The "gifted" system in US schools is broken, racist, and completely fixable

[LWolf]

24. Parent ed is crucial.

When I worked in CA, I did monthly parent meetings in the evenings; one purpose was to educate parents about what it meant to be gifted; another was to help them support their children outside of school, and to help them advocate for their children within the system. It was productive, and I found that they started getting together on their own between meetings, too, to support each other.

This was for parents whose students were already identified. For those whose students were not, I had many meetings explaining the criteria, and if we did the tests and gathered the evidence and they didn't qualify, it was my job to explain it all over again.

I still do that. I always tell parents and students, before we start the process, that the school system only identifies a narrow part of the gifted population; that not being identified for the program doesn't mean that their student isn't gifted, but maybe not in the way that the school system serves. I also tell them that if their student needs more challenging material, I'm happy to work with the regular classroom teacher to help do that, whether or not there is a formal identification.

That usually does the job.