Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Hi everyone... new here

At our very good public school in California, they give pull-outs and tutoring for the kids in the bottom 20% but nothing (until 4th grade) for the top kids.
My son's third grade class keeps going over money, telling time, briefly multiplication... it's very slow.... It's all about the test scores.
My son got in the "advanced" score (highest possible) last year on reading and math for the yearly STAR test given- that's gotten him nothing in terms of enrichment. He's in a class of low-performing kids this year, I guess b/c they sprinkle the high-performing kids around to even the classes out.
We are waiting until 4th grade when the g/t class starts- it's full-time and allows them to skip a year of math before 7th grade. Sigh... Welcome to NCLB.

jack'smom - They put the high achievers in with the low achievers because studies have shown it really helps the low achievers. The fact that it's probably damaging the high achievers is apparently not of much importance. They do the same thing at my son's school - spread out the lowest-scoring kids and the highest-scoring kids across all the classes. One of the teachers had told me before 1st that they were pushing to change this and put the top 25% in one class, and the bottom 25% in another and then split the middle into the two other classes, but they were overruled by the administration. I'm sure CA has the same situation as TX where improving failing scores to passing ones = $$ for the school.

Then I'd tell my kid to pick the wrong answer on every question on the the test. The closer to zero they got, the better.

As for the "studies show" that high performers boost the other kids scores - maybe if the poor performers are copying their answers.

The best solution for the lower performers is to put them in classes with a low student-teacher ratio so they can move at their pace. Teaching to the low middle does a disservice to everyone but the low middle.

"The best solution for the lower performers is to put them in classes with a low student-teacher ratio so they can move at their pace."

SSSHHH! This sounds expensive.