You know, you’re always trying to figure out the best option, but there’s never a perfect solution. Even when you figure out the best choice for the moment, things change.

What I can tell you is that, unless your school district offers full-time Gifted Education, there will be problems keeping your child challenged and engaged in a multi-abilities setting as he gets older. Primary grade teachers have a lot more flexibility than upper elementary teachers.

However, lots of kids thrive even in adverse school environments.

And, there’s no point stressing about the problems that don’t exist yet. It sounds like your school administrators and teachers are at least willing to work with you.

You may want to ask if your son can try out 3rd Grade full-time at the beginning of the year. If it doesn’t work out, he can always try Plan B.

However, I bet he’ll do well. At the beginning of the year, there is a lot of catch up and review. There are a lot of kids who don’t read or do any math over the summer. Your son will probably excel academically with little, or no effort.

Socially, the beginning of the year is the best time to integrate into the class.

Good luck taking it step by step!

Our district has some really great programs once a child hits the 4th grade. Before that, it’s up to the individual school.

The school he goes to is good with a lot of teachers who really care about him, but aren’t really sure how to teach him. Some that are over zealous and keep trying to diagnose him with something.

It’s really stressful, we are currently thinking of having him put ahead a grade, he would skip the 2nd grade. The plan for next year is for him to go to the 3rd grade class for ela and math, then go back to the 2 grade for the rest of the day….. if the schedule works out. If it doesn’t? Who knows!
I think: if he is going to be with the 3rd graders for half the day anyway…. what is the point of keeping him in the second grade.

He started reading at age 2.5, and was reading 3rd and 4th grade books when he entered kindergarten. (Capt. Underpants was a big hit!)

He has been using a computer since he was 3 (we got him one for his 3rd birthday)

He goes to school and dumbs it up to fit in and to please his teachers. I think he has even gotten answers wrong so that he will seem more normal.

He does have a great reading enrichment program. The reading teacher is wonderful and pulls kids with the same abilities and puts them together in spite of there age or grade!

He also was going with the 3rd grade remedial math classes last year. Great math teacher.

One teacher tried to convince us he has aspergers syndrome and had me believing it. Thank god for his Doctor!

Sometimes I wonder how we could home school or send him to a private school. But there is no way we could afford to do it.

My son is very gifted, he was reading at three and reading chapter books at four. He is also gifted in math, reasoning, and writing. He is still only five, so thankfully I have not had to enroll him in a school just yet. I homeschooled him through first grade this year, and plan to continue with more broad range topics this following year, before he becomes compulsory age.

I am very concerned about what to do with him once he attains compulsory age. If I homeschool I am concerned about telling the district what grade he is working in, etc… I do not want to limit him to learning say 3rd grade material in any given year, but I also do not want to say he does more, but then not finish it…

I would ultimately like to send him to a school. Obviously this will have to be a private school as by the time he enters “first grade” he will be in third more or less… I do not want him to be put in a class with only older kids, but would ideally like to see him learning in a mixed age class.

Well thanks for that post…

Mrs.MegLogan

In this school district, GATE class opportunities are only available at certain schools. If parents want their child in the GATE program, the kids are either bussed across town or parents have to provide transportation. Yes, the GATE program was intentionally established at a forever underperforming school so that the GATE kids test scores would improve the schools overall test scores.

And at the jr high, GATE classes do not exist. GATE students are placed in classes with ELL, RSP and “regular” students.

Private schooling is not an option where we live. There is not real choice of private schools and the few that exist are not staffed by credentially teachers. And academically, they are not much different than the public schools. So, we send our sons to public school and provide, as much as possible, other learning opportunities for them.

It is painful to see how NCLB is actually leaving many students behind. I’m also choosing to homeschool my son, and I’m finding that this is a great choice for him.

I’m also sending my daughter to a private school that encourages child-centered and project-based learning. This is a wonderful setting for my creative, gifted daughter. Not only is this the right academic setting for my daughter, it is also a truly diverse, open-minded supportive setting. My daughter found that any topic can be explored in class and that all kids are accepted - regardless of class, race, attire, etc.

By the way, many private schools (including this one) provide scholarships for students who otherwise could not afford the tuition.

It is a tremendous challenge to find the right school setting that matches a child’s needs. It would be lovely if most public schools (supported by out tax dollars) met the needs of most students. My advice for any parent is to learn about your child’s needs, place them where necessary, and advocate for your own child as well as the community’s children.

In “The War Against Excellence” Cheri Yecke wrote that slower students at the bottom 3% or so got 15 times as much money as the top 3%.

Support and valuing of gifted and talented programs has been steadily declining for the past 25 years. Every few years in our school district, another “extracurricular” activity is dropped. Physical education is even declining. Kids often only get PE twice a week.

The reasoning our superintendent of schools gives is programs have to be dropped to improve standardized test scores. The dropped programs leave more funding and time for academic achievement.

In my observation, the more they devalue the arts, crafts, and other areas of learning, the lower the test scores become. I don’t believe I’m the only one who sees that, yet those who run our schools are missing the whole picture.

Because of this state of affairs, many families who can afford it send their kids to private schools. These schools mostly cater to the upper middle and upper class, and the programs offered are almost always college preparatory. This is where I see the most severe lack of valuing gifts that are other than strictly academic.

I benefited from a well-rounded education as a gifted student 30 years ago. Gifted and talented programs abounded throughout the entire district. I was gifted in math, science, English, and music, and classes were available at all my schools for gifted and talented students. I started college with 14 semester hours of credit from my high school AP courses. I completed college with a B.S. in chemistry and worked in industry and as an academic researcher before teaching.

Today, to study the arts seriously, students have to travel to a different city to attend a school for the arts that actually teaches at the students’ level.

Education in America today is a sad thing. That’s why I home-school my gifted son. He doesn’t test gifted by the academic tests given. But he can design, build and engineer robots that work with programs he writes on his computer. He’s 12. He was reading well in preschool and could count to 100 before kindergarten. There isn’t a test for engineering talent, so he’s not talented, according to the school district, yet he has all the signs and abilities of a gifted child. But he isn’t interested in performing on the academic tests, so again, he isn’t gifted. He considers the tests to be hoops a monkey could jump through and isn’t interested if that’s all they are interested in. So I also have a gifted child with an attitude, and that is challenging to say the least.