I received the "gifted report" from my son's school on Friday. Apparently, as a formality, the school has to do a "gifted report" to document DS qualifying for the gifted program; and, also I suppose as a formality, the teacher still does, as a part of that report, a gifted rating scale of DS even though he fully qualified with his test scores alone and the rating scale was redundant/unnecessary. I did not see the actual ratings the teacher gave DS, (although I assume if i want I can request them?) but only the "t-scores" and none of the categories came up as significant for "gifted" based on the teachers responses. It doens't matter really because he is in the program regardless. But, really, it makes me sad considering that on her BASC-2 rating scales she gave pretty extremely negative ratings across the board - probably resulting in his coming up as very significant on a number of disorders. And many of her reponses were based on "assumptions" and not actual observations. So she is more than willing to "see" negative . But on the gifted rating scale looks like she sees him as barely average. This kid is the highest reader in her class. On every test, they give him he comes up as the highest. He passed the 4th grade reading comprehension section of the school's Qualitative Reading Inventory and passed the fifth grade (with 80%) word list. He is in the 92nd percentile for math and always attemtps the extra-challenge problems at the end of the math tests and has received As on those sections. And she can't find it in herself to "see" any significant gifted qualities in this kid? Seriously?
I am so tempted to point this out at the next meeting. I'd be more understanding if DS's achievement was not bearing out but that isn't the case.
