Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Ridiculous GT things I Heard "

My son's school informed me that they don't test kids who are at or above grade level.

Oh and the VP told me that 'Kids choose to be bored'

As far as your son being accepted into first grade, I can't give you a definite answer at this point. He would have to go through the process of the testing and interviewing and the final decision would be made by our Admissions Committee based on his current grades, the test results, the character reference forms, and the interview.

Even students that are gifted academically can sometimes experience challenges when they are much younger than their peers. This is one of the reasons that we do not encourage moving students ahead. If your student comes to *school name* as a first grader, he will be the youngest in his class (by more than a year) when he is in mid-school. Most of the boys will have hit puberty, grown ten inches, and like girls. If your student is still small, hates girls and still wants to play with trucks, it can be very difficult socially and emotionally. It is so much easier when a student is the oldest in the class instead of the youngest. The older, academically-gifted students usually become the leaders.

*school name* does not have a separate gifted program because our entire program is advanced to begin with and we teach to the upper half of the class. We find that students that are in the gifted program in the public school are usually on track with our students.

The K teacher gave us the garden-variety: "I'm afraid to keep giving him harder and harder 1st grade math worksheets because, well, what will they do with him next year?"