My daughter,12yrs.old,7th grade is being “dropped” from gifted class to regular class after 5 years in gifted classes. She has ADHD and 504 plan. My daughter told me this today. She got her report card today as well. She brought all grades up for the semester but overall average was not 80. After all these years of grades worse and better I have never heard of this “80 average rule” until just 9 weeks ago. We have a general team meeting next week for follow up of last meeting but I have heard nothing about her being dropped from the gifted class, as of tomorrow!!! Is this considered a change of placement? Is this legal? I need some help fast. The gifted class is first period tommorrow morning and she told me she has been instructed to go to a regular class under a different teacher. If anyone can help me immediately please email me if possible. Thank you in advance.
Re: gifted class
Rachel, I don’t blame you for being upset about the way this was handled. The 80% rule is ridiculous. Giftedness doesn’t have to do with grades. I would be interested in knowing why a gifted child wasn’t doing better— could it be the class situation or the teacher? Is there an unidentified LD? Usuallly, you can’t hold these kids back!
We had a similar problem with grades last year with my son, only at his school they don’t remove a child mid-year, unless the parent oks it and knows full well what’s going on. In his case, he was bored out of his mind. The class was chaos, noisy, kids out of their seat, doing whatever they wanted to. He wasn’t getting the LD support he was supposed to get. It was impossible to get the assignments or due dates. There weren’t enough photocopies of class materials. They were supposed to take turns reading a book because she didn’t have enough. The teacher stood me up for parent conferences. The LD teacher was intimidated by the classroom teacher and wouldn’t insist on the things in the IEP. No wonder his grades were a problem. I wasted way too much time trying to be nice and work within the system, not getting anywhere.
Fourth quarter, I became Atila the Mom and showed up every morning for two weeks in a row to collect the assignments, make sure that he had the preferential seating he was supposed to have, make sure that he had the photocopies he was supposed to have, etc.— basically I provided the LD support. I provided the enrichment for my son’s assignments, which should’ve been her job but I don’t think she had the skills to teach GT. The classroom teacher had to cooperate with me because she knew my next stop was the principal’s office to explain why I was there. At the first sign of slippage, I showed up a few mornings in a row and that seemed to get things back on track. He had A’s the fourth quarter. Hey, ya know the stuff in the IEP was right and if you did that with the GT enrichment, it worked. They just couldn’t or wouldn’t do it.
My longwinded point is that you can try to advocate within the system, and I certainly hope you have more luck than I did. But when all else failed, what worked for me finally was getting in the trenches, holding them accountable for what they could do to help him, and taking on the repsonsibility for providing what they didn’t have the skills to provide.
Re: gifted class
Wow, I can’t believe that they told your daughter the day before they were going to change her classes! It seems like you should have had more notice!
It has been my experience (dealing with two different states school districts) that each school can run their gifted program pretty much however they want to. In our school here in South Carolina, you can be put on “probabation” if your grades drop below B’s. If you don’t bring your grades up by the next quarter, they can move you out of the gifted classes. Recently they have started to really follow this rule, after years of ignoring it, because budget cuts are forcing them to try to cut funds anyway they can.
geeeez!
Rachel,
I strongly suggest you go to the Memberlist and look up “socks.” She is on the first page, member 14. She has her web page and e-mail listed. Contact her. She is an advacate and may be able to help you.
Good luck,
Barb Bloom
(edited to make it easier to find socks.)