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Well, I don't. Children on the other end of the bell curve have to be given an appropriate education by law, why should the other end of the courve not have the same rights?

I have to pay property taxes, some which end up in my local public school, yet I don't get anything back from them.

I am not even asking for them to give more to my child. I would be happy with a voucher for the amount they spend per child at PS. I would happily supplement the rest. My neighbor has a child who is disabled. The goverment spends $40,000 a year providing appropriate schooling which includes a shadow teacher full time.

This country is wasting its most precious resources in the name of equality.

And by the way, when the school has to comply with the law for disabled/delayed students, they don't ask if they are kind and considerate. That is for the parents to teach. The school can't even teach them academic subjects. I don't think I want to trust my daughter's moral character to them.

I hear you, but I have to admit that I feel ABSOLUTELY NO GUILT about HSing my son, regardless of what that means for the schools. If they want my son, his scores, the money for his presence, my energy and time, and all that stuff that people (like my mom) say that I "owe" to the system--or even to other GT kids--then they have to EARN it!

If they aren't going to teach him, if they're going to kill the light inside him and make him believe he's a bad kid simply because he's bored--and they did all that last year, for as long as he was in that classroom!--then I'm yanking him out and I'm perfectly fine with that.

My only worry about our choice is that maybe I didn't work hard enough to make it work, but that's still not a concern about what *I* owe *them*, rather a concern about what *we* could have *gotten* from the system if we'd tried harder. Even that's a fleeting worry though. I'm pretty sure this is the best path for us.

Ultimately, my job as a parent is to raise my OWN kids the best way I can. It's all I have the energy for. I'm active in a parent group to try to fix the school system, but I just can't sacrifice my child for the machinery to grind him to a pulp.

...Not that you were suggesting that I should, of course!

Crossposting galore!

I am torn about what the schools can actually do for an HG+ child. As things stand, I'm not sure that much is even doable.

Does it sound like I've given up? I think maybe I have a little. I don't want to, but the realist in me sees that SOOOOO much would have to change to make things work well for HG+ kids in any systematic, systemic way, that I just cannot see it happening. They can never be anything but exceptions, square pegs in round holes. It's always a slog, a battle.

I just can't find it in me to think that it's worth it for us. Not to discourage others who can manage--like Dottie, say--to whittle out a good fit for her square peg from that round hole. To people like Dottie I cheer loudly! But I just know that was NEVER going to happen for us. And banging my hard head against that horrible wall was NOT how I wanted to squander my child's life and joy and intellect. He'd have been squandered. I saw it happening. Fast.

I think every parent has to weigh her/his resources against the fight faced and place those resources where they make the most sense. For us, it wasn't even a quandry. Easy choice.

That certainly helps. OTOH, I feel like the deck in our system has been stacked against us from the get-go.

Maybe a victim complex, you ask? But no, honestly, I think it's just reality. I'm not usually a whiner about how cruel "fate" is to me. LOL! I tend to look at what is and see reality. Spock and all that...So I think I have a pretty clear view of just what we're up against, and I think I am pretty honest about my own abilities to deal with it.

Could I be one of those "older" families paving the way? No, I don't think I have that in me, nor do I think my child has it in him. I wish we could, but I don't think we have that to give. It is my fervent hope that someone else will give it. I am still an optimist who wants very deeply for the system to serve HG+ kids. But I'm quite thoroughly convinced by now that our system is not going to serve our particular HG+ kid. It just can't work.

And that makes me sad.

I believe that if this country can devote a fortune to special ed --- including individualized education plans, personal teacher assistants, and so on --- it can provide similar attention to gifted students.

There are public schools for gifted students: the Davidson Academy, in the LA public school system, in Florida, etc. (And there are many private schools.) If these districts can manage, so can others. The problem is a lack of will on the parts of the school boards and state authorities. I'm not saying these schools are perfect, but they're better than forcing a kid to do 2+2 when he can do 54288/54 or 2x(4x2 + 3x + 8) = 100.

Finally, I had said that high IQ greatly increases the probability that someone will become an inventor, etc. Although an IQ of 130/98th percentile isn't a requirement for being a scientist, etc., the simple facts are that it makes things a lot more likely in that regard.

Also, the higher the IQ, the more a student is being damaged by a system that caters to an IQ of 90-110. This is unacceptable.

Also right now, almost NO resources are devoted to gifted students and most GATE programs don't honestly address their needs anyway. Right now, I don't think that even 0.5% of public school expenditures go to GT students.

I don't want to rant, but seriously, this is a huge disaster in our system.

Val

I agree, Val. Seriously, I agree a LOT! If it's a rant, it's a good rant.

I think I'm just beaten down by how bad it is. I hate that, but I think that's the truth.

GT kids get no resources, and that's not okay. I just despair of that changing in the current faux-egalitarianist atmosphere that has overwhelmed our schools. I hate it, but I don't see a way to change it in my child's lifetime. So I'm doing what I must to survive the bloodtide. I don't know what else to do.

I agree COMPLETELY. Thanks also for the kind words.

What's saddest is that GT education could be less expensive than ND education because the GT kids would likely finish school 1, 2 or more years sooner than others. If the schools scheduled the same subjects to run at the same time in different grades, moving kids to the levels most appropriate for them (up or down!) would be simple. And when they top out in upper grades, they could go to the next school up the chain.

<sigh>

Val

Agreed, Val. There are such simple fixes available. The same-time scheduling you suggest is the best, I think. Easy as pie on teachers--and easier than in-class differentiation!--no more expensive than what they do now...It just seems like a no-brainer to me.

But is it happening? Nowhere I see. And to do it requires a complete change of attitude about what education means, what its purpose is: to teach kids based on where they are intellectually instead of based on what their ages are. But schools just place way too much value on age and not enough on ability. I don't see it changing. I don't even see how to change it.

*double sigh*

I am not saying that an autistic child should not get services. What I am saying is that a HG child needs the services just as much. Their needs are just as important.

I heard this adin the car today.

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