Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Thread Like Summary - School options - need advice!

My son was tested twice with a big range between 132-150 in WPPSI-IV. The first time he took the test, I was informed that he quit participating after some sections, which resulted in his score of 132. We are trying to choose the best elementary school for him. We live in Southern California. We are currently in the best preschool in the area we could find, but he has no peer who can converse with him about all the engineering topics he loves. He ends up talking to teachers and admin more than his preschool classmates.

I’d greatly appreciate this community’s advice regarding the below two options.

Option 1: Public elementary school. Beautiful campus setting. Used to be a full time gifted magnet school, but converted to a regular school as there weren’t enough gifted kids to fill the school. All teachers are GATE certified. Offers part time gifted pull out once a week starting 3rd grade (the school hasn’t answered my questions about what actually happens at these pull outs). Tries to cluster gifted students in the same classroom. I don’t think this is more than a few students per grade. The definition of gifted is “ Qualifying Cognitive Ability score > 95th Percentile or > 93rd Percentile with Multiple Measures”. Some parents left bad online reviews that the school didn’t challenge their HG / PG kids. Glowing reviews as a normal school. PTA funding is about $65k a year. There is a district wide educational foundation that provides some funding as well. District annual budget is around $16500 per kid. Supposed to be under 30 kids per class. % of students passing state standard is 76% math, 75% English, and 69% science.

Option 2: Public magnet school, K admission is by lottery. K students are evaluated throughout the year, then starting 1st grade, split into 35 kids in a high performing classroom and the other 35 kids in a regular classroom. Starting 4th grade, kids are officially screened for giftedness based on undisclosed criteria, and the school maintains 1 classroom full of kids in each grade that are supposed to be gifted. PTA funding is about $230k a year. District annual budget is around $15500 per kid. Facilities are extremely dingy and I didn’t feel as much warmth from the teachers. All teachers are GATE certified, and the district has a ton of information about giftedness on their website FWIW. % of students passing state standard is 82% math, 84% English, and 76% science. The school has a robotics team that my son would love.

Neither school seems ideal at first glance. However, considering your child's interest in engineering, perhaps the second school may be better, especially considering their robotics team.

It depends on what the robotics team is about, what it specializes in, etc.

Pull-out gifted may not be enough especially with your son's high IQ, and often times these "pull-out" programs are simply holdovers that are not efficient uses of time.

I'd lean towards the second school, especially if the high performing classroom is one where many of the students are gifted.

However, these pullouts may not be enough. Any thought of some sort of acceleration or even grade skipping?

We did this for our kid (two grades actually). Best thing we ever did. PE is awful later on in middle and high school, but who cares, really, when they're making straight A's and enjoying the challenges in everything else?

One thing I never understood are these two words, "high achieving". That's not a synonym for high IQ . Or, shouldn't be. The challenge in our case was to get our low-achieving kid, but high IQ, to become a higher achieving. They're much more so, and, believe it or not.... very confident because they know they've been advanced due to their potential. Just the opposite of what you would think with all this 'red shirting' stuff going on.

We live in a different country and found that a byproduct of acceleration was success at sports. My daughters started school as early age entrants and physically developed alongside their older grade peers (6-18 months older), but when they competed at sports, they were placed amongst age peers and the physical difference was startling when they lined up at the starting blocks.

Academically, however, because my daughters did not perceive that they were much younger than their grade peers, they only thought of themselves as average achievers until they eventually overtook their grade peers, whereas my son stayed amongst age peers throughout his school years (no one would have considered him for early entry as he was not a well behaved, compliant three year old as my daughters were) and was far ahead in knowledge and understanding because he was a consummate self directed learner (many of his teachers admitted that he often exceeded them and allowed him to substitute activities as long as he didn’t disrupt the class). He was offered radical subject acceleration at the beginning of high school and has much greater self confidence in his abilities.