investigating gifted
Mar. 20th, 2009 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaI've just emailed the gifted teacher at Casper's school to ask for a meeting. We'd like to know more about the tests used, what Casper's scores were, and if her youth (birthday 8/28, K cutoff 9/1, so she is probably the youngest K in the school) is taken into account, as well as more about the gifted program in general. mr. flea is the one pushing on this; I think he feels that his parents didn't push him academically and never expected greatness from him. He was a perennial B+ student and always just missed the cutoff for things like gifted or honors programs, and his parents never made a noise about things. He wants to be better advocate for our kids. I am a little ambivalent but I figure learning more can't hurt, right?
The gifted teacher has a web site with photos of her classes (K isn't up yet, but I learned they have 45-minute pull-outs every day; 90 minutes 1 day a week). The 1st graders are 8 kids: 6 girls and 2 boys, all but 1 white (and the nonwhite child has parents who drive a Mercedes; I know almost all of these kids and their parents). There are 4 first grade classes of ca. 20 kids at the school; first grade is the pioneer year of the upper-middle class families choosing the school. The higher grades at the school as a whole are much smaller (1-2 classes per grade, many nowhere near 20 kids per) and mostly nonwhite. The gifted second graders are 4 kids: 3 boys and 1 girl, all but 1 white (I know only one of the kids). There are no pictures of 3rd grade kids, and the 4th-5th grade is only 2 kids (1 boy, 1 girl, both nonwhite). So, it does look like there is a fair amount of socioeconomic-which-in-this-town-almost-always-includes-racial stratification going on wrt passing the gifted test. As I sort of expected.
The gifted teacher has a web site with photos of her classes (K isn't up yet, but I learned they have 45-minute pull-outs every day; 90 minutes 1 day a week). The 1st graders are 8 kids: 6 girls and 2 boys, all but 1 white (and the nonwhite child has parents who drive a Mercedes; I know almost all of these kids and their parents). There are 4 first grade classes of ca. 20 kids at the school; first grade is the pioneer year of the upper-middle class families choosing the school. The higher grades at the school as a whole are much smaller (1-2 classes per grade, many nowhere near 20 kids per) and mostly nonwhite. The gifted second graders are 4 kids: 3 boys and 1 girl, all but 1 white (I know only one of the kids). There are no pictures of 3rd grade kids, and the 4th-5th grade is only 2 kids (1 boy, 1 girl, both nonwhite). So, it does look like there is a fair amount of socioeconomic-which-in-this-town-almost-always-includes-racial stratification going on wrt passing the gifted test. As I sort of expected.