Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Letter to school re DS and math - response!

Eibbed, I think part of what you're possibly caught up in here is that the school might not have a true end-of-1st or 2nd grade assessment that ties to their curriculum set up - our elementary tended to do assessments by units rather than have a full-on first grade/2nd grade etc assessment... and the other gotcha was that state testing (where we are) doesn't start until 3rd grade, and doesn't cover all the concepts that are actually taught. In our case there is a lot of early elementary spiraling of "thinking" and "explaining" type work in math vs more traditional easily quantifiable stuff. How's that for a confusing thought to follow lol? Sorry I'm not explaining that well.. BUT.. fwiw, I'd take Sweetie's advice - sign up for the free 2-week trial verson of Aleks and have your ds take the assessments for as many grade levels as you can. The VERY USEFUL thing about the Aleks assessments is they will give you a detailed report that ties your child's knowledge to YOUR specific state curriculum standards (for all 50 states). It's also very easy to reset a grade level so that if your ds for instance, aces the grade level X assessment, you can switch him up to grade level X+1 and have him take that assessment (just be sure to save all the reports from the grade level X before making the switch).

The one gotcha with Aleks might be starting grade level - we used Aleks for after-schooling but it was several years ago, and at the time we used it, I think it started at grade 3.... but I also think they were adding in lower grade levels, or at least that was in their plan.

If there isn't a grade level below 3 and you need that for your ds, check out IXL. At the time we were using IXL (also several years back), it didn't have the same type of reporting against state standards but they might have added that since then.

THEN - if you find an online source to provide you with the assessment against state standards, also google around on your school district's website to see if they've done any type of research/eval/etc of that same company. The reason to do this - if they've done an eval and found a company's program to be credible, you can use this as backup when you go to your meeting, take the evals you've done online at home, and fire that back at your school staff if they cast doubt on the assessments.

Last thing - our ds was denied math acceleration in early elementary (in his case due to a disability that impacts his ability to write down math facts quickly). He literally had no acceleration at school all the way through 5th grade. For him, the downside was he was extremely bored and he eventually became extremely frustrated when he saw other kids get acceleration (and rather than just become frustrated he advocated for himself and was still denied). However, we let him afterschool in Aleks, we kept the reports of what he'd learned vs state standards, and when he had an opportunity to ask for acceleration at school in 6th, those reports got it for him. He's now in 7th grade, appropriately accelerated in math and science and he's doing VERY well. I realize that's not the optimal outcome - the acceleration should have happened way back in K... but... just wanted to put that out there to let you know that for those of us who advocate like crazy in early elementary and aren't successful... it's not the end of the world. It's frustrating and beyond annoying for sure, but it's also only one step in the journey.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - one other thought that comes to mind - our school was so very into "explain your work" and "show your work" all through elementary - and that was extremely challenging for our ds... for those very simple concept problems. If you think that might be potentially happening for your ds - work is so very simple, there's essentially nothing to explain (from his point of view) you might take a few of his example worksheets and talk him through it and write down what he tells you - ie, you scribe his thought process, so you can show that as extra proof he's got the concepts down.