Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Problem with our schools enrichment

I'm new here, so I apologize if this has been covered before. I did do fairly deep search, but may have not searched for the right terms.

Our DS10 is in a GATE magnet program in LAUSD (Los Angeles). We were thrilled to get him in, and hoped it would be a step up from our local school which was nice but not up to his level (they have an SAS program, but their idea of differentiation is somehow different from what my dictionary says). What we found is not what we expected, and to be fair this is partially our own fault.

The school believes strongly in enrichment. We assumed this meant enriched work instead of the regular work, not in addition to. (laugh now. Like I said, I'm new here) So now we're facing a serious dilemma. Our son is now dealing with 4-5 hours of homework a night. The work is mostly disparate. Rarely does one subject support the others, and worse still, it is all grade level. *sigh* The classroom population is something like 2/3 girls, and the majority of the kids appear to be what we used to politely call apple polishers. Mind you, they appear to be good kids who have always enjoyed school, so I suppose receiving even more school as a reward for being smart makes sense for them. It just doesn't for our DS.

Had I known what I know now, I would have pushed for advancement back in 2nd or 3rd grade. Back when it would have made sense. Now we are dealing with the emotional issues of a boy who is in a new school and has almost no friends. Moving him to a middle school (which starts at grade 6 here) at this point is not really in the cards.

Anyway, what I am looking for is studies/data that show the efficacy (or lack thereof) of enrichment, and/or homework in 5th grade. I happen to like DS' teacher, but find the amount of work to be crushing for a kid like him. He is already talking about not liking school. Often. This is not a good sign to us. Yet we don't know what exactly to do.

Ideas. Suggestions. All will be appreciated, especially if anyone knows of studies I can show to the school's magnet coordinator. I prefer to politely point out the schools flaws rather than beat them over the head.

TIA

I don't know of any studies, but I personally feel anything over an hour in elementary is far too much. I mean, if the kid can't figure it out after spending all day in class going over the same material for days/weeks at a time, how does and extra hour at night help? It just seems like busy work to me.

10 minutes per grade per night is my personal max.

There's a useful analysis here: http://www.marzanoresearch.com/documents/GSASR_HomeworkArticle.pdf

Note that it's extremely pro-homework, and devotes an entire section to "more is not better," complete with cites.

US Dept of Education says 3-5 math problems are more than enough to show if you got it or not (now of course 3 calculus problems are completely different than three addition problems so I even go as far as to say 2 hard problems up to 5 practice in straight calculation problems) is enough. And if you give elementary school kids a few quiet minutes at the end of the day for "work time" you might not need to bring it home (depending on the math task).

If I ruled the world...2-5 math problems, maybe a challenge problem for those who actually like that kind of stuff (optional) and reading would be the only allowable homework (reading could be reading class assignments, own book, something for a content class)...with the occasional review/study for test(with help on learning HOW to study for a test). Everything else (including projects and papers and such) should be done at school.

What you describe is a program that (in my not-professional opinion) would appeal to those one standard deviation from the norm, IQ 115 or so... the bright kids who find grade-level work satisfying and engaging. For the truly gifted child, it amounts to torture.

As for homework, I can say is that I'm adamantly opposed to any "gifted" program that punishes students by burying them under an avalanche of homework. The lesson the kids learn is, "Don't be smart," and I couldn't think of a worse lesson our schools could be teaching our children. Furthermore, gifted children do not need repetition. So unless they're doing research, projects, or the like, they should not be wasting their time.

I'm curious to know why you've ruled out moving up to middle school based on social issues, because it seems to me that if he hasn't found his place in a new elementary school yet, then changing to a new middle school wouldn't really change that.

First of all, thank you all for your responses. I've been busy with other things, and suddenly realized I needed to check this thread. I assumed I would be notified when other's responded. I see I need change my settings.

Alexsmom, thank you for the link. It confirms what other here are saying. Its nice to know even the pro-homework side realizes there is a point of diminishing returns.

Dude, your assessment of the school matches mine perfectly. Brilliant minds and all that.

As to why we have not moved him on to 6th grade, the answer is; its complicated. The local middle school, would be at best a poor choice, both academically, and socially. There are others in which he would be better suited, but they are magnet schools with waiting lists, and such. Since we are in a magnet school now, getting him in another, at the proper time, is easy, but not before then.

Also, he has been acting up at lunch, something he had never done before. Little things, mind you, but enough to let us know he is hard pressed at the moment emotionally.

And finally, we are due to have an evaluation (what they call an SST) on him soon, which could possibly turn into an IEP. Our DS appears to have dysgraphia, or at least he shows most of the symptoms of it. In addition he also is dealing with a growing inability to focus. I don't know if it is ADD lite, boredom, or something else. We got the opportunity to observe him last night at a meeting hosted by a nearby middle school with a crazy awesome focus on science (DS is WILD about science), and even when he was the most focused, he could not sit still. He was rubbing his face, his head, sliding down in his seat, sliding up. When I put my arm around him to steady him some, he started putting my hand on the top of his head, and holding it there. Things like that. We know what he is like at home, and just always assumed he was "that" way. Seeing him next to his peers in that context was illuminating.

Anyway, we knew something might be up, and while the magnet program is chock full of enrichment, it is also chock full of school psychologists, a school nurse (an unbelievable rarity in elementary schools around here) and the like. Meaning we're in a good place to support him if he needs to learn to take meds, or just do some behavioral changes. A middle school with multiple teachers and a wild pack of kids would likely be too tough on if he had to also deal with that stuff.

btw: love your handle. I'm a native Californian, and thus can say the word "Dude" 20 different ways, all with different meanings.

FWIW, the above description sounds exactly like my oldest dd appeared in 2nd grade - before we found out she had vision challenges, so just something else to consider. Our dd has 20/20 eyesight, but also had double vision which caused the vision in one eye to shut down, lack of peripheral vision, and her eyes didn't track each other. We never realized *any* of this until she went through a neurospcyh eval due to challenges in school, and because her ped was convinced she had ADHD (she doesn't). Her handwriting was also very similar, at that time, to our ds' (who does have dysgraphia) but improved dramatically after vision therapy.

Re schools, we chose not to send our ds to our district's highly gifted magnet school for the very reasons you're struggling with your school - we heard feedback from other families in the program that the school equated "high intellectual ability" with "let's pile on lots of extra homework!". For elementary we chose an optional school that was open to all abilities but in theory let children have the chance to work at their ability level (didn't work out that way!), for middle school we chose a private school that isn't specifically for gifted students but has a high expectation of challenging academics, differentiates curriculum in math and languages, and has a student body that has a student body that has a much higher proportion of middle-highly gifted kids than our public school options did (with of course, the exception of the highly gifted program which pushes the homework envelope!). Neither of the schools our ds has attended had a high homework load, even the private highly challenging academic school - they challenge the kids to think, not to slave over books for hours at night.

It's probably just me, but for our ds I have never really felt grade acceleration was a good option, even though he is capable of working several grade levels ahead. Doing a 1-2 grade level acceleration would give him slightly more challenging work but still have him in a classroom where the students weren't intellectual peers.... plus it's helped our ds to be with age-level peers when it comes to social and organizational/maturity issues, he's just more comfortable and fits in better. To give him true intellectual challenges, he needs college-level courses at this point, so we supplement with online courses and intellectual experiences wherever we can "collect" them, plus let him have a lot of free time just to think, create, imagine, etc.

One other thought - if your ds has dysgraphia, that could be causing the homework time to stretch out - my ds has fine motor dysgraphia, and even with keyboarding etc he still goes through homework at a relatively slow rate - that's just his speed. He'd never survive in a school that expected 2+ hours of homework a night out of typical students who didn't have dysgraphia.

Best wishes - school choices can be so tough!

polarbear