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[quote=Anonymous]NP, independent school teacher here (middle school).  The reality is that every school is not a fit for every child.  At our school, students do have a wide range of academic abilities, although the range is not as wide as you will see in public schools.  I think we do a good job of meeting the needs of our students and some teachers are better at it than others; however, we don't have the same resources as a large public school district in terms of appropriate placements and staffing.  For kids on the extreme ends of the spectrum-- either profound learning disabilities or profoundly gifted-- not every independent school is going to meet their needs.  For example, a child who is nonverbal, or reading at a 2nd grade level, is not going to succeed in my classroom.  I don't have a parapro or teaching partner; I don't have a resource room.  A parent of such a child would undoubtedly be counseled to look into a different program.

On the other side of the coin, I don't think it's a poor reflection on my school to say that if I have a 7th grader who is doing college level calculus, I probably am not going to meet the needs of that child in my classroom.  It's just not feasible to create a college course in mathematics for that child and teach it in parallel with a pre-algebra course.  It's just not.  We don't have the staff to create a class for one child.

So how would I handle such a student?  Personally, I would probably counsel the child out.  But of course, that's not part of my job description.  What would the administration say in that case?  I don't know, honestly, but it would seem to me a parent would know long before this point whether a school could meet her child's needs.

Again, we're talking about profoundly gifted kids here, not the ones who are very bright, working above grade level,  and are high achievers-- which most privates in the area have in spades.[/quote]

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