I attended the local school board meeting on Monday night to hear an update on gifted education in my children's district (K-8 only). Our gifted programs start in 3rd grade with a pull-out for math and LA. I, along with board members, was surprised to hear from the director of gifted ed that there is a huge discrepancy in the number of boys vs girls in gifted math across the district -- 75% boys vs 25% girls. There is not a large difference for gifted LA, although girls outweigh boys. I feel like there must be some flaw in their math identification as the girls aren't being recognized. Currently they use a combination of CoGAT administered in 2nd grade (60% weighting), MAP scores (30% weighting) and Renzulli scale completed by the child's teacher (10% weighting).
The director of gifted ed did say that the version of the CoGAT that was used in the past was biased toward boys. Hopefully the new version will not be.
What do your schools use to identify who should be in these classes?
