I am glad to hear a lot of different opinions and experiences with the HGCs. I guess when I spoke with that one mother who had her kids at PC HGC she gave only one opinion. Glad to hear other positive experiences like being able to communicate with the teacher, having a diverse student body in terms of disabilities and abilities, the need to not have perfect behavior or be dismissed, and having a workload that is not overwhelming for many children. Interesting how people have such different thoughts on the same program. I guess I'll need to take a wait and see approach and see what *my* family thinks. Thanks for all the feedback!

It is hard to read tone on these forums and maybe people are not trying to be as mean-spirited as it comes across. Maybe it's more about having strong feelings or being upset at something other than the posters themselves. Hope so anyway. We're all parents in this parenting thing together!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like it's a program for compliant bright kids who are willing to give up most of their time and interests due to an extremely heavy work load and not geared for truly highly gifted+ children who REALLY need a self-contained gifted class where their passions and high motivation for learning leads their education.

HGC is for moderately gifted and advanced students, period. Their behavior runs the gamut, and some have learning disorders, just like in any other MCPS classroom. The workload is a little more heavy than in the standard 4th and 5th grade, but since most of these kids work quickly, it is generally not an issue. My gifted and learning disabled son works extremely slowly, so it would have been an issue in his case.

However HGC is a misnomer - the highly or profoundly gifted are NOT well served by the HGC. There is actually no public service available for profoundly gifted students here. The reason is that it makes little economic sense to spend public money on a handful of students, so they are lumped in with the advanced students, which often does not work out that well. Since they are extremely rare, no one cares enough to do anything else, unfortunately.

Who are you to make such a pronouncement, the emperor? Of course there are a handful of highly gifted kids in the Center program, and at least some of them are well-served there.

My three kids have all gone through the Center program. One is at a top university now, doing very high-level work. He is definitely "highly gifted" by any definition of that term. He was very well-served by the Center program.

These kids might not all fit the definition of "highly gifted" but they are generally more than just "advanced." MCPS identifies almost 40% of 2nd graders as gifted, The HGC serves only 4& of 4th and 5th graders so compared to the larger group of "gifted" students (as identified by MCPS) these kids are the most capable.

There are non-compliant kids in my child's HGC class. I think that it is a challenging group to teach.

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like it's a program for compliant bright kids who are willing to give up most of their time and interests due to an extremely heavy work load and not geared for truly highly gifted+ children who REALLY need a self-contained gifted class where their passions and high motivation for learning leads their education.

HGC is for moderately gifted and advanced students, period. Their behavior runs the gamut, and some have learning disorders, just like in any other MCPS classroom. The workload is a little more heavy than in the standard 4th and 5th grade, but since most of these kids work quickly, it is generally not an issue. My gifted and learning disabled son works extremely slowly, so it would have been an issue in his case.

However HGC is a misnomer - the highly or profoundly gifted are NOT well served by the HGC. There is actually no public service available for profoundly gifted students here. The reason is that it makes little economic sense to spend public money on a handful of students, so they are lumped in with the advanced students, which often does not work out that well. Since they are extremely rare, no one cares enough to do anything else, unfortunately.

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like it's a program for compliant bright kids who are willing to give up most of their time and interests due to an extremely heavy work load and not geared for truly highly gifted+ children who REALLY need a self-contained gifted class where their passions and high motivation for learning leads their education.

That wasn't my experience. There were definitely non-compliant kids at the HGC. And most kids did not give up most of their time and interests. It is true that there were lots of kids who are not "truly highly gifted+", but then the number of "truly highly gifted+" kids is very small, by definition, and I don't think that kids like that are well-served in any classroom anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Did you like the teachers at Pine Crest? I have heard some negative things about the 4th grade teachers.

I've heard the same thing. Someone told me that one of the teachers was mean and could make children cry. I also heard they have zero tolerance for any behavior issues even if the child has an IEP or 504 (and won't work with you for accommodations) and that they are quick to dismiss children from the program who have any type of misbehavior. (Because you know, gifted kids are just perfect in the area of behavior, right? That high IQ negates any type of disability or any type of strong personality. ) I also heard a crazy thing--hope it's not true--that you are not allowed to communicate with the teachers via email or in person to discuss your child's progress or anything pertaining to your child unless you set up a formal meeting. What the hell kind of program is this anyway??

Was your child accepted this year?
Has anyone else heard that parents are not allowed to communicate with the teachers?