GATE testing

That sounds alot like what our school does. However our kids can be in GATE math and/or GATE language arts. In Math they can either be challenged and moved along more quickly withing their classroom or they can switch out and join the next grade level class.

There has been a lot of confusion as to whether my son is in GATE language arts or GATE math. I just want to make sure he is where he needs to be. I was told he was not gate math, but then the coordinator said the Raven's test qualifies him for Math, but after and entire year some teachers aren now telling me that based on the Raven's he should be in GATE Language Arts. It's been frustrating trying to get a straight answer. The Raven's results did not specify.

Yes, in public school, once a student is identified as GATE, they are "in the program." However, most schools cluster GATE kids in the regular classroom. Your job is to make sure your son's teacher is differentiating the curriculum.

The teacher does this by having your son perform at a deeper level. What that looked like in my daughter's third grade class is a report on an urban wildlife animal was assigned to all students with the specifications outlined. GATE kids needed to research whether or not populations in the local area were increasing or decreasing. They then had to develop a hypothesis as to why this was true. Each child had to research and prove or disprove their hypothesis with evidence.

Math is more complex word problems. Using math to graph as in the above urban wildlife report. They also are beginning to use Excel to write formulas for cell calculation.