Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Thread Like Summary - How critical is school selection?

Our 7 year old boy (2nd grade, public school) scored almost 100% in the Visual Spatial subset of the WISC-5. No full scale score because he didn’t want to finish the test. He has no learning disabilities or ADHD. He is amazing with math and ok with reading. Ideally the school would challenge him with Math and help him with reading but the class is too big.

I’m highly educated and can easily satisfy his curiosity and exploration with projects we do together at home (STEM, electrical and mechanical engineering, etc.). However, I suspect that his emotional development and well being is at risk as long as he is going to a school that doesn’t cater to gifted children. Even if he got an IEP, the “bones” of the school are the same. My intuition is that being around other gifted kids and teachers who specialize in giftedness can make a difference. But how big of a difference? Can anyone with a gifted child share their experience of NOT sending their child to a gifted school? Do you regret it?

I don't have a child in this situation, but I was in a situation where I was a gifted child not in a gifted learning environment. I attended the most highly ranked public school in my area for K through 4th grade and was in the gifted program there (7 of us accelerated into a higher grade level for reading//language arts and math each day). Despite this, I was terribly bored and did not enjoy school. My grades started declining even though everything was so easy. I didn't even pay attention at school after a few years. My teachers would hand out worksheets and I'd finish my assignment before they had passed out the work to the rest of the class.

My father helped nudge me to move to an all-gifted school, despite my guidance teacher telling my parents that I would fail there and despite my ambivalence. He had had a similar experience in school of being terribly bored and eventually dropped out of school despite perfect grades and test scores because he did not see the point of showing up.

Anyway, I moved to a gifted school, and, for the first time, I was surrounded by very smart people, including people who were much smarter than me. It was life changing. I became engaged in school and loved every minute of it, despite having massive amounts of work and studying to do. I made so many more friends than at my previous school because I could relate to them and be myself rather than trying to figure out how to socialize and attend class with people who had such different ways of seeing the world and interacting with it.

Now I also have children who are highly gifted. In my opinion, having gifted peers is so much more important than having a teacher who has a gifted certification or training. My children have encountered many teachers with the supposed gifted education background, but outside of an environment that fully embraces that culture, it kind of falls flat. We supplement a lot of "education" outside of their school because the school is not ideal for profoundly gifted children, but the culture is there, and it provides the supportive environment for the sort of nerding out that is not present in many places. The environment nurtures them in a way that encourages them both in and out of the classroom to be their brainy selves and provides a relatable peer group.