Ross Coker’s parents pulled him out of public school because they felt his educational needs were not being met.

Julie Coker said that Ross, 10, whose IQ test places him in the “profoundly gifted” range, now attends a private school that she feels can better provide for his abilities.

Private school education is expensive, though, and Coker laments that Ross’ former public school district denied him an appropriate, free education by not being flexible.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Ross Coker takes a piano lesson with Dr. Joshua Gan at The Selwyn School on Jan. 3. Ross, a highly gifted student, was pulled out of the Argyle public school district by his parents because they felt his educational needs weren’t being met.

“Being gifted is not being ‘elitist,’ it is a true challenge for both parents and educators,” Coker said.

How each gifted and talented child’s needs are met is essentially handled the same by area school districts.

In all cases and districts, students must go through testing to be placed in gifted and talented programs.

Most gifted and talented coordinators in the area say each child’s needs are determined on an individual basis, especially at an elementary level.

Ross and his 14-year-old sister, Lauren, are Davidson Young Scholars.

According to the Davidson Institute for Talent Development Web site, “Profoundly intelligent young people are those with an exceptionally high level of intellectual precocity. … Some of them demonstrate mastery in multiple domain areas; others excel in a single domain area.”

Still, “some of them are both highly intelligent and learning disabled,” the Web site states.

The Davidson Institute, a national nonprofit serving gifted children, says that trying to educate these students based on age is not a productive learning environment.

“The best situation for the profoundly intelligent child is for the parents and school to develop an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that takes into account the child’s intellectual precocity and emotional development,” according to the institute.

Federal laws don’t require schools to have programs for gifted students; states can determine their own programs, the site says.

According to a Davidson study, Texas provides partial funding for gifted programs; several states do not provide any funding at all.

According to the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented Web site, the state first passed legislation about educating gifted students in 1977, and in 1979 made funds available for districts to serve gifted and talented students.

In 1987, the Texas Legislature mandated that all school districts must identify and serve gifted students at all grade levels.

The state, according to the association’s Web site, defines a gifted and talented student as “a child or youth who performs at or shows the potential for performing at a remarkably high level of accomplishment when compared to others of the same age, experience, or environment and who: (1) exhibits high performance capability in an intellectual, creative, or artistic area; (2) possesses an unusual capacity for leadership; or (3) excels in a specific academic field.”

Ross’ case

In Ross’ case, he excels in math and language arts.

Coker wrote in an e-mail that before the past school year ended, while Ross was a fourth-grader in the Argyle school district, “the plan was for my son to spend half days at the elementary school and take language arts, reading, and math at the middle school.”

After several phone calls during the summer, that plan was not implemented, she said, and she had to make the decision before this academic year started to pull Ross out of Hilltop Elementary School and pay for private school education that she says they cannot afford.

Sacrificing Ross’ educational needs was not an option, said Coker.

“Without an appropriately challenging curriculum, these gifted kids become perfectionists, underachievers, may act out due to boredom and become depressed,” she said.

Ross had already showed signs of boredom, she said, and having to repeat material he had already mastered would only exacerbate the problem.

He feels punished for being “too smart,” said Coker.

Ross now attends Highland Meadow Montessori Academy in Southlake, which is a 30- to 40-minute drive from his Argyle home.

“Profoundly gifted kids are the kids who are most likely to fall ‘through the cracks’ in public schools,” Coker said. “Just like special education students, profoundly gifted kids have special needs.”

Argyle Superintendent Jason Ceyanes said he is simply following the district’s policy. The Argyle school district allows gifted elementary students to skip entire grades, but not individual subjects.

Ceyanes, who was hired last summer, said that before he arrived, a handful of students were allowed skip a grade level or two in a particular subject they excelled in, but that has created problems for those students in their junior and senior years of high school.

But, to allow a fifth-grader to be among students much older at the middle school campus for a particular class or two causes Ceyanes concern, he says. In addition, he said, it is not practical.

“I’m not saying we have the perfect answer with this,” said Ceyanes. “We’re just trying to do what’s best for all of our kids.”

One of the ways the Davidson Institute, which has about 1,200 scholars, helps gifted and talented students is by advocacy for the student, said Coker.

The institute will send letters and e-mails to administrators but, Coker says, there’s only so much it can do.

Jill Adrian, director of family services at the Davidson Institute, said the young scholars program helps families in many ways, including determining educational acceleration, planning for college early, finding mentors or tutors, and helping social and emotional development.

Adrian says when advocating to schools, it’s about helping educators look outside the traditional system.

She said grade acceleration has been around awhile, but subject acceleration is a relatively new idea. It has worked as a way to reach students who excel only in one or two subjects, she said.

But Ceyanes said it’s not the only way.

“Argyle provides accelerated instruction by subject area without necessarily giving ‘credit’ for the next grade level of instruction at the elementary level,” he said. “It sounds like we’re holding them back, but we’re not.”

He said some students who have been allowed to advance in individual courses have run out of courses to take when they get to be juniors or seniors.

Coker did not see that as a problem because of the high school’s independent study and dual-credit classes, in which students also can earn college credit for their work.

Ceyanes said because there is a limit on the number of dual-credit courses students are allowed to take off-campus at participating colleges, a student may not need a senior year but still may want to graduate with his or her class.

He said those students end up taking schedules heavy with elective courses their senior year, and because of the way grade-point averages are figured, this causes their GPAs to drop.

Ceyanes said it “complicates matters on both ends of the spectrum,” but if a student is accelerated by a whole grade level, then that group becomes the student’s peers.

He calls that the best of both worlds in that the student gets the academic challenge needed plus a peer group.

Ceyanes said subject credit is available at the middle and high school level, but he believes that national public education would have to be totally redesigned in order for every student to receive credit for whatever grade level he or she is at in a subject.

Essentially, he said, it would be like having numerous kindergarten through 12th-grade campuses without grade levels, creating a “very, very complicated situation.”

“The focus [of public school] is to educate all kids regardless of what their ability is. We don’t want to hold kids back,” Ceyanes said.

Mary Chancellor, gifted services coordinator for the Denton school system, said occasionally a student may test out of a subject and take a higher grade level in a subject, possibly at another campus.

She mentioned a case in which an elementary student went to a middle school for a particular course and parents were responsible for the transportation.

Decisions like that, she said, are up to the schools’ principals.

Coker said she looked into transferring Ross to the Denton school district and paying a transfer fee but was told she could not.

Spokeswoman Sharon Cox has said the Denton district cannot take transfers because of lack of space; there is an exception for children of district employees.

The Davidson Institute offers financial assistance to those who demonstrate need for educational purposes, said Adrian.

Coker said although she and her husband borrow and use credit cards to pay for Ross’ education, they have not pursed financial aid from Davidson because she doubts they would qualify.

She said she does not “feel comfortable accepting assistance when so many others need it so much more than us.”

Adrian, with the Davidson Institute, said what the federal No Child Left Behind Act has done in school systems is essentially leave gifted and talented students behind.

She said “going back to individualizing” education to the needs of each student would be a good way of reaching those students.

AMY DODD THOMPSON can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is athompson@dentonrc.com.