Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment NYC Private Elementary Schools to Drop Test

Brain exercises, mental workouts, practice in critical thinking, challenges in creativity, and physical exercise are said to sharpen one's measured performance. Meanwhile stress, sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyle and skipping meals or eating non-nutritional foods may decrease performance. Much of this is lifestyle choice and has an impact throughout the lifespan. Some of the biology and neuroscience explanations can be very interesting.

One concept brought forward by recent research is the relative flexibility or malleability of IQ, being responsive to changing internal/external conditions throughout the lifespan.

That being said, it is really not easy for a 5yo or anyone to "game" an IQ test. That would require an adult purchasing and utilizing preps, which some may see an analogous to purchasing an answer key. While the information may need to be memorized, the test prospect isn't coming up with the answers by his/her own spark of creativity or original thought applied to the problem. "Teaching to the test" in this case may result in admitting some pupils who subsequently cannot keep up the pace, and do not possess the intrinsic curiosity to fuel their ongoing motivation for learning.

I think the validity is fine as long as the tests are taken as they are meant to be taken - without advanced preparation.

If a parent wants their kid to test as gifted on an IQ test and goes about prepping that kid for the test then the results are spoiled. They might as well have just made themselves a certificate that says "I have a gifted kid".

True but in NYC there are 300 gifted citywide seats - the schools only took kids with 99s and then did a lottery from the 5000 (yes you read that right) who scored at eligible levels. For entry to K there were 2800 who scored at 97 and above (although only 99s get in). And as I said, the money goes with the kid - so there is demand and clearly need - you set a criteria - all these kid met the criteria - and then you just say tough we don't have seats. But you could - you just need to designate the schools to meet this need and demand. And based on the number of teacher applicants to these schools - teachers want to come.

there is also regular g+t which serves 90% and above on the tests and then you have defacto citywides because in some districts the number of 99s who didnt get selected go there. So if you are a 95 you likely end up in a regular classroom. Is this bad - no not necessarily - but when something which seems like it would serve this kid better is dangled in front and they miss an opportunity because of 5 questions at the age of 5 you can see why parents get so upset. The other 3000 applicants are usually kids in 1st, 2nd and 3rd who got 99s and didnt get in so they keep testing hoping someone moves!
DeHe

Thanks for the link, Indigo. Definitely the court I'm in, we must get to customized learning. It will happen, but not from a fixed content model. And definitely not in a measure every twitch environment.

I'm not sure, though, that the numbers there reflect actual need so much as they reflect demand.

I'm not necessarily saying that meeting demand would be wrong. But it would definitely be lower in my personal value system than meeting authentic need, which should take into account those children who don't (for whatever reason) score as well as they "should" as well as those whose scores are being artificially inflated by all manner of external leveraging.

The problem is that there's only so much ink in that printer, though... so the gifted kids who don't have all those advantages don't wind up getting their certificates... (See DeHe's post)

Agreed.

Agreed! Demand would need to be a sustained demand. Both cluster grouping and school-within-a-school can be utilized to address this. Unfortunately initial artificially high demand may be fueled by media hype and pressure by those who would like to operate in a divide-and-conquer mode. The power/influence of these forces upon a school may be mitigated by use of flexible cluster grouping and school-within-a-school.

At the moment I am thinking of a high schooler who's parent passed, resulting in temporary disruptions to home life until new roles were established and some healing had taken place. For a time, the lack of continuity and support at home rendered the student unable to function at their previously high level. The student's mind was simply occupied with other processing, and rightly so. Placement in a different cluster may be useful until the student is ready to take on additional challenge. Emphasis on readiness, ability.

Oh, I'm not saying that if you can be prepped to test gifted, you ARE gifted. I'm saying--dang, it's a blunt instrument if it's that easy. But really, I guess I already knew that.

I have to say, I lost faith in IQ tests' ability to tease out the tails a long time ago. I mean, a solid 90th% kid is probably going to be a different kid than a solid 99.99 kid. But as far as an inconsistent kid with some 99s and some 95s and a random 67 just for fun? I don't know. How do we pit that kid against a 97th all around? You factor in squirrelly kid, bad tester, shadows on the ceiling--it starts to look ridiculous. I also say this in part because I know 30-some kids who tested 98th% and up (DD's grade) and they are...wow, a really diverse bunch of kids for the top 2%! Let's not forget about one's ability not to eat the marshmallow (sorry for the shorthand if not familiar with that experiment).

I see why parents are going nuts with this.

Please consider not accepting things as they are: a limited number of seats for advanced academics, combined with a competitive, divide-and-conquer, winner-take-all mentality.

Economics teaches that there is market stability when supply=demand.

Instead of parents accepting that there is a limited supply of seats for gifted education and/or advanced academics, parents can unite and request seats be re-purposed from gen ed to advanced academics. This may be a meaningful educational reform: Increase the supply of advanced academic seats to meet the demand. (Here next to the word "demand" I will also add NEED, an important concept discussed earlier on this thread.)

It sounds like NYC needs about 5000 seats converted from general education to teach advanced academics, disbursed throughout the city? Who has a handle on where the qualifying students live, and which neighborhood schools would make the most convenient "magnets" for housing school-within-a-school programs? Does the school district have those figures? Does the media? Is anyone in touch with a school board member who might like to explore the concept, including exploration of gifted resources like Davidson, Hoagies, SENG...? Might there be some 200+ teachers excited to learn about advanced academics, even giftedness, and who would look forward to cluster grouping, acceleration, curriculum compacting, independent study, and more?

Improving access to education is said to be important to social justice. Helping NYC educate its 5000+ well-qualified students who are underserved would surely raise the bar.

Poor choice of words to say "pit against"--what I meant was that I don't think it's really reasonable to try to determine whether one of those kids is meaningfully smarter than other or needs more in the classroom than the other, especially considering many other variables that are less definable on paper.

As to whether we all agree--I don't know. I think some posters here would not agree that those 5000 kids are all deserving of gifted ed.

I find this topic immensely confusing myself--do we advocate for separate HG+ programs, or what?--so I have no answers.