School "spreads out" gifted kids to multiple clasrooms?!

[franklinmom]

The gifted coordinator for my son's middle school actually said this: "We try not to have too many kids with gifted IEP's in one classroom. Lord, if we put them all together we'd never hear the end of it. Every parent in the school would be wanting their kids in the gifted class." I was speechless. He went on: "We do try to group them by ability, so he's with kids who are able to do the work. Not every kid who's able to do advanced work has a gifted IEP, you know. We keep it to about a third gifted IEP kids per classroom."

Meanwhile, when I asked my son to identify the category in Bloom's taxonomy that best represents the work he's doing in Language Arts class (where his strongest skills are), he said "Comprehension". The work I see coming home supports that. The "Comprehension" level is far, far below the level of critical thinking that he's capable of and that interests him. He's BORED. He draws in class and doesn't participate in classroom discussions according to the teacher. His grades are good, but not stellar. The fact is he's bored and he doesn't care. We have yet another IEP meeting next week.

Questions: is this way of grouping gifted kids common? Am I on the wrong track to think that the lower level thinking skills a problem and the presence of non-IEP kids in his class explains that? How do I get across to the school that he's bored and the work isn't challenging?

(Sidebar: For what it's worth, he's been telling me for months that there are kids in his classes that can't do the work and they're only there because their parents are teachers.)

[bros]

How old is your son? I want to say... 12? I forget, does he also have LDs (so he'd be 2e) or do you have another child who has disabilities?

Honestly, first I would suggest looking at the work he is given in class and evaluate it yourself based on Blooms Taxonomy - here are some Bloom's Words to help figure out what level on the taxonomy it is at - www.clemson.edu/assessment/assessmentpractices/referencematerials/documents/Blooms%20Taxonomy%20Action%20Verbs.pdf

The thing is - there is nothing requiring the school to do anything for him for his giftedness - gifted IEPs are not covered federally, so you will have to check your state laws on gifted IEPs to see what they are required to do per state statute, if anything.

This way of grouping gifted kids can be common for group work - have the highest work with the lowest, they learn from each other.

Sometimes, they will place students in a class who normally wouldn't be there, usually just to make it so they can actually have the class, and subsequently increase class size for other teachers (and cost the job of one teacher, potentially).

Have you considered ways of enriching him at home? What kind of books does he read?

[franklinmom]

Hi bros! Yep, he's 12 (going on 37) and he is 2e (dx'd with ADHD, dysgraphia, NLD). My other child is 10 and also 2e (gifted and much milder ADHD). In TN, giftedness is considered a disability, with the same mandate for receiving an appropriate education. What happens in practice, though, might be a different story. There's no problem at his school with filling a classroom with gifted IEP kids. I'd estimate among the 7th graders at his school there are 30-40 kids with gifted IEP's. So I'm pretty sure the issue isn't filling out a class. Your advice on evaluation based on Blooms is great and I've already done that. The work is solidly "comprehension level" work with a few minor exceptions. And we've done lots of enrichment -- mostly summer experiences, but also Vanderbilt Saturday Academy for gifted kids, Destination Imagination, plus a pricey art supply and graphic design habit. Maybe because of his ADHD, his favorite reading material is magazines -- Popular Science, Newsweek, Air & Space, The Economist, PC World, National Geographic. But he does read military history books straight through the minute he gets one.

I think we're doing all we can on the homefront. I'm just not sure the same is true at school.

[healthy11]

As bros mentioned, gifted IEP's are not federally mandated, and plenty of states don't even offer them. It has been my experience that unless a district has a self-contained "gifted/talented program track," schools DO "spread around" the brighter students, and they generally try to have a mix of children of all abilities in every classroom.

I'm guessing that the teacher in your son's classroom may not be particularly experienced and/or have much training in working with brighter students; there are ways to enrich lessons for students who are more capable... I can remember one of my son's English instructors utilizing several different "versions" of Romeo and Juliet, for example, in the same classroom, and allowing a choice of varying projects to demonstrate different levels of understanding and mastery of materials. If you have a chance, you might want to look at www.prufrock.com/ for materials that might help your son's instructors differentiate assignments so he's less apt to be bored/"coast" through school work.

P.S. I was composing my reply as you were also responding to bros' post. My son is 2e, and he also prefers non-fiction types of reading materials. I wonder if you might even ask the teacher if your son would be permitted to "intersperse" his love of military history reading with some of the "assigned" classroom topics. (For example, if kids are required to look at different types of literature, which is listed among www.tn.gov/education/standards/english.shtml for 6th grade in TN, could your son select a passage of his own choosing and analyze it/demonstrate comprehension in a separate presentation to the teacher or to the class?)

[bros]

Feb 14, 2015 22:09:17 GMT -5 franklinmom said:

Hi bros! Yep, he's 12 (going on 37) and he is 2e (dx'd with ADHD, dysgraphia, NLD). My other child is 10 and also 2e (gifted and much milder ADHD). In TN, giftedness is considered a disability, with the same mandate for receiving an appropriate education. What happens in practice, though, might be a different story. There's no problem at his school with filling a classroom with gifted IEP kids. I'd estimate among the 7th graders at his school there are 30-40 kids with gifted IEP's. So I'm pretty sure the issue isn't filling out a class. Your advice on evaluation based on Blooms is great and I've already done that. The work is solidly "comprehension level" work with a few minor exceptions. And we've done lots of enrichment -- mostly summer experiences, but also Vanderbilt Saturday Academy for gifted kids, Destination Imagination, plus a pricey art supply and graphic design habit. Maybe because of his ADHD, his favorite reading material is magazines -- Popular Science, Newsweek, Air & Space, The Economist, PC World, National Geographic. But he does read military history books straight through the minute he gets one.

I think we're doing all we can on the homefront. I'm just not sure the same is true at school.

Honestly, try and get him into reading more books - I have ADHD and I can really focus on some books - might be hyperfocusing, might just be because I like the content. If you want, I could suggest some books, you could review what they are online (for content, things of that nature). I could suggest some interesting History books that I have read in college, if his reading level/comprehension is that high - never took any military history, but I took some subjects that might be found interesting (Like a course on witchcraft, one of the books details a rash of poisonings in the court of Louis XIV that was blamed on "witchcraft").

You could try to look up lessons online, have him read material for HS students - you can find a bevy of LAL lessons on readwritethink.

[jisp]

Franklinmom,
I live in a town where every other kid is basically gifted. I "get" gifted kids. Plus I raised three of them. Separating gifted kids is not always in the best interest of those who are gifted or the other children who are not classified as gifted. Why? Because in the real world there are not clear lines between brains that are "gifted" and brains that are not. And in the end all brains have to learn to work together. I know there are teachers and parents who say it is not fair to hold gifted kids back academically and have them in class with non-gifted kids. But I do not believe this is true because development is not linear. All gifted kids have weak areas and many kids who are not labeled gifted are in fact extremely bright. It has always struck me as strange that we think we can make decisions about talent and gifts when we know that how intelligence develops is more complicated than what we understand. In an ideal world a teacher is skilled at working with each individual child to strengthen their weak areas and help them to understand their strengths. A talented teacher with a creative and solid curriculum should be able to teach a wide range children whose IQs fall along the bell curve successfully. Obviously there are children on the extremes of the bell curve in the .01% of the top and bottom who might require special attention. These kids are often best served by taking a few classes with high schooll students in areas such as math, where they can have teachers who understand the material they are learning, rather than middle school teachers who might not.

Your child is going to need a wide range of skills to be successful eventually. Academics are just a small part of what it takes to make it in this world. If academics come easily than that leaves time for your child to learn and master other skills that will help him/her in life. Being bored can be a learning experience. Learning how to stimulate his active brain while being bored can be a life-skill. Learning how to explore material at a deeper level can also be a life skill. Plus there are all the other things one might want to learn in life if one is not hampered by too much school work. 50 years ago bright students would spend their time learning to play a musical instrument, writing, drawing or apprenticing. There is so much out there to learn. And now we have online classes as well.

My own son had a long and complicated school career. He never excelled in school because of his being 2E. But he was motivated and he read on his own, he would watch videos of MIT lectures, he would teach himself how to play the guitar and how to read music. Now as a PhD student in mathematical biology his greatest strength is that he knows how to work independently and is not dependent on others telling him what to learn and how to learn it. I doubt his advisor would be giving him the time of day as a first year graduate student if he did not have that skill. And it is that independence that has allowed him to work on a problem and produce paper (which is highly unusual for a first year grad student).

[michellea]

I am not sure what is typical grouping/placement strategies for gifted kids. I live in Massachusetts and we do not have mandated gifted programs. That said, we have some of the most positive post HS outcomes in US as measured by standardized test scores, college placement, graduation rates etc. Given that we do not "group:" gifted kids together and our educational results are high, I would suggest that grouping exceptional students together is not the only way to help them reach their potential and or keep them engaged. I would also suggest that intellectual horsepower is only one variable that can contribute to academic success, engagement and learning. Equally important is a student's ability to be intrinsically motivated, to deal with a variety of individuals, to develop resiliency, to take initiative, to learn from mistakes and to engage. It sounds like your son's placement is an outstanding opportunity to learn active and independent learning.

I am the mother of two bright, slightly above average (IQ) students that are engaged, hard workers. Even though they are not gifted in the text book sense of the word, they are excellent students. They are able to keep up with high level work and critical thinking in their areas of strength and interest. I am positive that their "gifted" peers learn as much from them as they would from the gifted group. Low performing gifted students could learn from my children self advocacy, teamwork, persistence, and reliability.

On a side note, as a special ed advocate I have quite a few 2-E clients. Some struggle quite a bit in school. It is not always obvious who the "gifted" students are.

[franklinmom]

Thanks so much for everyone's input!