Do you know how the placement decisions are made for middle school honors courses? For instance, in our district (not in NJ) the kids who are in the gifted program in elementary school are automatically allowed to choose honors courses but children who haven't been identified are let in based on standardized testing that is done at the end of elementary school (not state testing).
The place to start is to know exactly what the policy (in writing) for admission into the gifted program in elementary and the honors classes in middle school. Granted, what is in writing isn't necessarily what is followed in practice, but in order to advocate in a difficult situation you always need to know what is stated in the actual policy and you can *always* use that in advocating whether or not it's used by the school routinely in practice.
The next thing that would probably be helpful is if you had any kind of ability testing for your child, and I'm guessing you would need to have that done privately. That would give you another strong data point if his ability was clearly high.
I also don't know anything about NJ, but I know in our state that high scores state testing is *not* a strong measure to use in advocating simply because the state testing is actually testing a rather low ability level compared to what high achieving kids are capable of.
You've also mentioned that English is your second language - do you sometimes feel that puts you at a disadvantage in talking to the school staff when advocating? If so, (and this is true for all parents, not just in the situation of potential language challenges) - try to do as much of your advocating as you can in writing. We're in a slightly different position in that we were advocating for a ds who was 2e but we found it extremely helpful to be able to ask for advice in how to communicate with the school from a parent's advocate. If there is anyway you could get advice from a local advocate who knows your local schools it might be extremely helpful.
Last thought - I am sure it's tremendously discouraging to see children included in the enrichment program who seem to be there because their parents politicked to get them into it. The flip side to that is - those parents had a voice. They most likely squeaked and squalked loudly and perhaps made a stink, but however unfair it might be... it means that a parent who advocates does stand a chance of getting their kid into the program... and if you squeak and squalk loudly enough *and* have data to back up your request, you stand a good chance (hopefully) of getting your child into the program too.
polarbear
UNfortunately, what I feel, my squeaks are doing opposite. I feel that I cannot help my son and he is losing his confidence and desire to learn. He is tooo little to know all ugliness of this word. He does not understand , why it happened , why kids with much lower abilities year after year in the enrichment program while his results without any additional programs are higher,.
