Gifted kids in DCPS (specifically Lafayette)
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Anonymous
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For the umpteenth time. Your kid is very smart. Not gifted. There are sooooo many people thinking that their child is gifted when they truly aren’t. It’s supposed to be a very very small group of kids with the most exceptional qualities of intellect that are labeled gifted. Not ones that are just “bored”.
If your child is so gifted they would display the traits of being gifted. Being bored isn’t one of them. |
Anonymous
You do realize OP said in the OP that the kid had been tested and was determined to be gifted... |
Anonymous
But ALL kids at Lafayette are gifted! Don’t you realize that? |
Anonymous
Bee in your bonnet? |
Anonymous
I was tested as a kid and “determined to be gifted,” which meant put in a gifted program from 6th grade on. But I and the rest of the kids in that program just tested well and performed well in class; we weren’t profoundly gifted. As I understand it, that’s how public school gifted programs continue to operate; they’re just taking the top ~5% of testers out and putting them in one class. If OP’s daughter is profoundly gifted, that’s a different matter, but nothing she has said leads me to believe that’s the case. My own kids are similar to me—both reading many grades ahead from the earliest days of elementary school, one of them far ahead in math. They went to ES at Murch, which did a nice job with in-class differentiation, and they’ve both felt engaged and challenged at Deal and Wilson (the older one; the younger one isn’t there yet). I far prefer the heterogeneous classroom experience my kids are having to the tracked gifted experience I had. |
Anonymous
Yes! I remember doing this as a kid too. Want to know where this is. |
Anonymous
Whereas our Montessori MS has defaulted this year to everyone in each grade on the same level and I hope it improves but I’m really not counting on it. |
Anonymous
*ES |
Anonymous
They do nothing. My child had a complete evaluation and one of the recommendations was that they be placed in gifted classes or enrichment. Lafayette flat-out said they only focus on getting kids up to grade level and don’t do anything beyond that. They used to offer a fair amount of enrichment in reading and math but they haven’t done that for years. They used to at least do small things like change the level on required school programs like ST Math to a higher grade level for kids who could do the work but even that doesn’t happen anymore even though it does not require any additional resources. Teachers used to have more freedom to offer more challenging work to some kids but no longer do that. |
Anonymous
PP, this is great. So many folks struggle when I share something similar about my childhood. Yes, I wish my math skills were stronger, but I have yet to meet a white peer who had a similar public school experience to me - was life changing. |
Anonymous
| I think a lot of people can relate to your post, OP, even if they haven't had their child tested as gifted. The curtain has really been pulled back this year with virtual learning, now we have hints at what goes in actual school. My conclusion is our traditional school system is to bring a cohort of children up to a [very low] minimum standard, that is testable. There are some kids on the screen I see (mostly girls) who are just kind of putting up with it or somehow find it okay, but it is absolute misery. Children are capable of so much more. I don't have a real answer for you other than we are hanging out on the waitlists of many montessori PCSs with the hope that children being able to drive their own learning a bit more has to be better than this. It'll be a drive, but anything is better than this. |
Anonymous
Uh huh, yup... 
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Anonymous
I think we all tend to forget that Public School is meant to educate the masses. There is a set of standard knowledge/skills we all want the population to basically comprehend. Schools plan their delivery to the "average" student, with the knowledge that there will be some below and some above the average. That "average" is probably a lot lower than most of us realize. (When you are above that average and surround yourself with people above that average, it seems crazy that the "average" is what it is.) This system works because it is all about delivering that basic knowledge/skills to the most number of people. It is a pure cost/benefit situation for society. If they were to spend too much time/energy focused on the above average students, the pay off would not be worth it. Those kids already have the knowledge/skills the government wants its population to have. Therefore, it makes more sense to deliver extra time/energy to focus on those below average. My conclusion- Public School works in the way it is supposed to. But if we expect above average students to have more attention/challenges/etc, government/society/whatever has determined it isn't worth the cost to them. Thus, it is on you the parent to provide that extra. |
Anonymous
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In the US, public school is meant to educate the masses in a CERTAIN JURISDICTION. We don't have a centralized public school system at the national level in the US, or even at the state level exactly.
If your jurisdiction happens to be a tony suburb of a big US city, or a city where test-in magnet programs have been strong for generations (unlike in the District), a school system might be aiming for the stars. If you look at list of the highest-performing 500 government schools, the ones sending the most graduates to top universities, in the UK, almost all of them are private schools. Here in the US, the top 500 are mostly government/public schools. This Boston Latin graduate thinks you're painting with much too broad a brush, PP above. |
Anonymous
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My kids are like yours, OP. Their teachers focus on having them work on the learning apps provided in Clever -- Lexia, iReady, Reflex, etc. On the elementary school level, these apps are very, very good, because they provide the solid basis kids need to advance quickly once in middle/high school.
I myself was placed in a gifted program starting in first grade, and by the time my class graduated high school, most of my classmates would be considered highly successful in DCUM terms. When I remember what I was learning at the elementary level, academically, much of it is the same as what is in those apps. |