Abstract
We thought our son was advanced even as a baby, but as we had no other children we weren't sure. He began to cross-country ski with us when he was two, and learned to ice skate from a children's instructor at four. Now, at seven, he's on a pee-wee hockey team and won an award this past season.
We didn't know much about school programs and enrolled him without question in first grade. The following spring (he turned 6 in April) we took him for an independent evaluation at a university connected child study center. We were rather astounded by the findings. On the Binet test our son was found to have an IQ of 150. On an achievement-type test his placement looked like this: Math—grade 5.3, Word Recognition—grade 6.4, Reading Comprehension—grade 4.1, and Spelling—grade 4.2. On a silent reading test, he got a grade level score of 5.8.
We arranged a conference with his school principal and teacher and took the report. We felt our son ought to be given more to do as he'd been getting very restless. His teacher wouldn't even read the report as she said she didn't want to be swayed by information other than her own. The principal read it and said that tests didn't tell everything. They both said our son was becoming a behavior problem in the classroom and he shouldn't be given any advanced work until he could learn to control himself. They put him in second grade. Now at age 7, he's not interested in school, doesn't want to do anything hard. His teacher says he is worse than ever and he should be kept back in second grade until he learns to control himself. He has become disobedient and refuses to work at his assignments. We feel desperate. What can we do?
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