in one room, no more he said she said, no more making stuff up or blaming. It's time for a plan that makes sense or for us to leave and go somewhere else next year.

Make sure stuff gets written down and that people agree with major points as they're being recorded. When more than one person is involved in a meeting, there's always going to be disagreement or confusion about what was said or meant.

In fact, sometimes I manage to have confusion when I'm the only one in the meeting ("Did I decide... or ...?").

GOOD LUCK.

Thanks Val! You know being in CA like me, that no plan really "counts" any more than the agreement of the people in the room that it's a good idea. I fully plan on summarizing the notes and sending them to everyone with a "this is what I understood, do we all agree" type of clarification.

Thinking positive, happy, we are on the same team thoughts. Same team... same team... same team....

Great Points! Great Plan!
Even if you don't get confused, it's a great way to pull a meeting together, as in:
"I'm confused, so we agreed to a years learningm and we talked about ways to measure that learning, but what did we agree was workable?"

Hearts and More Hearts,
Grinity

Okay we're back- finally!

The meeting was weird and I'm not even sure what to say so I'll start at the beginning even though the processing speed issue didn't come up until the very end.

Essentially, the VP came in with this great idea to do exactly what we've been asking for since October. She said that she felt like it was time to give DS a diagnostic test to find out what he already knows in math and where to start from there. DUH! We of course, smiled and said "Oh that's a great idea!"

We did get them to agree that once he finishes their diagnostic, he will begin getting instruction at his appropriate level. For next year, he will start 4th grade wherever he finishes off this year and we will not have to wait until we can scrounge up a teacher meeting. We pushed heavily for him to go directly to 5th grade math next year and pending the daily schedule, that seemed agreeable to the team.

We didn't get a timeline. They all want him to finish the diagnostic test but don't want to hurry him so he has enough time to do it during math time at school. We wanted them to say he would be done by x or y but they didn't want to do that. Okay fine.

The stubborn school psych wasn't there- we had someone else from the district and her two interns. It was fun for them- they've never sat in a meeting that wasn't about remediation before :-) The psych that was there was actually visibly annoyed that the VP and teacher hadn't completed the diagnostic BEFORE this meeting since we requested it in January. She asked them point blank, how they expected to know his readiness level without having tested for it. We enjoyed that moment!

So... we have a lot of talk, with documented (already received via email) plans for the rest of this year and next but no timeline and lots of room to backpedal. It is progress...