My understanding is that if a child is qualified, they get in, and there is no limit as to how many "spots" DYS has available in any given month. Do you have information about quotas, Bianca?

Lorel, Bianca was talking about her daughter's school in that post, NOT DYS.

There are problems with every method of differentiation. I'm thinking about underprivileged gifted kids who might not have the exposure to things 5+ grades ahead, though they may have the intellectual power to comprehend it. Then there are kids who are way out there in just 1-2 areas, but more average in others. There just aren't any easy outs when it comes to summarizing a person's intellectual capacity.

My preference is to look at a number of things, and never pigeonhole a kid based upon a single test.

And not only underpriviledged kids ... I think of my KG, borderline EG/PG. He's working comfortably 4-6 grades above level for reading, but only 2-3 above for math--even though math is clearly his strong point. I blame this on me. :-). We just don't work with him formally at home. I work full-time, and while we frequently play mathy games that he loves, we rarely do anything formal.

This has left some pretty gaping holes in his math ability (easily converts between fractions, decimals and percents, but can't add with carrying on paper--we actually *are* going to work on that tonight!).

But just because he doesn't, doesn't mean that he *couldn't*, kwim?

I think that's a very important point, Mia, and yet another reason why any one definition of HG/EG/PG doesn't really work for all kids. If the schools and their deep-in-GT-denial parents never give them anything harder than grade level, then that's all they'll be capable of doing.

In K, my son was reading at the 3rd-4th grade level...but we didn't have any books for him that were harder than the 3rd-4th grade level. So of course that was his limit!

I like what Dottie said about black-and-white definitions only working for black-and-white kids. We have to look at the big picture, using whatever tools we have available and seeing where our kids have been limited as well as helped.

Thanks Dottie,

Yes, I was talking about the entrance requirements to my DD's school.

I see your point, but I have to disagree with this statement, Kriston. Alot of the stories and anecdotes about the extremely PG kids state how they were able to top out on acheivement and subject tests with no prior exposure to the material (I'm thinking specifically of math, here, obviously subjects such as history would require exposure). Some kids seem to be able to go from addition/subtraction to calculus without all the prerequisite instruction. I have seen this, on a smaller scale, with my children. They have made huge leaps in knowledge without any prior instruction. That's the reason I asked for grade skips for my children. They knew the material without ever having being exposed to it in school or home, just as a lot of parents here state their children learned to read with no istruction. Obviously one won't go as far as one could without the training, but I do believe that there are children that can "self-teach" most of the primary and secondary curricula with very little instruction.

As for the other points, I agree with you and Mia. In my opinion, someone can be PG in math but nothing else. (Or reading, etc.) A gifted athlete is usually only truly a star in one sport, say gymnastics, but not in tennis or ice skating for example.

I totally agree with you Mia and my DS7 is exactly the same - vastly further ahead in reading than math, although really I think math is going to be his strongest area at the end of the day.

It's much easier to have exposure to a lot of different reading sources than fill holes in math. I have DS working 3rd grade math right now (going into 2nd), and it's filling holes. A lot of it he really does "know" conceptually but maybe isn't familiar with notation. Ah ... one of the things we hope to fix somewhat by homeschooling. Anyway - it's much more about how they learn, rather than what exactly they know IMHO.

DS9 is most advanced in math, because he shows great initiative and interest there as well as talent. But his English score on the Explore was one of his highest. This is a "subject" that I doubt he's ever really been taught at all (elementary K-3rd and half of 5th). I believe he learned whatever he was tested on just through his voracious reading and ability to absorb material. He also did fairly well on the multiple choice writing portion of the SAT.

I sometimes shortchange my son by thinking of him as "math gifted", but he has some serious potential across the board.

That's funny, because I think of DS11 exactly the opposite. It has always been his reading that seems the most extreme to me, but his test scores always come in with math at the top!

Speaking of voracious, he's finished up Tom Clancy and has moved on to John Grisham so far this summer. Thankfully, Grisham has written quite a few books so this should keep him occupied until school starts. (Note to those parents of younger bookworms: hook them on a particular author or a series instead of a stand alone book. It saves a lot of searching the library shelves for something interesting.)