Was your child's Gifted Class a waste of time?

Parent Cafe
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<p>In our town, kids are identified in 2nd grade through the Otis-Lennon test. S2 was not identified in 2nd grade, but his wonderful 3rd grade teacher pushed for him. He wound up getting tested alone by the school psychologist and he very easily tested above the cut-off. The gifted program in elementary school – a pull-out program of a few hours a week – was a waste. The teacher was a looney who, I think, they didn’t want in the regular classroom. He got little out of it then.</p>

<p>In middle school, however, the teacher was brilliant and creative. Each student could pursue something that was a passion of his/hers. I remember to this day my son’s presenting a report on astronomy. He explained how people figured out the speed of light. (To this day, I still don’t understand it . . . . ) That was enjoyable because the teacher was awesome.</p>

<p>Did not specifically track into APs or Honors in HS.</p>

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<p>My daughter’s gifted “enrichment” was a waste of time and did little for her except to make her, and the other kids that participated in these activities, targets of ridicule. That was elementary school, in middle school the “gifted program” was completely invisible to her (and to me). We failed to see how her curriculum was any different.</p>

<p>Now, when I was in the Mentally Gifted Minors program in my school (California - 1970’s), we were picked up once a week and bussed to the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley to take courses in astronomy, computer science, and other high level topics. We were taught by UC Berkeley students - though an occasional professor would stop in to check our progress. I found this program to provide the mental challenges I needed.</p>

<p>I was sorely disappointed when my daughter’s experience was so “lame”. But then, I figured out that the program only was funded at $8 per student, per year (about 75% of the funding goes to the administrator of the program). What in the world can anyone do with $8? Not much.</p>

<p>We were also disappointed in the children’s program of MENSA. We thought they would have activities for children, when in fact it was more of a support group for parents of gifted children.</p>

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<p>Responding to toadstool’s comment about Massachusetts - I think it really depends on the school district.</p>

<p>Our Massachusetts town is like Lake Woebegone; all the kids are above average. As far as I know, there are no gifted programs in the elementary school. In middle school, they track for math only. In high school, they track language, math and science. Math, for example, is tracked at four levels (slower pace, college prep, college prep + and accelerated). It is possible to move between the tracks to some degree.</p>

<p>I would agree with toadstool that our high school tries to be inclusive, so, for example, GPAs are not weighed and there is no valedictorian. Personally I think it works well.</p>

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<p>Well BEFORE the district eliminated funding (and therefore programs) for GT, third grade teachers would recommend a few kids. Two quarter-days a week these kids would be pulled from their regular classes for GT activities fourth through eighth grades. Other than p*ssing off the regular teachers and ostracizing the GT kids, I saw little value. The only unquestioned good thing that came out of this was being recommended for the Johns Hopkins gifted program (which actually is quite good). </p>

<p>What I’m more impressed with are gifted and talented TEACHERS. My daughters have been blessed with a number of these over the years, and each one has left the kids with remarkable life lessons.</p>

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<p>When I was growing up in elementary I was also bused to a separate school where we got together with other kids in the districts elementary schools. By the time we were in jr high there were different tracks for math, reading and some science. This was a long time before AP and certainly no parents were helping kids like they do today. Heck, the closest my parents ever came to helping was to ask, “do you have your homework done?” This is not to say they weren’t extremely involved, but in those days you either did it or you didn’t.</p>

<p>In my kids cases, neither of my younger children went to public school and when my son hit middle school and was pretty much bored to tears we could have looked to the G&T of the public school but in talking to parents a lot of the stuff was just extra work that they pulled the kids out and they missed regular class. Seemed like a waste to me and at the same time I knew how much my kid would hate not being in class. So… we sent them both to private school where they by no means are the smartest and there is no elitism in thinking there are some who are G&T when clearly only a few would be truly considered gifted in the very truest sense of the word.</p>

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<p>Our gifted program wasn’t a total waste of time, but neither was it as good as it might have been. The first problem was the identification - which cast as wide a net as possible with the result that the kids in the program were above average, but there was a wide range of abilities in the classroom. There were two tiers, one for the brightest that was all day at a separate school. (Mathson qualified, but didn’t go because I hated the teachers and the school.) The second tier was half day and covered math and language arts and whatever else the teachers could squeeze into a day. Some of the projects really were great. Older son read and acted in a slightly abridged version of The Tempest and then went to see a Shakespeare in the Park. They also did a fun project studying probability and the game Can’t Stop. They wrote autobiographies which were very cute. Younger son’s class got all excited about The Raven - so a planned unit to just do the first verse got expanded to the whole poem and the entire class wrote poems as well. His class also did a class newspaper - they had a pizza tasting from four different restaurants, they wrote an editorial about wearing coats, they got the principal to give them a tour of the hidden parts of the school (attic, boiler rooms etc.) </p>

<p>What the class didn’t do was accelerate math (which Mathson had in the years before the gifted program kicked in). For my kids subject acceleration is more efficient, but it’s a bit of a problem in elementary schools.</p>

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<p>Our district’s gifted program consisted of a pull-out enrichment class in 4th grade, and an all-gifted classroom in 5th and 6th grades.</p>

<p>I don’t know how much academic enrichment we really got (although kids who wanted to do advanced work were allowed to do so with teacher supervision), but it was a huge benefit to me socially to be with the other gifted kids, especially in 5th grade. It was not a huge honor to be smart at my elementary school or middle school, and being with the other gifted kids meant time away from being taunted for being a “walking dictionary”. I had stayed home sick many days in third grade to avoid the bullies, and my attendance improved markedly once I was kept away from them.</p>

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<p>MA resident here. From what I’ve read of most GT programs, they would not have met S’s needs.
We supplemented at home informally, and through weekend programs and summer academic programs. We worked with teachers to enable S attend more advanced classes. Fortunately, Harvard Extension School welcomes high school students.</p>

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<p>We moved around with the military and saw gifted programs in northern VA, Norman OK, and here in Ohio (we went the private school route in LA). DD1 attended a Spanish immersion program in first and second grade in VA. That was a wonderful program (math and science taught in the foreign language). When we got to OK she then was able to have what I consider her best GT program - a regular session with the school principal who had a PhD in math. DD1 learned how to make quick calculations and check to see if something made sense which has proven invaluable since. Beyond that, in my eyes the value of GT programs is to push the student through basic math more quickly so they can cover more subjects and APs.</p>

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<p>Amazed at some of the programs that parents are posting. All we got was IB, math placement, a field trip.</p>

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<p>At times, the gifted programs where we have lived have been good. My oldest felt challenged in his first two years of middle school with various math contests, Wordmasters, Stock Market games, etc. Now that he is a senior, he has made his own opportunities for enrichment. He took calculus as a sophomore at a community college and seven different AP classes online. When he graduates, he will have taken 13 AP exams.</p>

<p>The youngest has never felt challenged. In fact, he just detests his current pullout situation because it seems more geared toward more reading. He longs for math contests like his brother had, but was told that he could not partipicate because he has band when the contests are held. Oh, and the gifted teacher wants him doing independent studies. It does not interest him. The teacher told me if he does the study, then maybe they will consider letting him take a course online. He asked if he could take the course as his independent study. The answer was no. Needless to say, he dislikes school, but moreover, the teacher. </p>

<p>We spend millions each year in this country on special education. Unfortunately, that special education does not include gifted. We are losing our best and brightest – and that is coming from an educator.</p>

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<p>I have nothing but great things to say about the gifted program at my d’s elementary school. Starting in the second grade she spent one day a week in the gifted classic room with one of the most energetic, talented, and amazing teachers I have ever met. Outside of that one day a week, this woman also worked my D’s classroom teachers to accelerate her classwork or come up with independent projects to supplement or replace regular classwork. It was just a wonderful experience.</p>

<p>Middle school is a different story. Gifted kids are channeled into AC (Accelerated Content) classes. Some of have been amazing, some not so much. </p>

<p>Can someone explain the trend of having gifted kids do art projects instead of learning to write papers? I can see art projects in addition to writing, but a seventh grade gifted student should be learning how to successfully complete several different forms of academic writing in all the content areas.</p>

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<p>I thought it was a waste of time. The teacher was definitely not gifted, she only knew one way to solve the problem. She gave lots of puzzles/quizzes/brain teasers and all the parents had to help out. The joke in our family is that we knew we were definitely gifted. Especially when it took a Phd grad to solve a 4th grade problem.
As a result, I did not push my second child in anything gifted but she’s tagged as one in some of her classes. I don’t care about the program but won’t fight to have her removed if she is placed into it.</p>

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<p>ScottieMix. There have been some bright spots in my kid’s school experience (re writing), but in general I would advocate for much more emphasis on writing throughout the entire school curriculum. I don’t care what field a kid goes into, the need to be able to write clearly is paramount.</p>

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<p>yes a waste of time. Schools used teacher rec and then testing. Son got to participate in a math day(5th grade) and a rocket building (7th). In high school the teacher in charge tried to do something but lacked funds. She was also in charge of the kids that needed help and they had great funding. Teacher did have meetings for parents and tried to bring in speakers from local colleges. We did get “free” AP tests for all GATE kids one year. Not many kids took the test so the $ was minimal.</p>

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<p>Our older two benefitted from our family being posted in Ontario,Canada during early elementary years. Canadian law included “Giftedness” within their Special Education Act, so every district had to provide for it-- in some way.</p>

<p>With our new administration in the U.S., perhaps that’s an avenue to explore?</p>

<p>In the districts we lived, both had experimented with both models: “Congregated Gifted” (all day, all week) classes and 2x weekly Pull-out 45 minute programs. They concluded the pull-outs weren’t worth it, especially since some mid-day bussing was invoilved among schools, and dropped them. They kept only the Congregated model (25 kids, all day, same classroom, one extraordinary teacher). That’s how my older two did Grades 1-6, and in public school. </p>

<p>All-day congregated gifted classrooms were life-altering. In Grades 1 and 2, no reading was taught because the kids “knew” how, so the program began with reading students. That alone liberated a huge amount of time for Grades 1 and 2 to read for content.</p>

<p>One very sweet teacher I knew left teaching the gifted classes because she missed teaching children to read! There is joy in many realms, among all kinds of kids. </p>

<p>We encountered a problem in 3rd and 4th grade Math due to absence of teaching of some basics (multiplication facts) since so many other kids fairly breathed it in and didn’t need any drill/repetition, but one of ours did need a bit. It wouldn’t have made sense to drill the whole class, however, so we did at home.</p>

<p>A major difference was that in Congregated Gifted classrooms, NO HOMEWORK from grades 1-4. They assumed the kids had lives outside of class and needed their time to do things with families. Since homework practices the basic skills, why take up time with it? was the philosophy. So we went to museums or just cooked together. No “homework habits” were formed and none were needed at that age. </p>

<p>The essence to me of Gifted Education is recognizing that what’s needed is complexification and tangential thinking, rather than acceleration; along with recognition that the academics may be advanced but socially/emotionally the kids are at age-level.
For this reason, I came to like the Congregated setting (despite bussing and loss of neighborhood relationships) since there was no in-class pointing out of the “smart kid.” My kids told me later that on the playground, there was some of that, since there was also neighborhood schooling occurring in the same building. But at least there were many classrooms of kids so the social labels meant less all the way around.</p>

<p>When the Canadian government drew back some of this money (remember, they “could have” stopped with Pullout programs but chose to do more in these particular districts), I saw something disturbing. They began to assign teachers to these 25-student Congregated Gifted classes who had Special Education credentials but not a concentration in Giftedness, per se. It was quite a difference in their training and the results showed in many classroom decisions and pacing. I’m not sure they expected to have to manage 25 kids, either, since a lot of Spec Ed work and student teaching involves intense focus on fewer children in a room. The routines, rituals and repetitions of Spec Ed didn’t translate as well if the Spec Ed was for Giftedness rather than Delays. </p>

<p>When I taught in American public schools, I was in a poverty district, in Regular Classrooms. The BOCES sent in a regional roving specialist to do the “Tangrams” thing for the entire Second Grade, supposedly looking out for anyone who might be gifted, to test at the end of that grade, as pull-out began in Third Grade. THAT was a waste of time, as any teacher could have better told her who was worth testing based on 40 hours weekly with the entire class in all subjects. I think they were doing it to say “every child has a chance to be surveyed” but really, it was very weak and in particular not enjoyable to the kids I could intuit were gifted, because the pace was slow and conducted from front-of-room for all. </p>

<p>The kids I think who fell through the cracks in the American system were those who had
remarakble talent in Art or Music (and I knew this from being their general teacher) but were tested for “giftedness” based on IQ only. No big deal, though, since the follow-up for that testing was a 2x/week pullout anyway, so IMO not much of a loss.</p>

<p>I guess I don’t believe in the Pull-outs, although if that were all that was available, in a really deadly-dull school system, I could see where it would make the child’s day more pleasant to have 45 minutes of a project that was exciting. They’d look forward more to school, and that’s very important for kids, no matter what the reason.</p>

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<p>I was pulled aside for the gifted program in kindergarten, and it was a pull-out program that offered 2-3 hours of special instruction toward the end of the day. It wasn’t an accelerated academic program, but rather the kind the OP described: brain puzzles, special topics, that sort of thing.</p>

<p>I remember logic puzzles of all kinds, learning Shakespeare in the third grade, dissecting a pig’s heart, reading Sherlock Holmes and recreating and discussing the Magna Carta. It may not have been strictly useful for the TAAS test (this was in Texas), but it was certainly far more enriching than anything strictly academic would have been for me. I think that was its goal, though: enrichment for students identified as gifted and talented. I especially appreciated that it was a special group; I was allowed to socialize and work with students who were on or around the same page as me rather than being put in a class of mixed students, some of whom might be older, some younger, some further ahead and some behind where I was.</p>

<p>When I moved to California, the GATE program turned into special classes rather than group enrichment. It was only offered during the summer or after-school, and it was a topical course. I only did one because I ended up using the after-school and summer times for truly academic or community activities – taking college classes, studying for the SAT, volunteering, etc. – but the chance to make a robot was pretty neat. I just wish it had been integrated, in some fashion, into regular schooling.</p>

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<p>Our public school system offered a similar scenario. I think in and of itself, it was worthless; but there has been value in our children being labeled “gifted”.</p>

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<p>I think it is a good program if it is done right. My D was part of a gifted program in elementary school. What I found disturbing how students were id for it. My district keeps it under wraps and many don’t even know it exists.My daughter is very bright and was always on the honor roll but never in the gifted program. The kids are selected by teacher reccommendation. I had to inquire into the program. When D was in 5th grade, I finally contacted the gifted teacher coordinator and he looked into my D records and said she should absolutely be in the program. So he pulled her into the program. Had I not pursued it, she would have been missing a valuable program. With that said, it was a fabulous program, the teacher had them do mock trials, put them in county, state and national competitions for various things such as chess, music, etc. This group of gifted ghildren pretty much stayed together throught elementaryschool then high school, all were in Honor Society and in Honors and AP classes. I think the social benefit far outweighs anything else. These kids ended up top in their class, valedictorian, IVY bound etc. This was my D saving grace to navigate through HS. They were actually known as the “Loser Crew.”</p>

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<p>I totally agree with the OP.
Back in the dark ages, I dropped out of my own public elementary school pull out gifted program since the activities seemed very busy workish. If I got through all the regular classroom busy work and was very very quiet it was possible to educate myself by reading most of the school day. As a youngish adult I worked in one of the national gifted programs for middle and high schoolers and felt the main advantages were peer group support and acceleration. We home schooled for elementary and middle school so that our kids could learn at their own pace. They were involved in the high school gifted program which did provide a comfortable peer group but no meaningful instruction. A local university allowed eligible high school students to take regular course work for credit and they took advantage of that opportunity.</p>