Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Micro Gifted catering school

You might be right indigo, but that would depend an awful lot on your population size. In my city there is likely ti be 250 x 99.9% pluS people in the gen population, let alone 4 year olds who are going to get along.

Yes, if gifted are .1% (1%, 2%, 5%, 10%) there would statistically need to be a population of 2000 (200, 100, 40, 20) in your child's age and/or grade and/or cluster to find a second child of your child's similar relative ability.
In a gifted micro school, students would typically be in a cluster with a mix of ages as gifts and abilities may vary by student. There may also be times of independent learning at one's own level and pacing.
This may be heavily influenced by the leadership: teachers, administrators, parents. To a great degree, children can learn to be compatible classmates.

7,9,5,7,5,9,11,5,6,5,6,13,5,4,10,7,2,5,6,6,11,6,5,8,
6,4,9,11,4,11,4,6,5,6,7,5,4,7,5,4,7,4,8,6,4,5,6,11,14,7

If one used any global norm it would be very difficult for any small class to have a set IQ limit for entry due to the randomness of rare events. I ran a Monte Carlo 50 iterations of 6000 people to see a distribution how many within the population would score above 99.9% level on something. So, in these hypothetic 50 populations of 6000. A cases with as few as 2 occurred, and a case as high as 14 occurred. This simple analysis shows that there are some serious forecasting difficulties planning for highly gifted individuals. Although most populations you get the 4,5,6,7, or 8 that one would expect. A school would also have to plan for exceptional boom years and bust years.

This is a model of any event that is expected to occur at a rate of 1 in 1000.

Oh, and yes I would love to send my daughter to a school to learn to host parties, weddings and the like.

We just pulled our son from a small, small school. What we found was that while his educational needs were being met, they were only training him in the 3 R's. There were no extras. No music, no art (until a mother volunteered), no PE, no character education.
Then we started seeing warning signs in the employees. They were underpaid and overworked, his teacher didn't get regular breaks.
Then we started looking at the administration and noticing that the people who were unhappy with the school were being called "crazy" or "too picky." Families had been leaving the school the whole time our son went there and it took us a while to see what the issues were and how they were effecting our son on a day to day basis.
In short, our school turned into dysfunction junction. I think that this is a regular occurrence in small schools. Ask around about the emotional health of the organization. Do families stay with the school a long time? Is there a lot of turnover? It is easy to recognize when children are learning and learning well, it is not always easy to see when an organization isn't working well and won't be a good long-term fit for your family.

Yes, the needs of a gifted child may need to be re-evaluated on a frequent basis; Many families of HG+ children make a change in their child's learning environment placement several times over the years.

Yes I doubt there is anything I could do to stop my dd from learning the 3 R's, so they are not all that important to me.

The one I am looking at is very focused on real games, they seem to play a lot, they are into deep exploration of subjects, and they do bring in a martial arts instructor for PE, they manage a garden. Some of the other warning signs you mentioned I do think I need to still look out for carefully, but they have many open houses, so I might just keep going to some of these and try to get more of a feel. It is worth noting as well that my dd does love the place so far, but that is just the open houses.

I offer (as an example many on this forum may have at least a cursory awareness of): Davidson Academy of Nevada, for profoundly gifted middle school and high school students.

Sorry I can't quote right now... If gufted are -1, 2, 5 10%??? Isn't one of the biggest laments on this forum the fact that HG+ kids gamve different needs and are not peers of regular GT and MG kids?

My point is, in my town, looking for other kids on her level is a waste if time because they are so thin on the ground. She has a better chance at a regular school with a bigger mix of kids and iq's. All a moot point anyway because they don't have micro or gifted schools in my town.

Agreed. As stated, the variation was to illustrate the size of population needed at different LOG to statistically find a second child of similar IQ.

This sounds a lot like DD's school. They don't bring a martial art instructor but they bring other interesting professionals to lead physical activities, theater, and such.

It has worked much better than a traditional school would have, I believe, but I'm not sure if it can work for DD long-term. I definitely have some reservations.