How to Advocate for a Gifted Student

Parents and guardians need to advocate for gifted children in public schools. You are your child's advocate until he can take control. Until then, you are charge of the decisions while the student is a minor. Get involved with the schools as much as possible.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Educational assessment of the student
• Official school plan for the student

1. Understand as much as possible about your child. Identification of gifted children is done through educational psychology assessments and other tests.

2. Talk to everyone at the school who controls your child's education. Meet with the principal, resource teacher, if there is one, and the classroom teacher.

3. Ask questions, and provide information. Although the assessment provides guidelines for helping your gifted child in school, you know your child best. Write down a page of information to share.

4. Look over the plan for your child. Ask how programs work, how many hours a week the programs require and whether your child leaves the classroom to participate in enriched work.

5. Get updates. As the parent advocate for a gifted student, you want to know how things are going. The school may provide a report periodically, but requesting a phone call once a month is okay as well.

6. Watch your child's reaction to what's happening. Find out how she feels about the work, the structure and other aspects of the program. These are areas of discussion with the school's staff.

Tips & Warnings

• Most states have policies on inclusion of gifted children in the classroom. Visit the education section of your state's website to find out what these policies are, and know what schools must provide.
• Create a team atmosphere with the staff at the school, not an "us and them" kind of relationship. You may need to interact with the staff for extended periods of time.
• Stay on top of things. Don't sit back until there's a problem.
• Try not to blame the school when there are problems. Remember, schools are dealing with a wide range of learning abilities and must provide services to all.
• Talk to your child about how to advocate when he or she is old enough. At some point, you must step back as a parent, and then your child needs to know what to do.
• Don't be afraid to make changes. Sometimes the best efforts don't work and another educational situation is better. Alternatives are home schooling, public schools with special facilities for the gifted and private schools, some of which run free programs.

Resources

• Hoagies Gifted has a wide range of information on being a parent advocate.
• Hollingworth provides resources to parents of gifted children.
• Special Kids Today is a website with information about gifted students.

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