<p>Our state has a $0 budget for gifted education. My son is both gifted and has learning disabilities. We sent him to the public HS where they proposed that we do partial homeschooling – we took care of math with a tutor and writing, which he really needed to learn. On math, I paid a grad student from a local (but very elite) university to meet with him for 2-3 hours a week. In one semester, he did the entire junior year honor’s math curriculum. The next semester, he worked on something else with her. He interviewed at the local very good private HS that my daughter attended, but it was clear that they probably couldn’t handle either the tremendous gifts or the serious deficits.</p>
<p>Our district was dismal and uneven with the gifted program. They would identify, but not do much with the kids. In elementary school, they had an after school program for GT for 90 minutes a week where they might have an art class or build rockets. Both our sons thought they were mostly worthless. Middle school wasn’t a whole lot better. When S14 was in 6th grade, his science teacher had him do a project of his choosing and write a report on it rather than take science class, because he was “too far ahead of the class.” This lasted for an entire 9 week period. Luckily, another boy was in the same boat, so at least he had someone to work with. The middle school did have an outstanding math teacher who was also the MathCounts coach, and both boys got a lot out of that. Both sons are out of district at an IB HS school now and they love it because they feel like they are in classes with kids who are motivated. Our state says that GT should be treated on a par with special ed, but I haven’t seen it. If you tell a teacher with 30 plus kids in their class of varying abilities to do something extra for GT kids, it might just end up being extra homework. @mom2aphysicsgeek, our sons used the artofproblemsolving.com when they were in MathCounts. It was a good resource.</p>
<p>Our school does have a small budget they are supposed to be spending on gifted education. What they do is use it to run programs like Mathcounts and robotics. These are fine programs, and they are a lot more worthwhile than what is going on in the regular classroom instruction. </p>
<p>But there are a few issues I see with spending the extremely limited gifted funding on those activities. First, there is some idea that gifted kids are ok with regular instruction because they can pursue everything that’s really appropriate for them on their own time outside of school. And my daughter has been doing this with a lot of commitment and energy, but the result is that she has almost no free time. Second, the way things are scheduled, some kids aren’t able to participate. Should you have to choose between being gifted and being a musician? Third, if regular math teachers can simply run it in other schools then there doesn’t seem to be much point to having a “gifted program”–how is it in any way better? Fourth, most of the activities funded by this program are overwhelmingly preferred by boys and there really isn’t much equivalent available that attracts gifted girls for them to have opportunities to work with one another. I’d say 90% of the money is being spent on boys, and also that more of the gifted money is being spent on boys who aren’t gifted than on girls who are. The vast majority of the gifted girls aren’t getting anything. </p>
<p>Interesting observation, shawbridge. Our state does allow for gifted iep’s, and there is a fair amount of parental push to get students onto the iep’s, including (or even especially?) students with dual exceptionalities whose iep’s would otherwise be deficit driven. </p>
<p>Our state seems to have mostly window dressing for ‘gifted.’ They tend to have one (often marginal) teacher assigned to do something for those who are somenow ID’d as gifted. In grade school, it was a special pull out program, where they would have to do whatever coursework they missed in the regular classroom plus whatever the gifted teacher assigned. Neither of my kids found the class at all engaging and D begged to be able to quit because she was tired of having the ‘gifted’ teacher make the kids cry every day because she honestly wasn’t good with kids at all.</p>
<p>In 7th grade, S had a gifted SS teacher who pretended he was invisible because he asked her questions she couldn’t answer and after that, she totally ignored him. She had him for two years, 7th & 8th grades! It made him very reticent around authroity figures after that, until he transferred to a private HS where they seemed more accepting of varying abilities of their students and not intimindated when students had a lot of curiousity and a lot of tallent.</p>
<p>Have never heard of an IEP for giftedness and when I was trained as a hearing officer for our state, it was NEVER mentioned as an option.</p>
<p>PA state law allows for a gifted iep, but obviously since this is not a federal mandate, decisions made at a state level cannot be appealed to a federal court as can other special education disputes.</p>
<p>Also (I think) parents cannot request private school funding as least restrictive environment, unless the student also has a disability that cannot be addressed in the public school system.</p>
<p>I also do not know if a gifted iep follows a disabled student into a private special education school if the school is being funded by the district., even if the private school placement is also in PA. </p>
<p>As a practical matter, private schools in our area do not like to see students with dual exceptionalities so most students with dual exceptionalities will go through the public school system with both types of iep’s, or parents will remove a student to homeschool if the going gets rough. (Public school teachers’ unions are not big fans of inclusion, whether or not the student is gifted.)</p>
<p>So sorry to hear of the many obstacles that gifted students and parents face. Frustrating to think that the gifted may not reach their potential because their needs are not being met.</p>
<p>Our state had a very good public elementary school for HGT kids when my son went there. It was set up in the poorer quadrant and was supposed to serve HGT kids from the neighboring area. My son started there in 1st grade during the 2nd year of the school’s existence. This is an all day school, not a pull out program. When my son went to the school, there was quite a bit of diversity in the school. The majority of the teachers in the school are HGT certified. He is now a freshman in college. Fast forward. My daughter, who is in 7th grade, also attended the same elementary school. I saw the shift from it being a school for HGT kids in the quadrant, to a school for wealthier children who test better in K and 1st grade. It is very hard/expensive to test for giftedness at 4 or 5. So, the majority of kids who are getting in are the the ones who have benefitted from pre-school and tons of parental involvement. I am not saying the school isn’t still good. It just doesn’t serve the originally intended purpose of the first Principal.</p>
<p>Our state does have IEPs for HGT kids through middle school. I doesn’t really mean much. My daughter is in the only HGT middle school for our district. Only 3 of the teachers in the school are HGT certified. I am not saying that some of the non-certified teachers aren’t good, they are. However, you would expect more of the teachers to be certified in the only HGT program in the district. Her IEP involves a passion project. In addition to her regular schoolwork, she has to complete a project on something about which she is passionate. My daughter’s IEP has about four generic sentences about challenging her in the areas of reading/writing/math and social studies. I am sure that some of the IEPs are much more extensive as there are twice-exceptional kids who need additional services. </p>
<p>There are no HGT high schools. Just AP/honors. </p>
<p>I</p>
<p>In our town you are gifted in 4th and 5th grade only. @@ Since the gifted program can include kids who are unevenly gifted, and they weren’t allowed to accelerate the curriculum, the math aspect was particularly silly. Middle school allowed math and science accleration in 8th grade officially, and we successfully got my older son accelerated in 6th, but it was like pulling teeth. High school was a breath of fresh air. Generally kids could take what they wanted. Luckily my older son was very self-directed and his interest wasn’t covered by school classes anyway. </p>
<p>In our state, IEPs are for special ed kids attending public schools only. You can qualify only for SPEECH therapy (and only a very little time every week of so-so therapy–S had it off and on for years & begged to stop) if you choose to send your child to private school. You can’t get reimbursed for any portion of sending your kid to private school unless the public school agrees or you win a judgment that the public school can’t provide for what is set forth in IEP and needs to fund the private school. It’s pretty tough to win and make the state fund private school, but it sometimes happens.</p>
<p>in our city in S Florida the full time gifted programming was exceptional at elementary level, still good in middle school. Plenty of AP options in high school. two of my three tested (by the school) into the program and had stronger educational opportunities than in old district in suburban NJ. Otoh the regular classes my third child was in were truly lacking. </p>
<p>No gifted program in our district, and no honors classes. AP’s don’t start until junior year. Neither of my kids went to our public high school. D was in a private and S went to a neighboring public that had a great honors/AP sequence. </p>
<p>One thing that really gets me is that kids who read well can move on and read harder books. But kids who are good in math have to wait for everyone else to “get” it. I think it would be great if it was normal practice to allow kids to be challenged in math the way they can be challenged in reading.</p>
<p>Actually, there is more to being challenged than being ‘allowed’ to read ‘harder books.’ S was reading ‘harder books’ from the time he started kindergarten, but still had no challenge nor peers for math or English in his 1st grade school. The 6th grade teacher in the 2nd grade school he attended tried to have all the ‘advanced’ kids stay together in their math book, but finally just let the kids go at their own pace (whereupon their finished the book in a few weeks). There was no higher level of math available for them at that school. </p>
<p>When I was in school in the dark ages, where was “programmed texts” that we were allowed to do when we completed our other school work. I did it and was able to cover pre-algebra and algebra at my own pace using those texts. Don’t know why kids aren’t encouraged to use computer and other resources to continue advancing once they’ve exhausted current curricula in their schools.</p>
<p>Things are at least better than when I was a little one. Someone from the school came to visit my mother because my older siblings told teachers that I was learning to read at age 3-4. They demanded that she stop facilitating this disruptive behavior!</p>
<p>The grade school school GT teacher said in our parent-teacher conference that S was reading the newspaper in her class (which didn’t surprise us because he had been reading it cover to cover since 2nd grade). We asked her if she wanted him to continue to do so or to stop doing it and she couldn’t decide (and was wondering why she was having so much trouble with S & his friends in that class). I politely informed her that as soon as she decided whether or not she wanted him to read the paper in class or to STOP reading the paper in class, we would reinforce whatever she wanted. Until then, we and the kids were confused about her expectations and preferences.</p>
<p>The pediatrician kept telling me I was overstimulating S because he only took 2 very brief naps and then slept at night from the time he was very, very young. By the time he was 2, he took only one or NO naps! He was just very alert and interested in the world. He taught himself to read at 3 and upset the preschool director when he was trying to help her improve the nationally standardized placement test she was trying to administer to him.</p>
<p>Sadly, he was made to partner with all the ‘troubled’ kids in grade school and be their personalized tutor. He really got tired of that and it didn’t help address any of his interests.</p>
<p>This hits close to home. As an [url=<a href=“http://personalityjunkie.com/the-intp/]INTP[/url”>INTP Personality Type: In-Depth Profile & Analysis]INTP[/url</a>], all I have ever cared about in life is to understand the world as abstractly and thoroughly as I possibly can, and to help other people understand it better. Until college, I was never challenged in school, and when I discovered challenges on my own, I gave up on them too easily because TV and video games were too tempting. Today, I have a short attention span, I am in a perpetual state of procrastination, and I experience sudden and severe bouts of self-hatred, anxiety, insomnia, and suicidal ideation. Since a year or two ago, when I encounter a difficult intellectual problem, I often become inexplicably furious and overcome by sensations of tension and heat throughout my body, rather than the healthy euphoria I remember feeling as a teenager when I encountered difficult problems (at least before abandoning them). Would I have become any different if I had received more encouragement at a young age to embrace difficult problems and to think outside the box, and if I had been trained in methodical problem solving methods, and if I had been given a foundation for self confidence?</p>
<p>It is one thing to talk about gifted children as a national resource; it is another thing to empathize with those individuals who “fall through the cracks” and to understand how early mental developments affect their emotional lives as adult human beings.</p>
<p>Thank you for your enlightening post @Halogen. I agree that the mental/emotional side of the gifted should not be ignored. My kid is quite happy now, but there were many years that he was in turmoil. He was very fortunate to find something that he loves and that we, as parents, were able to help him seek out opportunities that capitalized on his interests. I recognize that things could have gone very differently for him so we really do count our blessings. I wish you peace.</p>