Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Private or public school?

Our DD will be 5yr in 2 month, For a private school entrance, she did WPPSI-III test, and got 136. Her verbal is weaker than other area, cause she is bilinguish.

The private school costs $$$$$, 30 minutes far from home (not counting traffic), but has a high school too.

The public school in walking distance with API 947 and inside a close community. But we don't have good high school in our district.

Our idea is to stay with public school till or near middle school, then either move or go to private school. How is this idea?

My best advice to you is that planning is fine if it makes you feel better, but you have to expect those plans to be utterly wrong by the time you get there, too.

You don't say what your DD's complete scores are, but if her verbal is lower, than I assume her nonverbal score would qualify her as HG+, and we usually say around here that if you find a good fit for an HG+ child for 6mos-1yr., then you are doing pretty well. (And I suspect that holds true for MG kids and below as well a lot of the time, too!) But you can often expect that good fit to fall apart about that time. The perfect set up usually only stays perfect for a little while and then you have to change everything, so trying to plan the high school path for a 5yo sounds like sheer madness to me! (No offense intended there. )

Take it one year at a time, see how it's going, and adjust as needed. Keep your options open as much as possible, and keep your eyes peeled for new options. You never know what your child will need as she develops, and you never know what changes will occur around you--new schools, changes in the existing schools, etc.--as you go along.

We started at public school, switched to homeschooling, considered a private GT school, and have no idea what we're doing next year. Our son is 7! Take it as it comes and it seems less scary! Honest!

Best wishes to you. It's an exciting ride!

Thank you for your quick reply.

Her verbal is 121, performance is 135, process speeding is 140.

You reply makes me feel warm. SF bay area is a crazy place in term of pushing kids. We took our DD to private school's test because other parents all talk about this school. But then, we calm down, and try to find more "sane" parents to talk with, so we found this board.

Good. I was worried I was being too honest for a first post.

Though you may be giving us too much credit to think that we're sane here... Certainly we're not a high pressure "push those kids 'til they drop" group! And thank goodness for that!

Without knowing any details about the schools or your child, I will toss out there that "good school" and "good school for my particular child" are really two very different things. We bought our house because of the school system...and now we're homeschooling! It just didn't fit our quirky HG+ kid. And because the schools are considered so "good," they tend to be extremely rigid and unwilling to work with parents to meet the needs of GT kids. But "good" in their terms was simply not good for him.

Also, an awful lot depends upon the teacher. A good teacher can make a horrible situation marvelous, and a lousy teacher can ruin the best laid plans.

Just some random thoughts...

Let me throw out there that private is not necessarily better. We are in a private school for gifted kids. Supposedly anyway... but they appear to have never run across a HG+ kid before. According to his teacher who has been there 20+ years, she has never had a kid reading in K. He gets no differentiation "because everyone in the class is gifted!" We are in the process of pulling him for homeschooling and moving to a public charter. We had assumed that private gifted would be 1000x better... we were very very wrong.

I'd like to jump in and speak to the processing speed score.

You've got a PIQ 135. Could be, the verbal is a little lower based on the bilingual element, which is common.

That processing speed is very high, unusual.

Others on this board have mentioned that processing speed is not an indicator of intelligence. Some people are unhappy that it weighs in so much for FSIQ.

I'm not interested in getting into that conversation, but, I will say that if you take very high verbal or PIQ and combine that with a high processing speed, like your child's, life can get very interesting!

Both of my girls have very high processing speed as well and I'm thinking at this stage of the game that learning issues coming about at school hinge a lot on that.

They read, learn, synthesize, integrate extremely rapidly. They need to change learning formats often and need little or no repetition.

We live in a great school district with great programs and great teachers. Even so, differentiation has not worked for them and we've had lots of issues related to their giftedness and much compounded by that processing speed.

Our principal has been great and DD8's first grade and second grade teachers went to great lengths to keep her engaged.
Ultimately, the principal has just agreed to dual enrollment for both daughters, which means they will learn at home through individualized learning programs for part of the day, and able to be at school enjoying their peers, specials and some other gifted programming for part of the day.
I am grateful for our P's openess to try this and am very optimistic.

Too much info?

It's only taken me over a year and a half to get where we are!

Obviously, all kids are different and your DD could easily have a totally different experience and do quite well in public school.

Just wanted to share our experiences and recommend that you keep an eye on things, especially with that high processing speed.

Welcome!


Neato

We crossposted CAmom! I totally agree with you! We did not go the private school route because: A. we couldn't afford it! B. I wasn't willing to go back to work to pay for it unless we felt the girls learning needs would be very well accomodated.

Never say never, but I haven't been convinced yet.

((or maybe I'm just making excuses cause I don't want to work outside the home full time! ))

On the bright side, a fast kid often "looks" more GT to teachers; they recognize GTness in fast kids more easily. (Not always, certainly, but fast and smart tend to be assumed to go together.) So that could make things easier.

Or not...It just depends!

One of mine was recognized early one was not. The one that wasn't will quickly "check out" when not engaged. That is personality, I think.

Kriston-
I have a fast kid... unfortunately that has been taken offensively by some adults. He just has a natural ability to figure out what's going on before most of the adults in the room! We're working on the tact that comes along with it. High processing and high reasoning has lead to a few conflicts with teachers in Pre-K and K! They do not like that he starts before they've finished the directions, or the eye rolls that he often gives out when they're putting forth the directions for the second time.

Add to that his propensity for comments like "Your words say you're not mad at her but your body and your tone says you don't like her at all." (said to one of his two Pre-K teachers when they were having a disagreement)

Sometimes I wish he were a touch slower!