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oh my. That does not sound at all promising at all! I am so sorry you had that response

Ugh. I wonder if this is a knee-jerk reaction to all the data-driven mania that seems to have overtaken our country, state and county.

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So we put everybody in the same room, give the teachers to the kids in the middle, and let the gifted kids teach the slow ones?

I don't think I would bother going back to that school again. Run! Run like the wind!

What she said. Wow, what a bummer that such a promising model was de-funded, blackcat.

My sisters had to do that when they were kids. The schools where we were living were apparently badder than bad (I was a baby). My dad worked for the government and was highly regarded. I've been told that he went to his boss and said, in a most gentle and indirect way, "Look at this cool job offer I got! If you don't transfer me away from these wretched schools, well shucks, I'll just have to take it! "

The transfer came through and we moved in early July.

How about letting your DD and DS to take their standardized test for acceleration? Our State policy is that if the student pass the grade standard test, they can accelerate. All public schools must follow state policy/regulations.

It is so disappointing when the good things get destroyed.

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Blackcat - does you son have or qualify for an (personal) assistant in the classroom?

Ridiculous. Scratch that school from your list right now.

We have an IEP meeting today, actually, but they told me the most he would get would be 20 min. of pull-out OT per week.

Our old school (near Boston) used to have a lovely enrichment program for spelling and math for 4th, 5th, and 6th grades with wonderful (college-level) teachers. The year my DS was in 5th grade, the school explicitly (and proudly! in the principal's newsletter to parents!) redirected the funding for remedial education so that kids at the 20th percentile could have a shot at passing the MCAS (the state's annual NCLB test).

it is wrong for society to have 1% have 99% of the wealth. But it is not like our kids can really shed IQ points to improve the scores of the lower kids - though with enough effort it can be made to seem that way. Our kids should get to learn at school too.

honestly, i think a lot of the resistance comes from the (false) assumption that gifted kids will be just fine without any intervention. i made that mistake myself when it came to DD5 - i literally thought, "well, she's fairly bright, so school should be a snap for her" (oh my, that was a rude awakening!)

of course, that doesn't explain why individual no-cost/low-cost interventions are such a giant wrangle, but it might explain the lack of political will.

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ha, yeah - i didn't live up to my potential in school, either! my system was to do *just* enough to not have to explain myself to my parents. my parents themselves did fine with school - but then again, they also got multiple grade skips, and no questions asked.

fwiw, the private school we painstakingly picked (and SCRIMPED to afford) for DD didn't want to deal with her issues - they also thought she should just magically be a-ok, and they didn't care too much when she wasn't.

of course, 1/3 of her class got free speech therapy (which is awesome!) through the school - but DD got booted out of a math enrichment program that a teacher had specifically invited her to join. she fit in beautifully, but when the administration found out, it was all over: the sessions were 2+ grades above her "level" and she was suddenly persona non grata.

that was an excellent thing to have to explain to a 5 y/o who had finally found something good about school.

I sent an email yesterday to DS's IEP manager saying we are wondering why DS is doing the first grade level math curriculum in school. I said that given his obviously advanced ability level, he should not be doing a prescribed curriculum and put into a box by the district. What could he accomplish in math if he was actually taught to his abilities? I said that we need to find creative ways for him to thrive academically in spite of his physical limitations (he has developmental coordination disorder and motor skills that are about 2 years behind). I wrote this deliberately knowing she will forward it to everyone on the IEP team including the principal and his teacher. No one has responded.

I also sent a note in with DS to his teacher this morning stating that DS will no longer be doing the first grade level math homework, since it is approx. 2.5 years below his level. I said that he prefers to do advanced math and will do that instead. I can't control what they make him do at school, but I can control what he does at home. What are they going to do? Report me to CPS because I'm not forcing him to do math that he mastered a long time ago?

But the assumption is ubiquitous. If you look at reports of test scores or graduation rates or whatever, they typically focus on closing achievement gaps between the rich and the poor, as though wealth was the ONLY reason for the gaps. NOW, I'm not saying that poverty doesn't affect school and work performance, because it clearly has a huge effect. The problem, IMO, is that substantially ALL performance gaps get attributed to the rich/poor divide and ignore the fact that some people are just really smart. And some people aren't. (And both groups are in all SES classes.)

I suspect that there are many educators/researchers who simply don't like to admit that some 1) people are simply born smart and 2) you really can't turn average (innate) talent into giftedness. In part, and IMO, ideas about educational equity and everyone being able to go to college aren't just made-up PC fantasies. I think they stem in (large?) part from outsourcing skilled and semi-skilled jobs that used to be a route to the middle class in this country. Unfortunately, this situation puts a large chunk of people into a corner, where they're told that they MUST go to college in order to find a decent job. It's possible that MG+ kids are a nasty reminder that equal educational outcomes are simply a fantasy.




Actually, the grass is greener, and gifties are "haves" in the world of generally applicable ability. Gifted kids learn faster and better. If you don't teach elementary-level mathematics properly to a gifted kid, she can self-teach what she doesn't pick up by osmosis. Other kids can't do that. Yes, there is also the disaster that befalls gifties when they don't learn how to approach something that's cognitively challenging. It's just that the horror of this problem may be hidden because the gifties can function naturally at a level considered normal. Non-gifties may have a much harder time with that if they haven't received a good education.

Really, this is the double-edged sword that is the US educational disaster. And it's helped along by narrowed opportunities for people who wouldn't have gone to college 50 or 60 years ago (including gifties) but who would have led good lives doing good jobs that paid good money. All without student loans.

And as for asking too many questions, yes, that makes us a PITA at school. I'm not justifying the school's negative reaction or excusing ignoring MG+ kids (and really, above average kids, too) at school. But, in my opinion, it's not super-realistic to expect that a teacher or administrator with average-ish abilities will be able to really understand a very bright person who sees the world in a fundamentally different and more nuanced way. Again, I'm not excusing the system, but am offering an explanation for why things don't work on an individual level. As a person who sees a lot of nuance, you think you're making such a reasonable argument or request, but in the eyes of people who've never or only rarely seen a kid like yours, and who probably don't think like you do, you're coming out of left field and challenging ideas that have worked at that school for years or decades. Who do you think you are, anyway?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome