I just sent an email to our state gifted coordinator complaining about the way my son was treated in our public school and asking for part time school for kids who can't seem to get an appropriate education at school.
My son was born with hypotonia and had motor delays possibly due to mild birth asphyxia. At 12 months his motor skills were 50% delayed, but tests showed that he was 50% advanced in receptive/expressive language skills. During the test he pointed to an A in an alphabet book and said A. He was obsessed with letters and numbers and by 2 1/2 he read his first easy reader book--only 12 months after he was finally able to walk.
He didn't go to preschool because he didn't fit in. He loved shows like Between the Lions and other educational shows.
At 4 1/2 he started musical theater classes and was able to memorize his lines (300 words) and he did this faster than the much older kids. One teenager said he had to be "autistic" to be able to do this. He does not have Asperger's or any form of autism according to his developmental pediatrician.
The month he turned 5 he had his Kindergarten Assessment and I was able to listen to it. The teacher said he was at the 4 and 4 1/2 year old level. When asked to name animals he was counted as being at a 4 year old level because he didn't name very many--he was spelling some of them and then tried to recall all the different kinds of cats--tigers, lions, etc. before moving on to a different type of animal. He refused to try to write numbers because of his motor skills. It bothered him that he couldn't write or draw very well. He asked too many questions and the teacher called this "verbal overflow." She thought we should keep him out of school until he was six.
He started Kindergarten at age 5 anyway and on the first day of class the teacher handed me a list of instructions. I handed it to my son who both read out loud and followed the instructions--Flesch-Kincade 5th grade level. He read a page from an encyclopedia for his "letter of the week" show & tell but he wouldn't color in the lines. For this reason, the teacher recommended transitional first grade (a year in between Kindergarten and first) so he could spend most of his time coloring--which he absolutely hated. Ironically, he was already scheduled for a proficiency based promotion test to see if he qualified to skip first grade. He did not make the required 90% to skip first grade but his scores were high enough that they would have been considered passing scores for an end of year first grade student. My son said he saw percent questions on the first grade test and he hadn't learned about percents.
We even told the kindergarten teacher about my son's highly gifted half-brother who dropped out of school because he wasn't learning anything. We told her about our son's unusual way of doing subtraction with negative numbers before he turned five. She was only concerned with the fact that he wouldn't color in the lines.
A first grade teacher with training in special ed told me I needed to either homeschool or put him in private school because it was my duty as a parent to see that he got an appropriate education and it would not happen at that school. I did not have any training as a teacher--just an associates in accounting--but I thought I had no choice, so I homeschooled. Twelve months later, after my son homeschooled maybe two hours a day, the individual achievement test given to him by a certified educational psychologist at the developmental pediatrician's office showed that he was at just turned seven, reading and comprehending at 5th grade level and doing math at 4th even though he had not been taught at that level. The educational psychologist said he thought my son could have scored even higher because he complained about being tired and he seemed to have some vision problems and time ran out before he missed enough questions to stop the test. In fact I had tested him at home and he was easily reading and comprehending at a 7th grade level. A few months later he read Time magazine and answered questions about what he read. He has since had vision therapy.
My son did play online educational games and must have learned a lot there. It is a shame that he can learn more at home just by playing games than he can in our public school.
We took the achievement tests to the school and spoke with the special ed director about possible accomodations. He never called us back. The superintendent said he couldn't really help me because this was "a good problem to have."
I think other twice exceptional kids in our state are being treated the same way and it makes me angry to think about this. I am sending in an application with a portfolio to Davidson Institute to see if he qualifies for their Young Scholar Program, but since he does not have a full scale IQ score I don't know if he will qualify. We can't afford testing. Insurance paid for the achievement test but will not pay for an IQ test.
My son just turned nine and is enjoying reading a college level psychology book and he studies SAT word books that are written for high school students. His gifted middle school friends tell him about the robotics class that the gifted middle school kids get to do, and I hate for him to miss out on these things. We also need a math mentor because he wants to solve math problems in ways I was never taught and we end up fighting over math.
I don't think it is fair that my son should have to do without. We pay our fair share of taxes.
