<p>I dislike the word gifted. The vast majority of students who are labeled gifted are simply bright students who have tested well and will benefit from some accelerated studies or enrichment. Very few are actually gifted, which IMO can only be identified with an series of tests including an IQ test. Of my three kids, all are labeled gifted. Two are simply bright kids, quick, intuitive, inquisitive kids, but gifted is a stretch. They get excellent grades, but they do study. One is truly gifted. His high IQ is coupled with a learning disability. This made his education a nightmare with teachers who just didn’t believe in this. He was miserable and couldn’t wait to get out of school. Can’t say that I blame him. The gifted program as it currently is, isn’t for the truly gifted, but the bright students that are a step above their classmates. The truly gifted will be just as frustrated in these programs. I will say that there is absolutely no stigma to the program. You can usually tell who the kids are based on the level of math in their current grade as the gifted kids are a year or two ahead. No one cares…except the parents.</p>
<p>There currently really is not much recourse for families/kids who are truly gifted. There are rights for kids with disabilities but actually very little for the rest. As a practical matter, very gifted kids in the US often get only as much as their families are able to provide.</p>
<p>Giftedness, like nearly everything else is a spectrum. Giftedness also comes in different shapes and sizes but is mostly recognized in testing well for math/verbal. </p>
<p>At 3 years old, one kid I consider gifted had taught himself to read and decided on his own to help redesign the national, standardized test that the preschool director was trying to administer to him. The stunned director wisely abandonned the effort to test him–first time in her decades as director. Another kid I also consider gifted, at the age of 3 was able to accurately and in great detail describe and explain how each child in her preschool class felt each day and why with uncanny accuracy and insight (all without anything being said by any of those children).</p>
<p>Neither of those children got much benefit from the paltry G&T offerings by their state but their family provided extensive supplementation and enrichment, nourishing their strengths and interests.</p>
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<p>What REALLY sucks is when you are identified as both gifted AND disabled. Then you get nothing.</p>
<p>^ In our experience our son did get access to the gifted programs and accommodations for his LD. The problem was more that there were teachers every year who simply didn’t buy into the duality of it. Legally they have to provide services per his IEP, getting them to do this is a pain in the kiester when you have one that just thinks your kid is lazy. I encouraged any teacher that felt this way to call a meeting with his case manager and we could talk about his accommodations. Go through the proper channels if you think something isn’t appropriate. Simply refusing isn’t an option (it’s actually illegal). In reality it’s just a pain.</p>
<p>The other reality is that seminars and other offerings for gifted students are a ‘pull out’ program where the students make up missed work on their own. Over time this was too much of a hassle for him. The cost/benefit ratio for gifted/LD students to miss class is low, especially if you have a teacher who will give the student little support. I have another student (no LD) who didn’t go for nearly a year because the meetings were always during APChem or CalcAB. He couldn’t afford to miss the classes to sit in a socratic seminar.</p>
<p>Your son was lucky. I was in the 97th+ percentile in every area except math, where I was in the 12th percentile, and the bull we got was that I couldn’t get an IEP or join the special ed program because my non-math scores were too high, and I wasn’t allowed into the gifted program because my math scores were too low-- not that these were broadly sweeping programs, they WERE done on a subject by subject pull-out-of-class basis, but for some reason admission into the program wasn’t done that way. The way it WOULD have worked out is that I would have been pulled out of my math class to work on math separately with a sp.ed teacher (or in high school I could have taken the special ed math class), while having the opportunity to take advanced courses in other subjects, but I just got ramrodded into the mainstream courses for all of my subjects. So I was always either hopelessly bored or way out of my depth, there was no in between. I wasn’t able to get a school to give me disability accommodations until college, my parents just didn’t know that I had rights in order to advocate for me. Which is a shame, because by then I was six years behind in math and had gotten lackluster high school grades because I was mind-numbingly bored. Thank god for community college or I may never have gotten anywhere because of that mistake.</p>
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It’s probably not different than regular 6th grade. But people are paid (and go to training courses) on how to write this gobbledygook.</p>
<p>Rebecca- check out the Center for Talented Youth, run by Johns Hopkins University. It is a great program for “gifted” kids that has all kinds of online classes as well as summer programs. Your child would need to take the SAT to qualify, but we found it very worthwhile.</p>
<p>ohiomom2 - my oldest d was very much like yours (high school athlete). our state calls it an iep instead of a wep. we kept an iep in place for her for 3 years of high school although she chose to not participate in “gifted” activities. there were a couple of times the iep was helpful in that it allowed her to take more advanced classes a year ahead of time. d went on to be named nmf and attend a top 10 college (where she was a 4 year college athlete). her high gpa and high class ranking came as a surprise to a majority of her high school classmates once they learned of it late in her senior year of high school (she was chosen to be a speaker at the graduation and had been named nmf as well). kids choose their own path and for her, being a closet nerd is what worked for her. it all worked out ok. all kids are different and their needs are different. my ds is not at all a closet nerd type and it would be difficult for him to pull that off. even with an iep, the same public high school did not meet his needs.</p>
<p>The WEP as it is currently written may not be much different. The bigger issue is having it in place. Each year as this document is renewed you can make requests for changes as you see necessary. As condor suggests this may include something like waiving prereq’s for certain classes. Think of it like a placeholder. Once you know you need it the hassle to get one actually written takes a long time. If you or your son are concerned about any implications this may have on college applications, or how this may be viewed by universities, meet with his GC who should be able to explain the document and it’s benefits to you both.</p>
<p>The definition of gifted varies from place to place – and this can pose problems if your family moves from place to place.</p>
<p>When my son was nearing the end of 6th grade, we moved from a community where only the top 2% of students were considered gifted to one with a much looser definition, encompassing more than one-quarter of the school system and as much as one-half of the student body in schools in the more affluent neighborhoods.</p>
<p>My son was not considered gifted in the old school system (which was appropriate) but should have been considered gifted in the new one (he was probably in the top 5 to 10 percent in terms of ability). However, because he had not been labeled “gifted” in the old school system and because the new school system made its determinations of giftedness based on a test that he was too old for at the time we moved, he was considered “regular” and placed in “regular” classes rather than GT ones.</p>
<p>It took only a few weeks for us to realize that “regular” had very different meanings in the two school systems. It took three years for him to fight his way, one subject at a time, into the GT/honors classes that he should have been in in the first place. </p>
<p>On the other hand, his younger sister, who was not too old for the test, was labeled as “gifted” within weeks of her arrival in the new school system. She was automatically invited to apply for every academic opportunity the school system offered, and she never was placed below the top levels in any subject. And we didn’t have to fight for this; it happened by itself.</p>
<p>The unfairness of this still irks me, more than a decade later.</p>
<p>I live in Ohio and both my kids were identified as gifted–in all areas, plus in some artistic areas. We got some sort of paperwork about it, but I am not sure where it is. In any case, in our district at least, whatever plan/benefit that was supposed to go with being ‘gifted’ has not really appeared. With budget cuts looming I would expect even less money going to enrichment. My kids had access to gifted enrichment classes for a while in middle school but in HS that went away–I think the idea was with honors and APs and post-secondary options, that was it.</p>
<p>I so totally agree with blueiguana - so many of these “gifted” kids are not truly gifted. They may be very bright, have involved parents who allow them to develop beyond their years but gifted? I don’t think so. My sister is absolutely convinced that 3 out of 4 of her grandsons are gifted according to studies that explain what a gifted kid is like. The only reason the 4th is not is because he is too young for her to determine his giftedness yet.</p>
<p>I love HImoms example of the 3 year old who wanted to redesign the test - now THERE’S a gifted kid!</p>
<p>I also think that all these “gifted” programs do not serve the truly gifted, just the above average performers.</p>
<p>^ The vision of the grandparent checking out the child is priceless. I remember ‘adults’ checking out our firstborn when he was walking, sticking keys in doors…OMG call the media!! Baby-Einstein!! Those early tricks are crowd pleasers. ;)</p>
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Well, maybe. Those needs may not be academic needs, though. In some cases, they may have more to do with ability to adapt.</p>
<p>In my kids former school a huge percentage of the students were identified as ‘gifted’. The administrators bragged that it was one-quarter or one-third, I forget exactly of a very large school. </p>
<p>It was extra money from the district. So there was a cash motive to identify as many as possible as gifted.</p>
<p>“There currently really is not much recourse for families/kids who are truly gifted. There are rights for kids with disabilities but actually very little for the rest. As a practical matter, very gifted kids in the US often get only as much as their families are able to provide.”</p>
<p>if you can pull it off, home schooling. We did it in 8th grade. Should have before that. If DD hadnt gotten in to TJ, that would probably have been the best option for high school (of course we couldnt teach HS at home - she would have spent a lot of time at the local Community College)</p>
<p>"Rebecca- check out the Center for Talented Youth, run by Johns Hopkins University. It is a great program for “gifted” kids that has all kinds of online classes as well as summer programs. Your child would need to take the SAT to qualify, but we found it very worthwhile. "</p>
<p>CTY was heaven sent for my DD. I cannot speak too highly of it.</p>
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<p>You make a good point. In many places, the term “gifted” is used to refer to a fairly large group of high performers, most of whom are not extraordinary.</p>
<p>In other places, only truly extraordinary students are identified as “gifted.”</p>
<p>I think there can be problems for the few truly extraordinary students in school systems that consider a large number of students to be gifted. The “gifted” programs in those schools are unlikely to meet the needs of the outliers.</p>
<p>The gifted kids mentioned in my example (outliers by any stretch), continue to be amazing. In pre-school, each kid was supposed to be teacher for a day. The two gifted kiddos wanted to individually teach the pre-schoolers origami. The teacher had to gently tell them that pre-schoolers were NOT capable of complex origami and that they had to scale back their lesson plans. Accordingly, the kiddos made the origami for the entire class & let the kids decorate the origami hats & have a parade & march about the classroom.</p>
<p>More recently, the kiddo who wanted to re-design the national test at age 3 was in a world-renown doc’s office for an evaluation (he has chronic health issues). The specialist confided that he had been trying to create a program to graph the results of a test he performs on his patients for decades, so he can show them in powerpoint slideshows and other presentations. The kiddo asked a few questions about exactly what was desired, even tho he was feeling pretty awful due to ill after effects from being tested. The next morning, that kiddo went back to the doctor with a program that did everything the specialist had hoped for and more! The kiddo offered to refine it further but the specialist was speechless!</p>
<p>Yes, the kiddo was and continues to be extremely gifted, as is the other kiddo who still very accurately pinpoints feelings and the motivations/reasons behind them of everyone around her (friend, acquaintance or other). These kids, in my mind are more than just “smart.” Everyone who has ever met them agrees but it can be a rather lonely experience – each of them has to decide what supplements/enrichments are desired and which are just more work than they are worth. Both have fortunately gotten the stimulation they need–OUTSIDE of class and in spite of their formal schooling. Both benefitted greatly from family trips, libraries, bookstores, and complete access to computers and mentors they found. Both still love learning.</p>
<p>Even the most elite prep school in the state, with the gifted kiddo taking all APs & marching band his senior year & literally missing half the year due to health issues did not overly challenge the kiddo who wanted to redesign the national test at age 3; he was a NMF in spite of missing more school than anyone in the history of the school! He is a co-author of many papers, including some on geology and others in his field of EE. He is stopping to smell the roses for a bit before he starts his full-time job in a month or so.</p>
<p>The other kiddo is also doing well and finding her own path. College is better able to provide the opportunities and stimulation that works well for truly gifted kids and allow them to explore widely divergent areas of interest. She ended up leaving HS after her junior year, attending CC & then transferring to a private U where she is flourishing!</p>
<p>There can be some advantages to being labeled gifted. In my district kids were given the “Raven” at a science magnet elementary school where there were many bright kids. I believe there was a push to get kids classified in order for the school to get extra funding. I do think the children were given some type of enrichment program.</p>
<p>But it really came in handy once the kids moved to the only middle school in town. We have an extremely diverse population and there are no private schools. The philosophy at the time was to put all kids at the school , regardless of their ability,in the same math class based on their grade level. Needless to say the majority of the parents did not buy into this (parents of struggling students were just as outraged as parents of top notch students). Even the high school math teachers were against the practice but the principal would not budge on the issue. He felt he was addressing discrimination. For several years math scores plummeted.</p>
<p>Then the parents of the GATE kids got together and demanded services for their children (smart kids=smart parents). I’m not sure if I have the facts exactly correct but I think in CA once a child is labeled GATE they are entitled to 5 hours of special instruction per week. There are many ways schools get by this ( by offering AP classes in high school for example) but this middle school was not able to demonstrate any type of advanced instruction for these “special ed” kids. The superintendent then forced the principal to offer GATE math and GATE English. The sad part was that those kids not labeled as GATE (only scored in the 97th percentile for example) were left out. A couple of years later, the principal retired and the requirements to get in the classes are not so rigid.</p>