Reply to How to meet the needs of the gifted child in DCPS?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I concur. These discussions go nowhere because way more think their children are "gifted" than the number that really test as such. Mostly those asking these questions have children that score what the dominant terminology these days calls "advanced" and they seek educational solutions that meet their kids at that level most of the time. The question is then how much time and attention "advanced" kids get and what classroom model works best for them (e.g. differentiation vs. tracking).
In my judgment, elementary school students are best served with in-class differentiation. They develop discontinuous at various speeds, making any sort of separation meaningless, for both advanced and struggling students. Supplemental push-in and pull-out can complement that. At the middle school level, although much of that is still at work and few kids excel at everything, offering basic and advanced courses can accommodate different ability levels. I also love the School-wide Enrichment Model (SEM) that provides for a tiered and flexible way to challenge those students who want and can handle it in a project-based manner. High School seems to be where specializations and ability-tracking makes most sense. That should be complemented by "bridges" that allow students to "cross over" as they develop into advanced learners, recognizing that some develop advanced academic skills a little later than others.[/quote]

I guess we can only really know about our own children (ours are fine, so no need to try to solve anything for them).

In our case, child #1 was one of those "fall through the cracks" kids.  SEM wouldn't work for him, because like many kids, nothing has grabbed his attention enough to care about a project.  Without the passion, there is no drive, and no achievement.  Instead, he sat in the back of the class, not causing trouble, and was completely ignored.  He taught himself what he cared about, and isolated himself from classroom activities.  This child needed a complete overhaul of his curriculum and environment.  He's in BASIS now, and happy -- not because of the acceleration (though he is proud of that), but rather, because of the depth across the curriculum, day in, day out.  Nothing else would suffice for him.

Child #2 is nice, loving, and engaged.  He was easy to spot, because he did things in class that other kids his age just didn't do.  SEM works well for him, though it is exhausting for us as parents, since we are the ones actually providing all the meaningful enrichment.  If SEM was implemented per its theory, it would probably be great.

As for myself, I was in an interesting position during high school -- my school gave me a large catalog of courses to choose from, and I could do each one at a pace which suited me.  I was not forced to progress out of my age group.  It was great -- self-tracking!  I only graduated early because I completed the entire catalog (a pretty pathetic catalog, in hindsight).  Besides the fact that the material was substandard, the only real flaw I could see in the model was that you needed a cross-section of teachers to be available at all times.  It's a shame that the only proponents of this approach are EPGY, CTY, Northwestern, et al...  (oh, and Responsive Ed, but there's that substandard material again)[/quote]

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