ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

Oh, it is all so complicated

The different programs to swallow

My puny brain almost exploded

Oh, it is all so hard to follow

Yes, it is so complicated to me.  I am a lazy mom and I try not to use too much of my brain on my kids' education as it gets drained out too quickly.  I like to take the easy way out as it makes my life easier.  My husband suggested that I use my brain more to avoid developing Alzheimer’s disease.  Maybe if I can get rid of my lazy habit.  By the way, I seem to be the least brainy person in my family of four.  Don’t tell that to my kids.  Anyway, my son thinks that he is smarter than me. 

Okay.  Back to the topic of why it is so complicated, I didn’t understand much of our school’s system until lately when my daughter, a kindergartener, was recommended to enter the high potential and gifted program, and that was when I decided to dig more into the school system.  This is what I found out.

Our school has a program designated for the exceptional gifted students at grade 2 to 5.  The parents have to apply for the programs.  It is kind of like applying for college.  You have to provide your child’s past three NWEA test scores and his/her IQ score.  The criteria to be accepted into the exceptional gifted program are to have an IQ of over 145 and score in 95th percentile on NWEAs for past three tests.  We were tempted to apply for the program for my son but didn’t go through the process, in fear that my son would not be accepted.  He is very good at math and science and that is pretty much all that he is good at.  He was in the high potential enrichment program (based on teacher’s recommendation) working on projects when he was in 1st grade.  He is a 3rd grader now and is in the high potential math program (based on teacher’s recommendation), which according to my research is not the official accelerated math program.  The official accelerate math program (based on test scores) will be offered in 4th grade.  Are you getting as confused as I am now?  So many different programs tailor for the different needs of the students.

I have to admit that I am not a fair mom.  I give into my daughter’s demand more because she is so cute.  I push my son harder because he is my first child and also because he is a boy.  My son was detected early with language learning disability and was put on the speech program when he was 3 years old.  He stayed in the program until after the end of 1st grade.  He loves math and science but hates anything related to language which somewhat hinders his communication and comprehension ability.  Due to this problem, I pay all my attention to my son’s study and neglect my daughter’s.  In my mind, she is just a kindergartener.  All she needs is to play and have fun, so I never ask about what she learns at school.  However, she does constantly complain to me (according to her teacher, she is pretty talkative at school and chats with her friends a lot in class) that she doesn’t like to go to kindergarten as it is too easy.  So, in our recent parent-teacher conference, I brought that issue up to her teacher, she told me that she was recommending her to the high potential and gifted program because of her high NWEA test scores (Math in 95th percentile and Reading in 97th percentile).  I was pleasantly surprised to hear that.  This is a different high potential program (based on test scores) from the high potential enrichment program (based on teacher’s recommendation) that my son was in when he was a first grader. 

So how many high potential and gifted programs are there in our school?  I think that there are six in total:  Level 1 High Potential, Level 2 High Potential, Level 3 High Potential, Accelerated Math, Accelerated Reading and Exceptional Gifted. 

So are you now totally confused?  Like I said, it is all so complicated for my puny little brain to comprehend.

Written by Elisa English

On March 8th, 2012