Reply to Has anyone been able to get accelerated math for their advanced kid?

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[quote=Anonymous]You can always ask. The math classes may not be at the same time, and so your kid will miss instruction on another second grade topic. If your kid is accelerated now, they won't know what to do with him or her later.

Here's the situation -

1. There are many precocious kids in this educated and wealthy area. There are many bored kids in public and private elementaries. The primary school curriculum is designed to cater to the lowest common denominator, because it is critical to teach reading, writing and arithmetic fluency to all children. Therefore the ones who already know all this are ignored. Both of my children were reading at a middle then high school level in elementary (vocabulary and comprehension). They just brought their own books to school.

2. MCPS has been trying to curtail gifted (and special needs) programming for years. All the special programming is expensive and logistically challenging. There can be significant pushback from central office when content coordinators in each school are asked by parents to accelerate their kid. We've experienced this at the middle school math level.

My second child has always been bored in school. Since magnets are lotteries now, she got into the CES but not the magnet middle. We asked for a placement test in Algebra 1 in 6th grade at her home middle school. They did their level best to deny us, but we managed to get her in. Despite being in the most advanced tracks of middle school, she is still not challenged. She will go to high school next year and has concocted an AP-heavy schedule for herself.

The reality is that no school exists for the gifted. Even MCPS magnets only deepen either STEM or Humanities, but not both, which is bizarre, because a lot of gifted children are interested in both, my daughter included.

You'll probably have to muddle through just like the rest of us with that type of kid. You'll need to stave off impatience, boredom, anxiety and depression in your kid, who may not see the point of going to school anymore. That's what I'm dealing with. Her hobbies and interests outside of school are what keep her from depression. Get your child into an instrument, or chess, or robotics, or whatever he has a liking for. It will distract them and make them use those brain cells.

This is not something the rest of the world can easily empathize with or understand. Even "gifted" is an incredibly loaded word people don't like to hear. It makes them insecure ;-)

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