I disagree, your definition of PG is too narrow. If we only look at the TATE's of this world, many children who need specialized education will be left out.
I agree, Bianca. We have one child in our district who is obviously PG and is accelerated several grades. People seem to accept his acceleration as needed, but lump all the other students together. The district insists that the services provided by our district serve the needs of all the other students. Though they may serve the needs of the MG children, the needs of the children between MG and prodigy are not sufficiently met. I feel like the biggest battle I have to fight in our district is to educate people that the difference is not necessarily how much these students know but the rate at which they learn.
I think those of us with children between MG and prodigy sometimes forget how profoundly different our children are. We spend everyday with our children and what they are appears relatively normal to us. I had a bring me back to reality moment the other day at our local science museum. The museum had three tables set up with hands on exhibits for children. There were a couple of teen volunteers at each table. As we went up to each table DD9 would talk to the teen volunteers about the items on the table. Without fail at each table one of the teenagers said to dd9, "Wow, you are really smart."
Wow, these kids are really smart even if they are not prodigies. The DYS site states, "we strive to serve the extreme of the gifted population." We need a term to differentiate the needs of this extreme. IMO their needs are profound. That is why it is so difficult to find an appropriate educational environment for them. Over 80% of the PG (using DYS criteria) children I know are educated outside of the public school system because the public school system failed to meet their needs.
We are working with terminology defined by a test which is no longer valid. People have tried to superimpose the terminology onto the valid tests of the day, but I think everyone is in agreement those tests do not differentiate sufficiently at the higher levels. For lack of a better definition, I use PG as defined by DYS criteria.
