Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How do you feel about the public school system?

Agreed. In my limited experience, the people aka mentality is what matters most.

Very much agree with this. In our experience, the smaller public district (1 HS, about 2400 students in the district) was less flexible than the larger public district we're at now (3 HSs, about 16,000 students in the district). But the most flexible was the tiny private school of about 50 K-5 students (my daughter's class size ranged from 12 to 8).

--S.F.

Our public school district is tiny and while we have had our ups and downs I see that they have been astonishingly flexible with our DD.

I have been on this forum for less than a year and almost from the start I have recognized that for kids like ours almost any school is not going to be enough for them. It is up to us as parents to do what we can to enrich and accelerate outside of school. Not ideal at all but it is the truth.

I see parents with kids in private and public schools on this board and I think that they are equally satisfied/dissatisfied with the way that their children are being educated from reading their posts.

I only occasionally go to online forums, but I'm so glad that I saw this thread. We have had a very tough time recently, ended up moving our middle schooler to a private school and the improvement is minimal. I see in this thread parents' frustrations that are so similiar to ours and teacher/administrator attitudes (even quotes) that are exactly what we got in our public and private schools. My family has lost confidence in our district completely. It's not that they don't want to accommodate the outliers. This is a district that has lots of gifted kids and a very strong focus on academics. I think the problem is that the schools have a very shallow understanding of the needs of these students and what these students are capable of. Therefore, on the surface, the school offers lots of options, but in essence, these options don't really work.

We have done lots of things on our own to make sure that kids get what they need. It's hard but who will do it if we don't? We are also working with friends to try and build community based programs for these kids. It's hard, too. But it is a small comfort to know that so many parents are going through the same process. The lack of meaningful gifted education (not just "a program" for show) has been for decades----based on the books that I read.

IME, teachers (mostly) DO care-- often very deeply. Of course, they too become victims at the hands of the system. Why?

Bureaucracy, by wry definition, cares about nothing but itself. It bludgeons those who don't 'fit' the "process" until they leave or conform. There are a lot of good teachers who are crushed under those millstones over time, in other words... becoming bitter, disillusioned, or deadened to the passion that led them into the profession to begin with. Most of the helping professions are susceptible to this kind of burnout when the individuals are stripped of autonomy in favor of bureaucratic, rigid procedural correctness, IME.

The sum of the two factors is what we observe with schools.

I really had tears well up in my eyes when I read the post a bit back which described this process from the perspective OF a teacher. It's very sad to see. There's something innately HUMAN about great teachers and teaching. Stripping the humanity via bureaucratic controls is part of what is deeply, deeply wrong with education now. Not all of it, of course-- the other problem is that the profession seems to encourage mediocre (or worse) subject mastery, which is a separate-- but no less vexing-- issue.

THIS is the post that I'm talking about. This is so sad-- and so completely true.

Yes, this. In The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin wrote about group sociology and how people can see problems as individuals and yet act in a way that contributes to the problems when they're in groups. I'm sure we've all experienced it: you're in a group, you know that x is wrong, but you feel powerless to stop it. If you speak up, you may not be able to change anything AND you get into trouble. This is especially the case when the leaders don't want to change and a lot of people support them. It's one reason why leadership can cause or fix so many problems.

Over the years we have met a few teachers who are very aware of the importance of challenging the advanced students, but I feel that either their hands are tied or they don't have the proper training to do so anyways. But we appreciate them nonetheless for thinking for these students.

However, I'd say the majority of the teachers that we've interacted with are quite content with what they do and feel that the parents are the unreasonable ones. I think they truly don't understand the needs of the advanced students. For example, our district uses Everyday Math as well, and parents have heard so many times that "but EDM has built-in enrichment for every chapter and we are doing those. Why are you still not satisfied?".

Things seem to be worse in middle school than in elementary school. I think it's partly because of the larger class size in middle school. But it's also partly because there is a bit of built-in acceleration in middle school (in math only). So the school feels that it has already done with accommodating advanced students.

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I have to say that at the moment we're actually pretty happy with our public school. We're in Canada so some stuff is the same but some is slightly different. Our teachers are well paid and all of the newer ones have at least 6 years of university. In my city it is extremely difficult to get a teaching job unless you speak French and there are thousands of unemployed new teachers looking for work. All of the teachers I have dealt with so far have really cared and tried their best. Not all of them completely understand gifted/2e kids needs or can manage to juggle them with a class full of a wide range of other issues but so far at least, it hasn't been for lack of effort.

DS was identified 2e through private testing last year part way through grade 1. We chose to test privately to avoid waiting and I'm ok with that. There are far more people in the system who's kids need an eval for bigger issues and who can't afford it. Once we had the report we went in and talked with the VP who turns out had just worked for 5 years in the board's special ed department - she gets it which is nice. We then got an IEP in place for the rest of the year that mostly dealt with the LD side of things but I was ok with that (at least short term). I helped in the classroom weekly and last year the LD issues far surpassed the gifted ones and that teacher couldn't handle doing both. The VP hand picked his class and teacher for this year and it has been a million times better. We send in work for him to do during math and we informally after school to satisfy his insane drive for knowledge. School at this point is about socialization and working on the LD side of things. He's now to the point that he hardly ever needs any of the accommodations in his IEP so we can now focus more on the gifted side (and it has made his gifted side more obvious at school so they are much more willing to focus on that). This calm likely won't last forever but for this year at least we're enjoying it. The gifted programming starts in grade 4 so hopefully we can figure it out until then (and hopefully it will be enough). If not then we'll deal with whatever comes.

DD is in SK and we'll likely test her once she is 6. We've had comments about her for years since she doesn't appear to have the same 2e issues. For now, she's happy, loves playing with her friends and then doing all of DS's grade 2 work when she gets home Next year might be fun since it will be less about play and more about academics that she has already mastered.

My mom and MIL were both teachers for 30+ years each and I've worked a lot in the schools over the past couple years. They are juggling a lot and I empathize. The schools cater to the majority and for the most part that works (at least for the majority). When you have a 1/100 kid (or a 1/10000+ kid like some of you do) the system breaks down and you need caring, compassionate, educated people to patch together solutions. Unfortunately from the sounds of most of the stories here they are few and far between which is sad especially for the kids who's parents can't or won't advocate on their behalf.