Kcab, that makes sense. I hadn't thought of the mysterious subterranean school politics! who knows what lurks under there?? But yes, Kriston, it seriously seemed to be in response to our coming in with this and then not jumping immediately to whole-grade accelerate him. We did ask then to put him in second grade math if it were possible...they said, oh that'd be SO HARD and we really think you need to skip. We said, "oh, of course we'll be thinking about it, but we want to wait on the classroom observation and social testing and think about it, so can you look into it because that's seriously a source of a lot of misery for him (with test scores to make that plausible sitting on the table in front of them), and, while we're waiting to take advantage of the perspective of your wonderful staff, what could be done to help him on reading? We keep hearing rumors of some other kid who's at his level in reading...couldn't they get together? And we know there are kids in his room who read more advanced books at home...our son can't be the only one who'd benefit." But we didn't expect much to come of it, b/c we've been pushing in that direction for more than a year and getting every stonewall in the book about not needing it and the curriculum being perfect and grouping being unfair and wrong. Maybe there was some other reason for the about-face, but it sure SEEMED like it changed the day they had their psych, the counselor, the teacher, and the principal all arrayed to tell us we were pushing our child into nervous breakdown land, and our psychologist slapped the tests on the table and squashed all their objections and qualifications.
The only other thing I can think of, is we did manage to steer the conversation a bit into, what can we do to help, it's terrible the school doesn't get more funding to let you do what you want to be able to, and let them tell us about how it would help to have parents at the board of finance...I don't know. Maybe it really did give them a reason to get on this, thinking, lets take advantage of this...I don't know. I expected them to want to push for a GT teacher in the budget, not rethink things!!
I'm flabbergasted, b/c the beginning of the year school meeting was about how they had completed the curriculum...that it was a 900 page book that told teachers what to do every step of the way so we parents could be 100% assured our child would get the exact same education no matter what classroom they were in. Oy vey...we thought, we are NEVER going to be able to get them to rethink The Plan.
It felt...I don't know. I felt wrongfooted. I've been reading and scheming and trying to figure out how I was going to, step by step, get them to rethink being against flexible grouping. And then, they just kind of casually toss it out, oh, yes, I'm glad you brought it up, we might have forgotten, we've decided to change how first grade handles reading. ??
Now I guess I'll just be afraid this isn't going to work or last...they did say ominous things about how we couldn't expect this every year, that schedules were Very Complicated. etc.
