The "More" Child

Two weeks ago, when I learned about the unfolding drama surrounding Kumar Singam’s efforts to enroll his 9 year old daughter in an MCPS middle school (posts here and here), I wrote him an email:

… I wanted to let you know that I really, really empathize with you. Just last night my 15 year old who will be a sophomore at [deleted] was sobbing about how she didn’t want to go back to school because she feels like she is “spinning her wheels”….  MCPS refusal to accelerate students who need it–especially those who are verbally gifted–is a travesty….

The Singam case, and the resistance by MCPS officials to grade skipping, gave me a feeling of deja vu.  My daughter was never whole grade or radically subject accelerated.  Instead over the years we bought hook, line and sinker into every MCPS-touted GT program there was, with promises that “next year” it would “get better.” Nonetheless, by the time C. was in middle school, she was asking school officials for acceleration–or some kind of  intervention–ironically first in “GT” science class, but really in other classes as well. She self-advocated, as GT kids are often urged to do. And was brushed off–which is when things took a serious turn for the worse, to the point where we felt we had to withdraw, and were left no option but to homeschool. We were told by the magnet coordinator, “If she’s not happy in the magnet, she’s welcome to return to her home middle school.” Snort…As if. I had naively believed that the magnets were part of that “continuum of services” MCPS likes to talk about, where people would appreciate and “get” kids like mine and where we would work together to find a way to meet their needs. But clearly I was wrong. The magnet, I was told by the then-coordinator, was a “privilege.”

Fine. We withdrew C. The next month she took the SAT as part of the CTY Talent Search and got a freaking amazing score for a 12 year old.  (No, as it turns out, they probably didn’t “have many students who fit her profile.”)  What to do?  More to the point, what would MCPS do for this kid/with this kid if we wanted to re-enroll her for 8th grade?  Because she–we–could not return to the one program supposedly tailor-made for kids like her.  That relationship was shattered.  After countless phone calls and conversations with indifferent or clueless school system officials, I finally connected with someone in the Office of Accelerated and Enriched Instruction (since retired) who got it.  I mean, by that time I had met with so much resistance and hostility that I actually cried while on the phone with her.

Much like Mr. Singam, we met with someone from the Community Superintendent’s office.  We too believed that based on testing, our daughter needed to be placed beyond the norm for her age, namely high school.  MCPS didn’t want to go there; it was not even open for discussion.  Our fall back was that at minimum she needed access to high school English and social studies courses:  just as they arrange for very advanced math or foreign language middle school students to take classes at high school (and for which there is ample precedent) they should do the same for our child. Again, we could get no commitment from MCPS.  The best we could get was an offer of possible placement into the middle school housing the math/science/computer science magnet. (Not the magnet itself mind you, but just to be in building with other really bright age peers.  And they made that sound like a huge concession.).  Once there, we were told, this MCPS individual, the principal and someone from AEI would meet with us and personally build our child’s schedule.  However there was no assurance that she would receive high school level instruction, and by this point we were just too gun shy to take a risk–yet again–on an MCPS promise.  So we homeschooled another year, returning C. to an MCPS high school program that is the unspoken “service” at that level.

All should be great, no?  Well, actually no.  I mean, it’s a really great program and she’s getting vastly more than is available to most kids her age.  But she still has felt underchallenged in her strength areas.  For example she essentially had to repeat government last year (after sucessfully completing an equivalent college course).  To the credit of the coordinator there however, this year C. has been able to get permission to take an AP history class typically reserved for seniors. It’s her favorite class, the one where she feels she “belongs” intellectually and socially.  Clearly, this is a student who could have been radically subjected accelerated years earlier in her area of strength, the humanities, if allowed.  And no, I’m not pushing her.  She’s the one who is yearning for more challenge, for true intellectual engagement and risk taking, for the chance to get to college sooner in the hopes it will be there.

Recently we met a young man from elsewhere in the country who has grade skipped, someone C.’s age who will graduate this academic year–and she is angry that she never had that opportunity. To her, it feels as if MCPS has held her back every step of the way, and she has asked me “Why with MCPS is everything always a fight?”  I wish I had the answer.  All I know is that children like mine–and potentially Mr. Singam’s until he fought back–are being harmed–yes, that’s right, harmed–by MCPS’s refusal to deal with the realities of giftedness at the individual student level, to fully and truly meet their academic needs.  What kind of a toll does it take to be given the message year after year that it’s not okay to be who you are, that you must stifle and dampen your curiosity and passion to learn?

It’s because of these experiences that I have been following, and will continue to follow, the Singam case so closely.  By very vocally and fearlessly pushing MPCS to do the right thing by his daughter, Mr. Singam has forced truths about the system into the light that go against the happy feel good message they put out.  (It should be noted that many GT advocates have more than one child in the system and that the fear of retaliation is often what mutes their advocacy efforts.)   The Singam case reveals the lengths to which MCPS will go to put the institutional status quo above the needs of a student.  It reveals MCPS attitudes towards the legitimacy of homeschooling.  And it shows that the Centers, and middle school magnets are essentially mechanisms to hold the the brightest kids in MCPS from advancing too quickly.  Meanwhile in “regular” school there is no GT there “there.”

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