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Dd#2 is identified as HG/PG. Dd #1 (7th grade) has multiple learning difficulties and is on an IEP and receives speech therapy and has a paraprofessional in some classes. She's had IQ testing done and tests in the average range. However, based on her poor language comprehension/receptive language difficulties I question the complete accuracy of the results. She's also going to be evaluated for an auditory processing disorder in the next month. I've had many parents of gifted kids tell me that she appears gifted (her way of thinking and problem solving). She is currently starting her 2nd year at a rigorous STEM charter school. Despite her multiple challenges she still maintains mostly B's (with some A's and C's). Fwiw the school is known to lose students due to how challenging it can be. Dd#1 is an extremely hard worker and loves to learn. Her greatest weakness is math (dyscalculia) but loves social studies and it was her favorite class last year.

Last night she confided in me that she is feeling bored in her social studies class and she wishes it would go faster and she could learn more. The statement sounded exactly like a gifted student wanting more challenge. So far she has A's on all her assignments in that class. Starting last year she's also told me she wants to be a middle school social studies teacher.

My questions are....
How do you advocate for a non-identified gifted student to receive more challenge in a subject area?
Have you ever had a school move a student to an AP class during the semester?
And how do you advocate for a student that has learning disabilities but is capable of the work with proper supports in place?

My take on this:

1) A student does not need to be identified as "gifted" to need or benefit from more challenge, a quicker pace, advanced curriculum, etc. As discussed frequently, there are many factors other than giftedness or high IQ involved in contributing to achievement in any particular subject or field. These factors may include a sense of internal motivation, an interest in and/or affinity for the subject, and opportunity. There is a roundup of advocacy resources in this old thread. It is called "gifted advocacy" because it is typically the gifted kiddos who need this type of support when the school does not recognize the student's potential on their own. It could be called educational advocacy, challenge advocacy or any number of other terms.

2) While school policies and practices may vary regarding schedule changes and switching courses or sections, typically a student may move to another class during the first week or two without difficulty. You may wish to check your school policies. If your child wishes to change sections outside of the typical window allowed for schedule changes, she may need to negotiate or self-advocate. This may include requesting the assignments/tests covered to-date and creating a schedule by which she will have completed all work and be up-to-date with the rest of the class. While this may sound daunting, it can be done, especially in an area of interest. This may also help distinguish your child to that teacher and/or to the school, and may be something mentioned in recommendation letters and/or the subject of a college essay and/or interview discussion, etc.

3) Wrightslaw is the go-to resource for any special needs advice. In a nutshell, your advocacy prep (and/or your DD's self-advocacy prep) might include knowing what accommodations your child would require.

Good advice above.

I will add that, when moving a student on an IEP up to an honors or pre-AP level, it is generally unlikely that the school system will send an instructional aide with her, unless the support person is there for medical, physical, or sensory impairment reasons. But I assume, based on the area of greatest need that you name, that social studies is probably not one of the subjects with an aide.

She still has a right to all of the accommodations on her plan, though specialized instruction would be inappropriate in an advanced academic course. Given your stated concerns with listening comprehension, I would imagine that is one of the reasons the school has not previously suggested a level change. You and your child may wish to be prepared with a thoughtful response to this legitimate concern. (E.g., her reading comprehension is excellent, and the bulk of content is accessible in the assigned readings, therefore any gaps that might occur in lectures will readily be filled through text resources. Or, the more advanced class has a greater mapping and geography component, which plays to her visual strengths (assuming that's true).)

The main challenge you will have is demonstrating that she requires accommodations only to be successful in the more advanced social studies class. If she requires more academic support than can be provided by the general education teacher making accommodations, then the school cannot really justify placing her higher. If she does not require accommodations in that class, then she may need her IEP services/supports reduced, as she is probably ready to begin transitioning to more independent management of her academic needs in social studies.

Having established that she is an appropriate learner for the advanced class, with accommodations, you may also find the way smoother if you can give the receiving teacher/department head a clear, organized, and easy-to-implement (very) short list of the accommodations she would need to be successful, and how they will make that teacher's life easier and more satisfying as an educator.

Another option, if not switching to the AP course, may be to study independently and take the AP exam.

Thank you for all the great information and advice, I definitely have more of an idea of which path to take and some alternatives. For instance, I'm not 100% sure if the para comes into her social studies class, but if so we can maybe request a trial without her to see how it goes for dd independently in that class. If I recall correctly her para is usually present in her math class and language arts class.

My greatest concern I think when it comes to having her take the social studies AP class is that her written output isn't that advanced (I looked over some of her answers in recent assignments). I think she expresses and explains herself much more eloquently in oral speech versus written. If dictating were available to her she would do much better.

I feel that this area of interest has always been her gift, starting at 3 years old when she preferred watching documentaries/history channel over cartoons. Another example was when we were on vacation in Europe touring Paris and all she kept wanting to talk about was WW II and current events with North Korea. It's nice that she finally has a class in school where she can discuss this global issues and world history. Her social and emotional intelligence is also very high in my opinion, and always has been.

Perhaps this school year can be spent proving her need of advanced placement in social studies and maybe we can try to get some more advanced independent work in this class.

This is the first time ever that she's mentioned something moving too slow for her and wanting more from a class so I think it's important to finally nuture her 'gift' the best way possible. Up until now she has always felt like the students who shined/smart were the ones who were strong writerst, readers, and mathematicians. I've always tried to teach her that her strengths would be more obvious once she'd be able to take deeper thinking classes that suited her interests.

Does she currently have dictation, speech-to-text, or supplementary oral assessment on her accommodations list? If these have not been discussed in her team meeting, it might be valuable to have the IEP team consider their appropriateness.

I think your plan of using this year to document her need for advancement in social studies, while seeking informal or formal supplementary work in class, sounds very reasonable.

mountainmom,

You've already received wonderful advice. I'll add a few thoughts based on my experience with my 2e ds who's in high school now. His challenge is expressive language (output) and written expression.


I am guessing that the "AP" classes you are referring to (at this point) are pre-AP (tracked to lead to AP in your district?). One thing that has been helpful for me in determining direction to take for my ds (and that he is doing for himself now in high school) is to network through teachers and other parents and weigh information on the workload and content of the classes that you're considering. What you're seeking is a higher level of intellectual discussion (which was something that was very important to my ds in late elementary and early middle school because it was not being met in his classroom). The challenge with Language Arts and Social Studies classes in our district though is what is expected of the students in terms of output. Our ds did well in honors-track LA/SS classes in middle school and in high school because we were able to appropriately accommodate his areas of challenge, but as he moved into high school the amount of homework required for honors LA/SS became an issue. Not that he wasn't capable of the intellectual challenge, but simply because the amount of time required to complete the homework for him was about 1.5 - 2 times longer than for other students due to his 2nd e - and the amount of homework being assigned by the teachers in those classes was, well, insane (or to be more pc, quite time-consuming) even for neurotypical students. My ds stuck with the honors track, but it's also caused him quite a bit of frustration and occasional feelings of close to depression because of the free time that's lost compared to the free time that his peers have. He's also purposed chosen not to take certain LA/SS AP courses at his high school because of the way they are taught - teaching specifically toward the test rather than learning for the sake of acquiring knowledge, hence spending a *lot* of time in class and outside of class writing essays. I don't know what the situation is in your school district, but ds was able to find alternatives to the heavy-writing-load AP courses here that are college-level and equally intellectually interesting.


The first thing you need to do is to move from "thinking" to "knowing with data to back up your knowledge". If she doesn't have a diagnosis that supports what you suspect, get an evaluation (either through school or privately) that specifically looks at her expressive language, written expression abilities, and physical handwriting abilities. Through that eval you'll get info that can help you define the path she needs to be on re accommodations and remediation if necessary. While it's been stated above that she might not be able to move into a higher level class while still receiving IEP instructional services, pay really close attention to what she needs for instruction - if she needs explicit instruction in written expression it's still possible this could be accomplished *and* she can successfully navigate a higher level class. It may require a huge advocacy battle on your part, but the key is understanding thoroughly what her challenge is. We pulled our ds from public school in 5th grade (at his request and because he was not receiving the instructional services outlined in his IEP) - so our situation is not exactly same as yours, however, fwiw, we had ds working with a private SLP from 5th - 8th grade specifically on written expression, and while in school (working ahead of grade level) he had accommodations as needed and the school allowed him to employ techniques his SLP developed specifically for him when writing. I can give you more input on what he used (accommodations and written expression remediation) if you're interested.


Re accommodations - put a priority now on figuring out what accommodations will work for your dd. Students with written output challenges sometimes rely on keyboard for output, sometimes rely on voice-to-text, sometimes use audio recording for taking notes etc). What works best depends on the root of the challenge, the student's personality and situation (can't use voice-to-text in a classroom). You'll get valuable input from an evaluation, and you'll also need to watch closely yourself, get input from your dd, do your own research, perhaps seek input from school AT specialists or AT experts outside of school. Keep in mind that your goal is *independence* for your dd for her life. Scribing isn't going to accomplish independence. Life goes beyond school - school staff will look at what she needs to be successful this year in school; you need to look at a plan that will lead to her being successful in life for life.



No matter what happens in school (try for all you can, but in the event that you don't get an ideal placement) - keep feeding her video, books, trips, museum visits, whatever that feed her passion. For all that accommodations and remediation and advocacy at school helped our ds just simply get through school (successfully), the journey through school for kids with significant challenges can be really rough and take a toll emotionally. If I could go back in time and do anything differently I would be sure sure sure to keep focusing on what my ds loved outside of school. We did a lot of this when he was in early elementary, but by the time he entered middle school we were running really short on spare time - he was wanting to be in challenging classes at school, we were working hard on remediation at home, we were trying out new accommodations etc. that there was little time left over for anything else.


I agree with you, and also feel that you'll be giving her another "gift" you might not have considered in advocating for the placement - whether or not it works out. You'll be teaching her how to advocate for herself (eventually - by watching you stand up for her now), and you'll also be showing her that you believe in her.

Good luck as you move forward - let us know how your advocacy goes.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Reading over polarbear's post, I need to clarify that the need for instructional support in written expression does not absolutely lock a student out of higher-level social studies coursework, but it does make the placement much more questionable, certainly at the high school level, where written expression is not just one of many possible ways to assess content mastery, but blurs into being a course learning standard.

Accommodations, OTOH, simply provide access. They may include some instructional strategies that aren't part of the receiving teacher's repertoire, which is where persuasion and persistence come in. E.g.,:

1. supplementary oral assessment
2. speech-to-text
3. reduced length of written products (e.g., 2 pg instead of 5 pg report)
4. typed response/wordprocessing/spellcheck/grammar check
5. alternative assignments (e.g., oral presentation or slide presentation instead of written report)

All of these allow the teacher to assess progress on the content learning standards equivalently to that of non-disabled peers.

Is it just her who finds the social studies unchallenging? It may be that everyone feels the same and the problem can be worked on without her changing class. Or it may be the teacher is trying for a gentle start to the year.

Just an added thought - while it's not always easy to use voice-to-text in class, don't assume it's impossible, either. Some classrooms have a corner with enough separation that dictation can be used there. For larger assignments, students can go to a resource room or other spare space to dictate. If the teacher is willing, they can often make it work with a little planning. Another option that may help your DD is recording lectures (e.g. with an iPod), so she has something to return to if her notes are skimpy.