The district that I'm thinking of open enrolling my kids into doesn't even identify kids as "gifted". So we would be going from a district where DD is one of the kids identified as gifted and in a gifted cluster to a district with no official gifted program (and it's not 10 or 30 percent in the current district--she is one of 4 in her grade of 80). However, the district with no gifted program says they take the MAP scores and other data and they simply put kids into the right level. Hence, there are 30 percent of kids working a year ahead in math. With reading they do the same thing (supposedly). I don't care about the "gifted" label. Is there a reason it really matters? I just want them to do work at the right level for their abilities.
Yeah, I don't really care about the label either-- but the point is that in any district that is identifying 10-20% (or more, as in my own) as "gifted" but then
doing nothing for those students (because apparently regular programming is "sufficient" for all of them), well, that seems to be about parents and not student needs.
What does that kind of district do with students who NEED to be 3-4-5 years ahead in math (or anything else)?
And
are they actually working +1y? Or is it just lip service? Because I've seen that particular bait-and-switch, too. Here, it is mostly about letting Tiger Parents
feel tigerish. On the plus side, I suppose that it does do some nice things in terms of protecting MG and bright-MG-ish children from their well-meaning parents without actually engaging in harming those children as much as their parents (evidently) would like.
So there is that.
Personally, I think that I would rather that they just educated all the kids according to their evident needs, and forgot about labeling altogether. Same difference.
