<p>[Washington</a> Times - REIS: Brightness at risk](<a href=“http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/14/brightness-at-risk/]Washington”>http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/14/brightness-at-risk/) </p>
<p>I wonder how well these policy proposals will fare.</p>
<p>Two little girls in our extended family are bored already, in the early grades. Moms have had to suggest enrichment. Luckily my niece is getting it, even though they tested her for gifted ed. and she missed the cut (it was a nice day, and she correctly reasoned that if she hurried through the test she’d get to go out and play sooner!).</p>
<p>Our education system needs some serious reforms. I honestly believe that my mental growth was seriously stunted in elementary school. After being yelled at for reading harry potter in first grade I realized that I went to school only to learn how to tolerate boredom. After 6 or 7 years of sitting and staring, my school finally caught up and now I am unfortunately quite challenged academically.</p>
<p>Early identification of giftedness is a must if you want to take advantage of what the system has to offer. I found much information in the ERIC Clearinghouse of the Dept. of Education (search gifted and/or gifted education), and that helped me insist that S be tested as soon as he started K and not to take no for an answer (“all parents think their child is gifted,” said the Principal). He was (amazingly, on the last legs of teenagehood, he still is).</p>
<p>Raider… you are exactly right. Our school district feels that once the kids get to HS, they have AP and IB courses and that takes care of them. BUT, what about long before HS, when many bright kids are just left to muddle along in grade school and middle school. Too many are lost due to the lack of challenge in the early stages of their education. All our time now is spent on bringing up the bottom so we meet AYP. To “heck” with the smart kids…</p>
<p>The bottom line is that the vast majority can not count on the public school system for gifted kids. By law they must accommodate kids with special needs but that does not include the gifted.</p>
<p>My kid was bused to a gifted program. We were delighted to have her in the “best” school. End of the road now that she’s is college is she had no extra curriculars, no afterschool sports, no time to participate in community service. After the three hours on the bus per day who has time ??? She is still mad at me i never put her in sychronized swimming classes (LOL)</p>
<p>You know…you can either spend your time trying to get the public schools to provide enrichment for your child…or you can spend time finding that enrichment yourselves. If you think academic enrichment is hard to come by…try dealing with the arts. We never fought with our schools about providing enrichment for our musically talented kids…we found better things than the district could have done anyway. AND we enjoyed doing that much more than trying to get a school district to allocate funds for a non-mandated program. </p>
<p>Re: boredom…my kids were readers well before kindergarten. They were NOT bored in school in the least. They finished their school work quickly (and accurately) and then were able to read…they were never bored.</p>
<p>I have no hope for those policy proposals. Public schools have mandates compelling them to provide services for kids who do not perform well academically. There is no money and little interest in providing an appropriate education for the very bright.</p>
<p>Thumper - your musically talented kids were not forced to spend the entire day doing elementary drills well below their capabilities. Most of us with highly gifted kids have done a great deal to provide enrichment outside of school. It helps to some extent, but it is far from the answer.</p>
<p>Thumper, reading was the way my son dealt with boredom–still is. No he’s not bored when he’s reading, but doesn’t he deserve to be engaged by the material in the subject at hand? It’s not about boredom per se, it’s about boredom with the particular subject. Wouldn’t it be better if his class was interesting and appropriate for his skills?</p>
<p>I just read instead.</p>
<p>From what I can tell, it’s harder to get the schools to exempt gifted kids from the ordinary drills (as NYmoomof2 said) than it is to get extra work. My friend’s son would get extra worksheets in 1st grade (he was reading Harry Potter & doing long division already). But, he was tired after spending all day doing the ordinary work–no way he felt like doing more on top of it. </p>
<p>Had I to do it over w/son…I’d have him skip a few grades in math, rather than muddle along, never having to study but doing great on tests…then thinking that’s how things go.</p>
<p>Thumper: finding enrichment is not the problem, it’s being forced to sit through 7 hours of school every day bored and then getting yelled at when trying to get ahead. Instead of adding activities to the school day, those activities need to be part of the school day. FYI I come from a state where there are no federal laws regarding gifted ed. There is one full time gifted program in the state (not in district and cannot choice in as it is full) and a few mediocre pull out programs that only occur once a week during recess(sad). No middle school programs exist either which I think is really important along with elementary school. A very intense, selective admissions charter school is right in district but only accepts 28% of kids. Note, this response is coming from a child’s perspective, not from some over zealous parent. </p>
<p>Also thumper, I sure think you would be complaining if your children were forced to sit through music school for 6 or 7 hours a day not learning a thing. Naturally, it would be considered a complete waste of time.</p>
<p>'You know…you can either spend your time trying to get the public schools to provide enrichment for your child…or you can spend time finding that enrichment yourselves."</p>
<p>We were very lucky. Our kids got into a highly-regarded magnet school for gifted kids. The parents took care of the enrichment. It was not a rich school but we provided special programs and faculty in music, arts, science, additional field trips and so forth – it was great.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We did exactly this until high school. When we took a look at the situation for high school we looked outside our public system. Until then, we think we did okay in terms of reading and broad knowledge base - not so good with math and science. If I had it to do over with, I would break free sooner with the sense of community and network in our public system and get my kids something better sooner in their lives.</p>
<p>Not every public system is bad, though. My sister lives in a small town with an absolutley wonderful high school.</p>
<p>We were lucky- involvement of parents with GT coordinator has made a difference in our school district. We had both the school’s and our added enrichment. Not perfect, but a good attitude towards giftedness and ongoing training of the teachers to change some of their attitudes.</p>
<p>My kids did plenty of busy work in school. As I mentioned, they were both readers well before K. Believe me, they had plenty of drill work on things they already knew. Still…they learned to do the work and them move on to the things that could keep them from being bored. We were fortunate to live in a smaller community that had understanding and flexible teachers for the most part. No there wasn’t a great gifted program (there was one…but you had to be gifted in EVERYTHING to qualify…my kids were not strong in math) but the teachers provided opportunities to enrich my kids. And as they got older, it got better. By middle school things were terrific and by high school they were fine…with the ability to choose certain classes (DS had to take English, but he chose Shakespeare. DD had to take history but she chose AP Gov). And no…my kids didn’t have to sit through six hours of music, but they did have to take general music. They learned that they had a talent and actually could be leaders. They never complained about being “bored” in music despite the fact that they already knew the general music material. And even moreso…they were excited about doing things related to their music beyond the school day…even though sometimes it meant being up until the wee hours to do school work. </p>
<p>And…we lived in the community where the gifted and talented program was run by Sally Reis. At the time, it was a national model. Now, it’s like most of the others…a skeleton staff. It’s sad that that happened, but the district made the tough choice to allocate resources to mandated programs.</p>
<p>It is very fortunate that you live in a small community where education seems good and involved. My teachers were not so understanding, more angry, feeling like I was disrupting the classroom when I wanted to do other things (I probably was, but can you really blame me). Where I live, there is no small community feeling, there are three districts in the county all with a portion coming from a mostly impoverished city, and then wealthy suburbs where ~50% send their children to private schools. Our state has among the lowest taxes and the highest rate in the country of private school attendance (20%). Sorry for my rant.</p>
<p>We are in a large, suburban community and one of the reasons we moved here was the extensive gifted program for son (8 years ago). However, this program was pushed through toward implementation by the efforts of a group of active/interested parents, just a few years before we moved here.</p>
<p>I felt very fortunate that we could reap the benefits of the parents’ advocacy and work.</p>