Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments What is a gifted school and where do I find one?

New to this forum.
My boys are 12 and 6, both in a good private school. In elementary school there is pull out enrichment in math and in the middle school there is grade acceleration in math. But of course, it is just a good private school -- many bright, upper middle class kids from families who value education. It's nice. But, it is not challenging to either boy as they are IQ outliers.

I see a lot on this board about schools for the gifted. I've never found one in our area. What is a school for the gifted and how would I find one?

thanks

Google search!

My ds6 is in first grade at a private gifted school; he was at public school for K and it was not good.

Every gifted school is different; some work up one grade across the board, some are really good at differentiation and others not so much, some do great with highly gifted+ kids and some don't. Just like any school, they all have strengths and weaknesses.

At ds6's school, there is a 125+ IQ requirement. Kids are in two-grade homerooms (first/second, third/fourth ...); they do social studies, science, art, music, etc., with that group. Math and language arts are in the same time slot for all grade, and kids are grouped by ability across grades for those core subjects. This allows a lot of flexibility for the HG+ child.

In addition, they offer a lot of fun afterschool extras; ds6 is taking an astronomy class, a watercolor class and doing Destination Imagination after school, all his choice. The upper grades have academic teams for state and national competitions.

So far, ds6 loves it. He's meeting kids that are much more like him, and being smart isn't looked down on but celebrated at this school. The downside is that it's really expensive, and that cuts down on at home extras like vacations.

We're lucky enough to live in a large urban area with a few gifted schools. Depending on where you live, there may be several or there may be none! Do an Internet search and see what turns up.

Also try the regions section of this board, and Hoagies gifted has some listings I think by state. I will see if I can find a link.

Here you go, the hoagies site is definitely worth browsing for other question too.
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/choose_school.htm
from there follow the link to schools.

Hoagies is a good start. You may also try your state gifted association and then Google.

Unfortunately you may live in an area which doesn't have a single gifted school. You know a nice, wealthy, very expensive area without a single gifted school. Wait, that would be where we live There are days I have really hard time believing that there is not a single gifted school here

Thanks for the links. I've looked at Hogies and PAGE (our state gifted group) and I've asked everyone I could think of at every school, parents group, etc.

We are in Pittsburgh PA. I have searched and searched and I cannot find a single school for the gifted within 5 hours. Some of the public school districts have program (but we don't live in those districts) but there are no stand alone gifted schools here unless I'm just missing it on every search.

Since my kids are not the only ones bored in their good private school, I can't figure out why we don't have a gifted school. We do have top notch universities so maybe these kids just skip high school and go straight to college. It is depressing.

EngineerMom and Lmom-

I feel your pain. I think that the lack of schools is probably because not every gifted family can afford private school, and we are talking about maybe 5 percent of the student population. (In an area with 5000 children in school, 5% is just 250 students - nearly all of them would have to attend the same school to support it).

For some help, though, I will offer you this. When I was starting HS, my family moved from a large school district with gifted grouping to a rural area with no differentiation. I convinced the school to let me take college classes and have them count for my grades in HS, and they went along with it, and the university costs were reduced. I suggest that (for your DS12, at least), you talk to state colleges to see what sort of dual enrollment options they have. Best of luck.

Or the school would have to be very small, which is often what happens.

Last year, our GT school had a class of 6 kids in the combined 1st & 2nd grade class. That's an average of 3 kids per grade! SMALL!

I wonder how they afford the teachers, building, utilities, insurance, etc on that level. Your DS doesn't go to the GT school - do you know how they make this work?
Maybe I will start a school. - hmmm

The school building is a small facility rented from a religious organization, so I suspect they get a pretty good price for it. (It would be sitting idle during the week, after all...) I think that they cover the costs of utilities and wear-and-tear, and beyond that, they're probably getting a near-donation of the space.

The tuition is fairly high for the area--a smallish Midwestern city--and that's the main reason DS7 isn't there right now. (Well, that and the fact that he would be only the 7th child in a joint 2nd/3rd grade class...) Full-time tuition is something like $8000 a year, which is pretty high for these parts.

Most teachers only work part-time, so I doubt they pay any benefits. Teaching there would definitely not be a good job for a primary breadwinner. It's mostly people who do other things, lots of Ph.D.s who teach a class here or there for fun, some retirees who like to keep a hand in and work with kids. They're excellent teachers--I know some of them in other capacities--but they're not the normal professional teachers that you might see elsewhere.

And, finally, there aren't many frills. There's very little in the way of extracurriculars. No basketball or football team, etc.

I do think there were some extenuating circumstances that led the school to be smaller recently than it once was. (I'd rather not get into that...) And the small size is definitely a problem for them, so they are working hard to attract more students. For example, they were quite willing to accept DS7 as a part-time student/part-time homeschooler. Most private schools around here wouldn't consider that sort of arrangement. But the GT school would have been happy to have him.

I think that if you see a need for a GT school and you can start one, you probably should!

Hi EngineerMom,
Are you familiar with this bunch?:
http://www.cmu.edu/cmites/index.html

Call them up and ask them a million questions. If you can't find a gifted school, you may at least be about to find a saturday program, summer camp or mentor for them.

Best Wishes,
Grinity