My wife and I went through a great.deal.of.hassle while advocating for our son's (YS2003) needs in public school. Fortunately, we're in Pennsylvania which has strong laws in favor of the gifted child - if the parent knows how to use them properly, which is a big 'if'.

Having made it through that particular wilderness, and after a couple of years speaking to parents groups about gifted advocacy, I put together a site specific to Pennsylvania which addresses gifted ed issues. The site is here: Applied Gifted Ed website

It differs from Hoagies (and to an extent the Davidson Gifted Database) in that the focus of the site is on what happens during your Gifted IEP meeting with the district and how to take what you've learned about giftedness and make it mean something.

Wow - thanks - that's terrific!
I wish my state had similar legislation and similar Webbuilders!
Trinity

I wish we had had a guide like this for our state five years ago when we took on the school district and lost! Wonderful job!!!!!!

well, the idea behind the site was to flatten the learning curve for parents.

My personal observation is that parents of HG/PG kids often know more about their kid's giftedness than about 'the system'. That's why the site deals alot with gifted ed process issues and not 'gifted ed theory' as much.

Pennsylvania has a unique set of rules that strongly favor the gifted child.

For groups like Davidson Institute and the Templeton Foundation, PA is the perfect state for conducting research - the state requires districts to identify all school age children at parent request - even for privately placed students, the state mandates individualized educational plans based on student need, and districts are specifically excluded from citing adminstrative difficulty or costs associated with implementing an appropriate plan for the kid in public school.

My local public school has more resources than the private schools in the area. The problem was figuring out how to get them made available. That's where knowing 'the system' comes into play.

Great website Todd. Well done. I have family in PA and a sister who used to be a teacher there (now in a different industry)--I will let her know about the site so she can spread the word to others in PA.