Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Updated: No experience with advocacy... ideas?

True... to clarify, she doesn't have tantrums at school (yet). She saves all those fun behaviors for us at home. Maybe because she tantrums at the slightest little challenge she faces, and she hasn't faced anything challenging at school yet.



Oh yeah she seems to be doing fine with classroom rules & routines so far, other than that she sometimes refuses to participate in group activities if she thinks they're too babyish. Sounds like the teacher has not insisted that she participate, which is probably a good idea.

Well, she's essentially skipped a year already for math and it's not enough. I wouldn't want a full grade skip this year because I'm very happy with the fact that she's only in school for 3 hours, plus she's got a bunch of friends in her class.

I would love to homeschool. DH is not on board yet but I think he's coming around already. We'll see.

Got her achievement scores today, posted here: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted...._achievement_scores_for_.html#Post142094

I loved working in the classroom last week. The teacher had me pulling kids to listen to them read individually. Sounds like the rest of them are pretty much on grade level for K. I knew my DD was way ahead of K level achievement, but I guess I thought there might be several kids in her class who would be 1-2 grade levels ahead... just because it's a charter school in a high SES, SuperZIP area. As far as I can tell, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Consider meeting with the principal and asking how the classes are assigned. For my oldest DS, the school had segregated the classes into very high with some high, high with some average, average with some low average, and low average and very low. That system was somewhat changed by the time my two younger children entered K, but I asked the principal to pick the K teacher for DS/DD who would be the best fit for DS. Interestingly, the number of GT identified kids from DS/DD's K class is more than double that from the other five K classes. Is it possible that your DD was placed into a class with a high percentage of average or lower kids? It just sounds odd that they are all reading at K level.

I'm sorry that I completely missed this post up until now. I'm in CO as well. Just so you know, ALPs are rarely written in K b/c the schools often state that they don't yet have all of the data to support a GT identification that soon. Often the approach is to given everyone the CogAT or some other group test in 3rd grade and then use that combined with achievement scores to decide who they deem gifted. Depending on your district, they may also throw in all kinds of other things to support a GT id if the CogAT or achievement scores don't meet the 95th percentile in one area state requirement.

While the state does offer broad guidelines for identifying and serving gifted students (http://www.cde.state.co.us/gt/download/pdf/GT_ECEARules_July2012.pdf), it looks rather different from place to place and, honestly, I wouldn't hold out massive hope that an ALP will be a silver bullet. I recall when my dd14 was in 2nd grade and I thought that coming in with WISC-IV (IQ) and WJ-III (achievement) scores would solve everything: they'd realize what they were dealing with and now meet her needs. Instead, the district GT coordinator told me, and I quote, "highly gifted students don't last long in the public school system. Have you considered homeschooling?"

We've made public schools work reasonably well for dd, but it has involved a few school switches, a grade skip coupled with her already being the youngest in grade pre-skip, subject acceleration on top of the skip, placement in pre-AP/honors/GT classes (depending on what was available that year), and extracurriculars that met her specific interests.

ALPs we've seen work somewhat and we've seen be nothing but words. Last year, for instance, my dd12 (who has PG VCI scores on the WISC-IV) had the same language arts ALP goal as did her entire LA class: improve vocabulary. There was no intervention on the school's behalf and no pre and post test. As I pointed out to them, dd consistently tests in the 99th-99.9th percentile on vocab (she's taken the WISC twice and other achievement tests with vocab measures). What, exactly, were they aiming to improve especially if the onus what entirely on her to make the improvements? The kid is also 2e and doesn't read a lot b/c she gets headaches, words move on the page, etc. so it was unlikely that she was going to pick up words on her own through extracurricular reading.

In your instance, I'd see if you can get IQ or other ability scores to pair with those WJ scores you posted on your other thread. Then I'd look into a grade skip for next year (put her in 2nd in the fall) if you're going to keep her in public school. We homeschooled for a bit in elementary, but I also had decent luck once we realized what we were dealing with by personally interviewing all of next year's teachers and being pushy to make sure that we got the one we wanted.

Unfortunately, getting ps to work often entails work every year to get the right teacher fit as well as acceleration moreso than just finding the right school. I've found that the "right school" often doesn't exist for HG+ kids where no extra work is needed on my part.

Hmm... I don't see how they could have assigned the classes based on either aptitude or achievement since they just didn't have any of that kind of info before the year started. All they had to go on to make up the classes was sex & birth date (plus parent preference for half or full day K.) Most of the class is older than DD, partly due to red-shirting of several boys.

Some of them may be reading higher than K level, but if they are it wasn't apparent to me in the 3-4 minutes I had with each of them. Even the best readers were mixing up small sight words like "do" and "did".

This is both sad and hilarious to me that a GT coordinator would come right out and say that. Mind sharing what district this is? I'm actually very open to homeschooling but I'd be ticked to hear something like this from a GT educator just because it sounds like giving up. Would a special ed coordinator get away with counseling out a student in this way?


If we can get it done affordably (Is that a word? Spell check doesn't like it) we might try for that sometime next year after she turns 6.

sent you a PM.

Thanks!

We may be in totally different parts of the state (I'll pm you), but what we found when our dds were in K was that the higher achieving kids were often in the full day classes b/c the parents of kids who had attended academic preschools and/or who came from more educated households tended to select the full day K with the assumption that their kids would learn more (although I know that they really can't teach more academics in full-day K). I saw the half day K teachers rave to parents of kids who were barely sounding out basic words like "dog" about how incredibly advanced their kids were.

I wonder if there might be a split like that at your school as well. None the less, it sounds like your dd would be advanced academically based on those WJ scores even in a high achieving K class.