[Ohiogift] "Home schooling grows on (military) bases"

Mon Oct 28 14:40:43 EDT 2013

Unfortunately, I also moved to Ohio in the 80s with school aged children as a military member and had similar experiences.  As an older mom who had her children at 30 and 36, I was really shocked how it appeared the education system had gone backwards on gifted students and academics.  In the 50s, I was skipped to second grade after two weeks in first grade.  In eighth grade in the 60s, I was colocated with other high abilty or high achieving 8th graders at the high school.  And that was in rural Georgia in the 50s and 60s.  I will not say the system then did enough, but the system then seemed to at least acknowledge on a daily basis that different students needed different types of instruction.

Mary Collier 

-----Original Message-----
From: Eileen Brady <ebrady99 at hotmail.com>
To: (Mary Collier) <redfoxmary at aol.com>; ohiogift <ohiogift at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Mon, Oct 28, 2013 11:26 am
Subject: Re: [Ohiogift] "Home schooling grows on (military) bases"

As someone whose family relocated to Ohio last year because of military orders, I can tell you that our experience in trying to get a new (civilian) school to understand our situation and simply place our child in the gifted program was no less than infuriating, even though Ohio is one of 46 states to participate in the Military Interstate Compact that was created to make it easier for a student to transition from one state's school expectations to another's.

We moved over the summer and our child was to start at the beginning of the school year. Even though we had registered her (in person) the previous April -- bringing with us her grades and test scores indicating her gifted ability -- and been in regular contact with the registrar and the principal, our daughter was not assigned to a teacher until weeks after all the other students. Then when we attended an open house the night before school began, we were told that the teacher had no idea of her ability and where she should be placed in a tiered reading structure. Luckily, her teacher was understanding and also extremely talented at differentiating in the classroom, and the people in charge of the gifted program were receptive and fast-moving.

As I have told the Ohio state board members in emails, where we previously lived in northern Virginia, our daughter's gifted instruction would have consisted of daily all-day pullout with her gifted peers. If we had lived in a county school there, she would have been eligible to attend a school for gifted students. As it is now, she receives pullout once a week and absolutely loves it, but we still feel as if the military move to Ohio has been almost a punishment for her as a student, especially considering the lack of support by the state. 

So I can certainly understand the desire of military families to homeschool in order to maintain the level of gifted instruction and to associate with others who understand the unique stresses that frequent moving and parental deployment have on children, which is something very few school administrators have been able to demonstrate to us. 

--Eileen Brady

To: ohiogift at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
From: redfoxmary at aol.com
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 07:54:05 -0400
Subject: [Ohiogift] "Home schooling grows on (military) bases"

This article appears in today's Dayton Daily News and at least relates to our school district:

http://www.boston.com/news/education/2013/10/26/military-bases-open-their-doors-home-schoolers/ePcgeiZ9VrTf9DxOuH7XUM/story.html

Mary Collier

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