Email I just sent to Brandon's new school district

We fought for his placement last year and I'm fighting for his placement this year. Yeah.

Ms. H,

I am just following up on our conversation this afternoon regarding our son, Brandon J.

We currently have Brandon placed in a GATE 2nd grade classroom at L Elementary School in *** School District. He comes to you with a current Psychological Evaluation done by Dr. R. M. dated April 3, 2007. In the evaluation you will note that his WISC-IV scores indicate a gifted child. His Verbal Comprehension Index is (96%ile, superior), Perceptual Reasoning Index is (99%ile, very superior), Working Memory Index is (94%ile, superior). This gives him a GAI of *** which falls in the 99%ile and classifies him as very superior in intellectual ability. Based on these scores Dr. M felt very comfortable recommending a placement in a self-contained gifted program.

I also sent his current progress report/report card when he did your testing and you will note that even in a GATE classroom all his grades either "Meets the Standard" or "Exceeds the Standard". Considering the above scores and his report card we feel Brandon has flourished in a self-contained program.

I have attached a letter written by his current GATE teacher. If you have any questions regarding the appropriate placement for our son please feel free to contact her. (The letter states Brandon's strengths and tells how he does in her classroom.)

We feel that Brandon's needs as a gifted child will not be adequately met in a regular 3rd grade classroom based on the above merits but also on the fact that he has been doing 3rd and even 4th grade work for the majority of the school year. If he were to be in a regular 3rd grade classroom he would be making no academic growth and that would be detrimental to his education. As his parents we believe it is our duty to make sure his academic needs and requirements are being met.

Similarly, based on the information you gave me today regarding the testing environment when he took the CoGAT we feel that his scores certainly do not reflect his ability. When we spoke prior to the test I informed you that he is a poor test taker - particularly in situations where he has never been before. This was a new environment for him and a stressful one. The fact that there were many students of various age levels (I believe there were students taking the test that were going into 7th grade) and the fact that they were all in the same room with one proctor taking various levels alone concerns us to the validity of his scores. Aside from the fact that you stated there were students who arrived after the appointed time and the proctor had to start and stop makes us believe that the best indicator of his ability is the evaluation from Dr. M, not the CoGAT.

Brandon's education is extremely important to us and we would be doing him a great disservice if we did not fight to get him into the program that best meets his academic needs.

Thank you,
Carolyn and Brent


I am so frustrated by the 2nd to last paragraph much less that the child has current scores that qualify him and he shouldn't have had to take the CoGAT to begin with. We will see what I hear back. Her comment today was it was "not best practice" to have a student be told they are gifted by one school and later told they were not by another. You think? I find it hard to believe that a cattle call "evaluation" is a better indicator of what our son knows versus a nationally recognized evaluation by a trained psychologist. But she had to go through the proper "protocol" for the district. My next step is to send all the information straight to the superintendent. As my friend Kim says, "squeaky wheels".

Hopefully the email doesn't come across as snotty and only as a concerned parent who wants the best for her child.