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IMO, one of the things really wrong with education, in this country, is that parents think they know more than educators and fail to heed the professional advice given when it doesn't tell them what they want to hear.
Funny I think many times the problem with education in this country is 20 somethings with no experience who call themselves teachers are thrown into the classroom and in three years they think they know more than the parents who have lives with their kids and observed them 1000 times more frequently and who have likely studied their kids issues and talked with dozens of doctors - and who have wisdom from life experience.
But otherwise I think I agree with you. We really disliked the G & T system and actually took our kids out of a school where they told us it was mandatory for them to be in G & T. They did not like being in classes with a bunch of smug kids who thought they were better than the other students, they did not like the hyper competitive atmosphere. School was not pleasant anymore. The came home crying daily, They teachers were lazy and awful. I think they stick the lazy teachers in G & T because you do not have to work hard to teach motivated kids with parents who work with them at night. At least they seemed to in that school.
Funny I think many times the problem with education in this country is 20 somethings with no experience who call themselves teachers are thrown into the classroom and in three years they think they know more than the parents who have lives with their kids and observed them 1000 times more frequently and who have likely studied their kids issues and talked with dozens of doctors - and who have wisdom from life experience.
But otherwise I think I agree with you. We really disliked the G & T system and actually took our kids out of a school where they told us it was mandatory for them to be in G & T. They did not like being in classes with a bunch of smug kids who thought they were better than the other students, they did not like the hyper competitive atmosphere. School was not pleasant anymore. The came home crying daily, They teachers were lazy and awful. I think they stick the lazy teachers in G & T because you do not have to work hard to teach motivated kids with parents who work with them at night. At least they seemed to in that school.
To be honest, a teacher with three years experience has experienced many more kids the age of the children she teaches than parents have. You may know YOUR child but the teacher knows how different children can be and has a better grasp of what is typical and what is unusual. As I said before, I wish we'd listened to the principal at dd's first school and just left her with her peers. She said wait to make the determination and she was right. I think we did more harm than good by pushing dd because I thought I knew more as her mother than her teachers did. They knew it is typical for some kids to be ahead of the curve early on and that you need to wait until 4th grade to determine whether or not that means anything. As a parent, I didn't know this.
Most people, including quite a few teachers, can not tell the difference between bright, well raised kids and a truly gifted child. Gifted kids process information differently. It is not the amount of knowledge that makes them different, it is the way they think. I hate when kids are put in GT programs prior to 4th grade. The younger the child, the greater the chance they are ahead of their peers because they have good nurturing parents, not because they are innately more intelligent. Gifted kids should be retested every three years just like other special ed kids.
And an experienced teacher may not be an expert on your particular child, but they have far greater experience with children that age in an educational setting than you or a doctor. In the course of my career I have taught and interacted with over 2500 students between the ages of 11 and 15, I can tell a gifted middle school student over a bright one within a week. The testing verified it when I made a reccomendation or questioned a placement.
Most people, including quite a few teachers, can not tell the difference between bright, well raised kids and a truly gifted child. Gifted kids process information differently. It is not the amount of knowledge that makes them different, it is the way they think. I hate when kids are put in GT programs prior to 4th grade. The younger the child, the greater the chance they are ahead of their peers because they have good nurturing parents, not because they are innately more intelligent. Gifted kids should be retested every three years just like other special ed kids.
And an experienced teacher may not be an expert on your particular child, but they have far greater experience with children that age in an educational setting than you or a doctor. In the course of my career I have taught and interacted with over 2500 students between the ages of 11 and 15, I can tell a gifted middle school student over a bright one within a week. The testing verified it when I made a reccomendation or questioned a placement.
This is why the wait and see advice is good advice. In time, the two will separate themselves.
There may be other types of gifted programs that I am not aware but in the school district where we live, students are pulled out of the regular classroom for the gifted class in elementary school. We had moved to a new school district when my son started 5th grade. He did not like the program and the idea of being pulled out of his regular class. The gifted teacher scheduled a parent teacher conference where she described how our son had refused to do one of her assignments. She felt he wasn't gifted in her opinion. We pulled him out of the program. He went on to score an 800 on his math SAT, graduate 2nd in his HS class (#1 went to Harvard), go to an Ivy League school and graduate from a top medical school.
Could he have benefited from a better gifted program? Possibly, but I doubt it would have made much of a difference in the long run. He learns new subjects very quickly so despite having several poor teachers in HS, it was didn't hurt him in taking AP exams where he scored a 5 on six of seven exams, or as a pre-med student. We could have sent him to the local university for classes while he was in high school with the HS's dual enrollment program, but for most of these classes, he probably had smarter students in his HS AP classes. Many parents worry about giving "gifted" students every advantage and opportunity in school, but in reality, the gifted students are the ones who least need it.
Funny I think many times the problem with education in this country is 20 somethings with no experience who call themselves teachers are thrown into the classroom and in three years they think they know more than the parents who have lives with their kids and observed them 1000 times more frequently and who have likely studied their kids issues and talked with dozens of doctors - and who have wisdom from life experience.
And this sums up why education is the mess it is right now. Everybody thinks they know more than the actual teacher. Respect for teachers as professionals is hard to come by, even though it actually is a skill that 90% of the population could never do well. Yikes.
That said, I WAS that kid y'all are talking about. I was bumped up to 1st grade out my kindergarten class because I was already doing 1st grade math and reading chapter books. Then in Jr High School, I was in a program that allowed you to complete Jr High in 2 years instead of 3. By the time I got to high school I was 2 years younger than everyone else and it showed.
I don't know what the solution is. One one hand, academically I always found the work pretty easy. If I had been kept with my age cohort I would have been even more bored than I already was. On the other hand, I was always wildly immature compared to my peers (especially in high school) and my social life and self esteem suffered because of it. It took me years to realize that there was nothing wrong with me, I was just young trying to cope with stuff out of my pay grade so to speak. LOL. If your teacher can craft individualized lessons keeping kids with their age cohort can work, but only if the classrooms are small enough for the teacher to be able to do that (or if the teacher has aides to help carry the load)... and we now that is not the case in most public schools. There used to be a special class at every grade level for the kids who could handle advanced work, but that fell out of favor along with "tracking" in general at the elementary school level.
I will say that by high school I was surrounded by people who were just as good at school as I was, so my magic "gifted" status disappeared, I was just a regular old smart kid LOL.
I now see her grade skip as being actually harmful (She's the youngest student in all of her classes often by a year or more).
There are pros and cons of skipping grades. I am not a giant fan of it for all the reasons you state on this board. I think that 14 year olds are 14 no matter how smart they are. I like programs that keep gifted kids in homogeneous age groups with more challenging course content. Not all schools have that and parents have to do the best they can with the choices they have.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
I've learned that having a strong peer group is more important than academic challenge. I've learned that being ahead, academically, doesn't mean they're ready for the next step emotionally or developmentally.
If you school had a true G&T program, rather than just pushing your child ahead do you think she would be in a better place emotionally, and developmentally?
I think that true G&T programs keep kids with a strong peer group that is similar without having to move them to classes where they are out of their element developmentally. My son is not in a true G&T program, but he is in a private school with a very strong honors program. That gives him a strong peer group that is the same age as he is. The only class where he is significantly ahead is in math where he will be taking Algebra 2 as a freshman. The honors section will be mostly sophomores with a handful of juniors and freshmen. I worry about how he will do in Calculus as a junior and what math he will take as a senior.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
If I had it to do again, I would have left dd#2 in her original school with her strong group of friends and let school be easy for her. I think she would have learned more in the long run that way. *I* was the one who thought she needed to be challenged. I'm not sure why I thought that now. I was just going along with what others told me.
I am sure that you did what you thought was right. Parents do the best they can with what they know at the time.
Well, the primary criterion is an ability standard score of 130, or within the range of the SEM (standard error of the mean), roughly 4 to 6 points, depending on the test battery.
The parents can write a letter to the special ed director, asking for the kid to be tested.
But, remember it's just a number and these numbers can vary, depending on the test, the kid's mood and motivation, maturity level, etc...
People take the IQ number way too seriously.
There are pros and cons of skipping grades. I am not a giant fan of it for all the reasons you state on this board. I think that 14 year olds are 14 no matter how smart they are. I like programs that keep gifted kids in homogeneous age groups with more challenging course content. Not all schools have that and parents have to do the best they can with the choices they have.
If you school had a true G&T program, rather than just pushing your child ahead do you think she would be in a better place emotionally, and developmentally?
I think that true G&T programs keep kids with a strong peer group that is similar without having to move them to classes where they are out of their element developmentally. My son is not in a true G&T program, but he is in a private school with a very strong honors program. That gives him a strong peer group that is the same age as he is. The only class where he is significantly ahead is in math where he will be taking Algebra 2 as a freshman. The honors section will be mostly sophomores with a handful of juniors and freshmen. I worry about how he will do in Calculus as a junior and what math he will take as a senior.
I am sure that you did what you thought was right. Parents do the best they can with what they know at the time.
Okay, I'l rephrase that, I don't see them ahead of their peers in the end. What was gained by pushing G&T kids if they end up finishing with lots of company who were not pushed? What does the extra effort gain them?
I have a dd like Tinawina above. Through elementary school, you'd have called her gifted in a heartbeat. In high school. She's bright but not the stand out she once was, mostly, because she lacked the maturity to handle some of the classes she's been placed in. So what did the effort of having her double promoted and placed in a G&T program for 4 years gain her other than loss of her peers and taking classes before she's emotionally ready? Watching her struggle is painful. She's so much more at home with her friends a grade lower than her. She doesn't fit with the other kids taking AP classes (most of her load is AP classes). She lacks their study skills and their maturity.
Her school has mutliple levels for each class offered instead of a G&T program. She was in a G&T program from 2nd grate through 6th grade (skipped 4th grade). Her current school has no need for a G&T program because kids can take AP classes or classes at the local community college if they wish so academic challenge is tehre for the taking. The issue we're having with dd is she is, emotionally, immature compared to the other kids taking those classes. There is one other student in her grade who is her age and he's even more of a fish out of water as he doesn't even look like the other kids.
Given she's one of two kids like her in her grade, how do you propose the school have a true G&T program with just the two of them?
I too am concerned with dd taking AP Calc next year. Her school offers both AB and BC so she can take two years of AP calculus before graduating, however, I have learned in the past that just because she's a whiz at the type of thinking necessary at one level of mathematics doesn't mean she's developed the logical reasoning skills for the next level. Math is her strong suit and she did fine in pre calculus but I'm still a bit concerned about calc next year. I'm really wishing she was taking Algebra II with her friends instead but she took that as a freshman. We didn't do her any favors in allowing her to be pushed this far ahead.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 06-09-2013 at 11:59 AM..
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