Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How imporant are exclusive gifted schools for PG?

I hate to tell you, but in my experience with my oldest DD the IQ scores at a later date may level off. She was much like your child at 16 months, and although she still performs at a HG+ level, especially in non-verbal reasoning and her VCI, she only tests MG on most tests and would not qualify for separate gifted schools. (She had the highest math average for her school last year in top-block 6th grade pre-algebra and is consistently the highest in STAR reading scores/AR points in her school.) In her case, however, it is likely a 2E situation with written expression/non-verbal working memory/dysgraphia/anxiety issues coming into play.

Hello sweetpeas and welcome! You found the right place Sorry, I have to make this fast but I wanted to say that I have to agree with ultramarina...Your children are still very young to form an opinion on their exact level of giftedness. Of course I would still look into all the resources you can. The books that were recommended are great. There is something with your children for sure, but is it truly "giftedness" or a high achieving child? What I'm trying to say, is that I was absolutely convinced that my oldest was profoundly gifted. He actually hit the milestones earlier than what you mentioned and after reading Dr. Ruf's levels of giftedness, he clearly was a level 4. Long story short...After testing, he was obviously very bright but highly gifted??? Ummm well, no. Through the years we have found that he is and always has been a parent/teacher/people pleaser and a perfectionist to the max. When it came and comes to academic type stuff like you mentioned (colors, letters, words, numbers...)he would blow everyone away, but when it came to the real brilliant out of the box "wow" thinking, he was and still is just "average" Lol Public schools with added academic competitions and regular honors classes have been great and has been enough for him. Now my youngest was a different story...He had all the amazing "wow" moments but not neccessarily the early academic milestones like my first. He was and is still not a pleaser or a perfectionist and could care less what teachers want him to perform on...Haha Well, HE is the one who tested highly gifted not the firstborn. This is just my experience and thought I would offer more to think about before uprooting your family. Partial homeschooling along with subject acceleration in public school has been great! Trying to figure out all the complexities of our childrens personalities and needs can be overwhelming. I'm so glad you found this forum. You sound like a great mom!

Thank you all - what wonderful responses! Very helpful.

Part of the reason that we are thinking about this now... we've outgrown our house and are debating if we should do an addition or just upgrade to a larger house (possibly moving nearer to the gifted school as well). We are leaning very heavily to staying here, because we like this area and it is near my parents - who are very involved with our kids. The gifted school is in a very densely populated, and we are more "wide open spaces" types. So if we decide the gifted school is the best idea, I might bite the bullet and drive them. It could be a good hour with traffic, but that is life in suburbia.

It's really good to hear some of you had children with similar "achievements" as young toddlers that leveled out a bit as they got older. I hope no one takes this the wrong way, but I do hope that is what happens with DD. Gifted is wonderful and I could deal with it. DH and I were both in gifted programs, so I kind of "get" those challenges. But PG is an entirely different bag of bones and, honestly, a pretty scary proposition in my mind. So I do hope that DD is maybe just having an intellectual growth spurt and this won't necessarily be her trajectory.

Our strong preference would be to send them to the local public school. I like the idea of "partial home schooling" and as a stay-at-home mom I would certainly be up to the task.

We are going to go and check out the school, have a tour and whatnot.

Since my son will be starting kindergarten in a couple of years, I agree that the wise thing to do would to be to focus on HIS education needs first. I do feel that DS would do OK with the local public schools, but given his personality I do worry that the high student/teacher ratios would not be ideal.

It's possible that your local schools will understand about giftedness and levels of giftedness and will try to provide an appropriate education for your kids. But it's also possible that they won't. Here's my meandering advice:

1. Make a list of questions and ask them of the principals and teachers at any prospective school, INCLUDING the gifted school.

Examples:

• My son started to read when he was two and now reads books like x, y, z. How do you approach kids like him? (When you say it this way, you won't put them on the defensive.) You do not want your son spending kindergarten and first grade learning about the letter of the week and sounding out Level 1 readers.
• What is your policy on kids who are working two or more years ahead of grade level in math (or whatever)? Stick to specifics: use numbers and subject areas.
• What is your policy on acceleration (grade skipping) in subjects or for a whole grade?
• Do you do out-of-level testing to determine placement? (Schools often don't think to test past a student's age-grade level: it doesn't seem to occur to the ones I've talked to.)

Listen carefully to their answers and maybe even write them down. If they say things like, "We will observe him for six weeks and then revisit the question," be careful. You'll be stuck at that school after six weeks. What's wrong with testing him sooner?

If they say things like, "We've never done a skip and I, for one, never will," or "We let a kid skip a grade in 1982 and it was a disaster and we'll never do that again," you're in for an uphill battle. Watch out for phrases like "All children are gifted." They're a sign that whoever says them doesn't get it.

2. Federal law (No Child Left Behind/NCLB) punishes schools for low test scores but doesn't reward high scores. So schools have no incentives to help talented kids but lots of disincentives in that regard. Some try very hard to help gifted kids, but remember that the law is pushing them to work with kids on the other end of the achievement spectrum.

3. Does the private school have an IQ cutoff? If so, how high is it? The top 2% (130) is very different from the top 10% (119-120). Your kids may be past the top 0.1% (145). There are a few schools that use 145 as a cutoff. If they take the top 10%, the school may be oriented toward above-average learners rather than truly gifted learners, and you might have to do some research to determine if the financial sacrifice is worth the return you'll get. Anecdote: teachers at a California school for gifted kids did an interview not long ago where they said that the kids who learn to read when they're two or three all "even out" by fourth grade and that early reading is "just another milestone" like walking. So much for them understanding about gifted kids! So, back to point 1: I would ask the gifted school how many two- or three-year-old readers they've had and what their policy toward them is.

If you think seriously about the private school, get stuff in writing before you give them a check. It's easy to get excited about a school; remember that the reality may be very different from the PR --- in part because PR is more open to interpretation than the daily grind.

4. Other minor points: how long is the school day at each school? In California, public K-5 schools (in the Bay area at least) have short school days: ~8:20-~2:20 except Weds., when they get out at ~1:20. Private schools have an extra 5-6 school hours per week. This is a huge advantage over public schools.

But public schools might have better programs if they're bigger (usually applies more in middle and high schools). How big is the private school? What kinds of programs do they have?

Are the public schools talking about cutting the school year to save money? They've started saying this in California.

Phew. That was long. Hope I helped. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to avoid doing my taxes, which I must now do. I hate taxes....

Oh one more thing: you mentioned your son's personality. My eldest son is stubborn and knows his own mind very well. My daughter is more compliant. She would have fit in better in the public schools as a result, but I think they would actually have damaged her more than my eldest. He's more prone to speak up or act out if something isn't right. DD would be far more likely to just go with the flow and probably wouldn't have been stretched appropriately. She turned 7 last week and is in 3rd grade. It's not much of a challenge so far, but her brain would be quietly ossifying if she was in 2nd grade now (and because of cutoff dates, some schools might have pushed to redshirt her and she could still be in first grade!!).

Great post, thank you!!! You shared a lot of good information - I haven't absorbed it all yet.

But you mentioned their cut-offs at the gifted school. Funny, I never even thought to check it out. They have an IQ of 125 listed as the minimum. hmmm...

Thanks - more later, but gotta run at the moment!

Welcome!

Our DS7 is PG according to tests, and we have some experience with some different school options. But as a preface, I would never say to anyone that a particular school option will likely work for their kid, and the kid will be able to stay there for all of elementary; there are too many variables, and the kid's personality will be a big factor. (FYI, we are in a smallish city 45 miles outside a major metro area.) Here is what we did. We got IQ testing on our son at age 4, because we thought he should probably start school early and in our state the schools generally require proof of IQ >130 to start early. We were shocked with much higher scores, and the psychologist gave us advice to wait another year to enter school and let our kid play awhile, since we would likely have lots of school changes in our future. We approached the local GT coodinator the spring before DS would start kindy with IQ report in hand, even though the district GT services didn't start until 3rd. We asked her what we should do. She acted as a liaison with the prinicpal, who helped hand select a kindy teacher who was good at differentiation and who would like having a kid like ours in her class. The school psychologist did some achievement testing, and we also filled out some other sort of social testing. It took half a year before DS was given appropriate math (which ended up being really great - the GT coordinator bascially tutored him on 2nd grade math). The kindy teacher was good at differentiating in reading, so we didn't worry about that. At the end of the year, we used that Iowa Acceleration Scales to convince the school that DS needed to skip 1st. They ultimately agreed (since it would be easier than the planned differentiation of 2 years for math/reading if he had stayed in 1st). We had troubles when DS started 2nd in getting him the right math (he was supposed to have 3rd, but they just kept him in 2nd, which he had already done). When we finally got math right with the local 2nd, we heard of an opening in a school for HG kids 45 miles from our house. The school is a year advanced, so with the grade skip DS was 2 years ahead baseline. We transfered DS mainly because we wanted him to be with kids closer to his level. The biggest change was that my stress level went down immediately, since DS was finally getting appropriate challenge across the board and we didn't have to closely monitor/remind the teacher that DS needs more in something or another.

DS is now in 3rd at the HG school (just started). I am hopeful that this will be a good fit for a while, but I am prepared to be flexible. This school seems particularly good at letting kids work at their own levels, and grouping kids by ability. Although it is easier on us to have him at this school, the local school was very willing to work with us and was pretty flexible, so I think we could have made it work if we didn't have this other option.

A quick comment about private schools. They do not have to do anything if they don't want to, so I wouldn't recommend moving near a private school unless you had a bunch of assurances in writing. Also, I'd try to track down families with kids like yours in the area who went to various schools and ask them how things went.

Gotta go. Sorry for the rambling. In sum, I'd say that if you remain flexible, things will be fine, even if you are not in the ideal school (if there is one). Work with the schools like your are partners, and try not to be too demanding.

I'm not offended and I totally understand where you are coming from, but I wanted to offer some reassurance. I have a child who did not level off at all. While PG may seem scary initially, some stuff that scares us turns out to be wonderful. The extreme gifted stuff has made aspects of our lives more complicated particularly as it relates to planning out education. At the same time though there is also immense joy. I no longer wish to will away some of the giftedness because it is part of who the child is and how he experiences the world. Yeah, it wasn't what I expected but isn't that the best part of parenting - all the unexpected stuff? So, I just wanted to say the best you can I urge you not to fear her development. It is part of who she is and being different doesn't have to mean having an unhappy or difficult life. In fact some of the g stuff can help make life pretty great.

School: I would strongly discourage you from moving for a school until you really know the school well and how it will work for both of your kids. There are a lot of variables there beyond the gifted part and I wouldn't make a major commitment until you've really worked with the school for a while and you are confident it will be a match for your kid.

Homeschooling: I would keep in mind that you don't have to do it all. Particularly as you are thinking about the cost of private school, taking just a fraction of that to hire out some of the education can simplify the process quite a bit. You can look to homeschool organizations and co-ops for social stuff - arts, PE, field trips, etc. And, then think about hiring tutors such as retired teachers or graduate students for any subjects where you'd like some assistance.

I am seconding this, though moving off on a tangent. We went into testing after having read Ruf's levels, and thinking "well, it's a relief we don't have a PG kid, because that would be so hard." Then we got results pegging our kid as PG. But he's certainly not what I thought of at the time as PG - he is not one of those kids who stands out as doing amazing things. He's pretty quiet and blends well. He does not act out in class if he's in the wrong placement, as he is a teacher pleaser who doesn't want to get into trouble. He is sort of "sneaky" PG; every once in awhile he'll say something so amazing that it reminds you that he's a little different.

I guess my point, if I have one, is that PG comes in all different shapes and sizes and flavors. There are those prodigious PG kids, who are obvious to all, and then there are a whole lot of others who test into it, and who do learn at an extremely fast rate and know tons of stuff and test really high all the time, but you wouldn't necessarily think of them as PG if you just happened to meet them.

Also, it's hard to say if your kiddo will level off or not, but I'm guessing that she won't seem so extreme in a few years. Our DS probably did most of the things your DD did at an early age, but once you get in school the other kids who learn things at the normal developmental time start to know a lot of that stuff too, so your kid doesn't seem quite as out there. It's when they're really young that they really stand out. (I remember hearing people say, shocked, "Did the BABY just say that!?") I'm not saying that "they all even out", but rather than it's not quite as extreme as the other kids have finally gotten to the first level, and some of them have strengths in certain areas, etc. I'm still surpised whenever my kiddo brings home these super high test scores, since he doesn't seem out there to me anymore after meeting the other kids, but he still is.

I am sorry for going off into a tangent, but what age do some PG kids level off? Does this vary also?