You’d think that with such a high demand, there would be pressure on the school board to open up another such charter. But that would be “elitist”, and they’d rather drive the students off to private schools. In fact, they try every year to shut the charter down, and to harass them in every way they can (like charging far more than market rate for the rent on the building). The charter is actually not chartered by the district but by the county, which is why it survives despite the hostility.

Meanwhile the highest-rated high school the district operates (they have 3 big ones and an alternative school) is proud that 32% of last year’s graduating class has gone to 4-year colleges, and 55% met the (rather low) admissions standards for Cal State. The high school actually does do some good things: they have an accelerated math program that gets about 30 students a year into calculus by their junior year, and they do have 9 AP classes (though not all are taught every year). The charter, at less than 1/3 the size, has 17 AP classes, making for a much more academic environment—the expectation there is that all students will take AP classes by their senior year.

I have a PG kid too. PG/ADD, not deficit of attention but attention regulation.

Here’s some food for thought. It has been said that public school just can’t do it, can’t (won’t?) accommodate these students on the extreme high end of intelligence. Okay, how about this? Exempt these parents from the tax portion that goes to school and give them a stipend. Allow them to apply those funds for private, distance, homeschool.

Maybe it is not unconscionable for schools to fall down on meeting the needs of ALL children. What is unconscionable, however, is taking our money so that we can educate other people’s children.

My son and I have used the CTY and EPGY programs (actually, I believe they are the same, only one is run through Johns Hopkins (CTY), the other, Stanford (EPGY). Both courses are EXCELLENT, however, expensive – at least for us – I am a single mom, homeschooling, and financial aid will cover only 1 course per year, and that costs $ 245.00 after all financial aid is covered.

If you can afford it, I strongly recommend these programs… I’ve tried others, less expensive, and nothing can even come close to comparison.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

We chose to go with a private school for the gifted for our son, because we thought it offered a broader and deeper curriculum with more individual attention and more experience dealing with the quirks of gifted kids. I don’t think it would have been reasonable to demand that of the cash-strapped public schools in our area. If we had not had the gifted-school option, we would have been demanding acceleration in the public school (which I know they did not like to do).

And as for what schools can do … I understand that there are financial concerns, and we weren’t looking for “perfect” with the public school he was in; we were asking for a single grade skip or at least differentiation, not one-on-one tuition. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

We were told he could do gifted first grade math as a first grader, though he would have tested out of that program as a Ker given the opportunity. Of course, he wasn’t given the opportunity. And in second grade, the “gifted program” started. It’s a good program, don’t get me wrong, but it’s aimed at moderately gifted kids. There is no highly gifted-plus option. My PG child needed more.

We ended up moving him, at great financial strain, to the local private gifted school, where kids are grouped by readiness level and not by age for math and language arts. My 6yo first grader was placed in a mixed first/second grade classroom, in groups of mostly second- and third-graders working in the middle of the third grade for both math and language arts. He’s thriving there, and actually *learning* at school — I can’t imagine him waiting another year to get an inadequate pull-out and sitting through days of lessons he knew as a 4- or even 3-year-old. What’s a reading child to do in first grade??

I find in unconscionable that we’re paying $15K a year to get our unusual child an education that’s even close to appropriate. Homeschooling is not an option for us, so although his tuition eats up more of my salary than we can really afford, it’s the best we can do.

Problem is, the response has a point — the best thing for a lot of these kids *is* either one-on-one tutoring or small group work, and convincing the general public that PG kids need this sort of radical accommodation just doesn’t go over well. “So, they’re smart!” people say. “That’s great!” Well, but when they’re too smart for the system … it’s a real problem for a lot of PG families out there.

My advice: Start homeschooling her. Use materials that are at her intellectual level…even if they are well above “preschool.” Sign her up for a CTY course or two and then when she passes a 2nd, 3rd, 4th grade class you have that “transcript” to show the school in order to advocate for an appropriate placement.

Good luck!