Share your experiences and tell us what policies you would like to see implemented to improve gifted education in the Land of 10,000 Lakes!

I have found the educators in my school district to lack in knowledge when it comes to assessing the gifted child. When our special ed team assessed my son for 2E, they appeared unaware of WISC IV limitations for highly gifted kids. When we told teachers we thought our kid needed help because he had dyspraxia, it took 3 years and 3 teachers to finally get them to e point to consider testing. When in his second grade year we requested, in writing, a complete evaluation of our son, the District denied us that right. We had to bring in PACER (parent training center) to get them to do it.

They discovered a highly gifted child with severe motor disability in the fine motor area. In our own research and pursuits we've discovered our son might actually be much higher than the District evaluation indicates.

I think it is pitiful that the District, State and Federal government puts the burden on the family to identify and educate the gifted child.

Also, when I contacted the Dept of Education, I was told the head of the gifted education would call me back. I've never heard from the woman!

The paucity of courtesy and the indecency of laziness and the detriment of ignorance seems rampant in MN educators.

Well, here is my situation. I have a 4 year old that went through the early childhood screening last year to make sure she is on track and so forth for entry into kindergarden when she is old enough. We knew she was going to blow the test away but still wanted to do it just to see what they might say. So now, think of this, at the time she was three years old but tested out at a 6 year old level according to there testing which by the way couldn't even determine her correctly as there system stops at 5.5 years of age and she scored off there charts. We knew this would happen as we have worked with her always. We taught her to read two years ago and last year she began learning addition and subtraction and I would give her daily spelling tests and she was required to read a new book every week. At this I asked about being able to start her in school early only to find out that Minnesota will not permit her to start school until she is 5 before september 1st in the year she is allowed to start school which means she can not start util next year being the 2008-2009 school year. The problem that this poses is th fact that by then she will be reading at a third or fourth grade level and already learning multiplication and division so she will not fit into kindergarden yet Minnesota will not allow her to skip kindergarden or any other grade. The state claims to lead the nation in education but I find that to be utterly outlandish if they will not even place a child based on their knowledge instead of based on their age.

This has caused us to have no choice but to continue to home school her with no intention of ever putting her into public school. The negative of that is the social interaction but luckily we do have a great resource to fill that at our church as there happens to be several other families in our church that have also taken to the home schooling route because of this states low education standards.

Does anyone know if there is a way to force the state to advance your child if they are not being challenged in their current grade leve.?

Thanks,
Chris