Gifted Bulletin Board

Welcome to the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum.

We invite you to share your experiences and to post information about advocacy, research and other gifted education issues on this free public discussion forum.
CLICK HERE to Log In. Click here for the Board Rules.

Links


Learn about Davidson Academy Online - for profoundly gifted students living anywhere in the U.S. & Canada.

The Davidson Institute is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted students through the following programs:

  • Fellows Scholarship
  • Young Scholars
  • Davidson Academy
  • THINK Summer Institute

  • Subscribe to the Davidson Institute's eNews-Update Newsletter >

    Free Gifted Resources & Guides >

    Who's Online Now
    0 members (), 99 guests, and 15 robots.
    Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
    Newest Members
    parentologyco, Smartlady60, petercgeelan, eterpstra, Valib90
    11,410 Registered Users
    March
    S M T W T F S
    1 2
    3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    10 11 12 13 14 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31
    Previous Thread
    Next Thread
    Print Thread
    Page 1 of 5 1 2 3 4 5
    Joined: Sep 2013
    Posts: 105
    B
    Member
    OP Offline
    Member
    B
    Joined: Sep 2013
    Posts: 105
    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?

    Joined: Mar 2013
    Posts: 1,453
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Mar 2013
    Posts: 1,453
    I am curious, if they have the kids taking the MAP then why doesn't that have the higher weighting given that the Cogat is a test that real gifties appear to do consistently less well on?


    Become what you are
    Joined: Jul 2012
    Posts: 761
    M
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    M
    Joined: Jul 2012
    Posts: 761
    My experience is from 25 years ago and not in this country but I went to math / science school from 5th-8th grade and there were 6 of us girls and there were 9 of us girls and 21 boys. Huge difference too and we all got into the program based purely on results of math entrance exam. They took in the top 30 kids and that was it. From all our friends kids, I can see how boys are a lot more mathy than the girls, though I'm generalizing here. Math might not be as interesting for a lot of girls so they do not put as much effort into it, perhaps?

    Joined: Jul 2012
    Posts: 761
    M
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    M
    Joined: Jul 2012
    Posts: 761
    as for the original "how are gifted identified" ... I believe our school district uses MAP scores but I might be wrong. At least that's what they used when our oldest was still in elementary.

    Joined: Mar 2013
    Posts: 1,453
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Mar 2013
    Posts: 1,453
    I also see elementary (majority female) school teachers actively encouraging boys not girls to the point where it makes me sick. More so given the amount of women that act as though women doing worse/having less confidence in Maths in part of some sinister male conspiracy.

    I am putting my money on something (Oedipal) that makes the female elementary teachers treat the girls differently which a lot of girls see as disproval for being good at Maths and once this is internalized it is hard to turn around.


    Become what you are
    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 3,428
    U
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    U
    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 3,428
    In our district they use IQ testing. I don't know if there are any gender differences in #s IDed. DD's magnet started out with equal #s of boys and girls, but now that she is almost aging out, there are significantly more boys than girls. Girls have moved or dropped out and boys have been the ones to replace them. I don't know why.

    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Our school district uses the RIAS for cognitive, and the OLSAT for achievement in language arts and math. The state leaves the choice of assessment tools to the individual school districts, but it does declare how those assessments are to be used to qualify students for gifted services. These three scores are fed into a matrix as follows:

    1.0 - <1.5 SD: 1 point
    1.5 - <2.0 SD: 2 points
    2.0+ SD: 3 points

    ANY of these results will qualify your child for services (1st - 12th grade):

    1) 3 points on the RIAS
    2) 7 points total combined RIAS/OLSAT Reading/OLSAT Math
    3) 6 points as above with further evaluation, to include info from tester on child's attitude related to performance during testing, parental interviews, child interviews, teacher input.

    Either way, the services offered are not a one-size variety. They have a program for "cognitively gifted" which amounts to short pull-outs twice a week for enrichment purposes. There are also longer, daily pull-outs for "gifted achievement" in language arts and math.

    These services are offered beginning in 1st grade. My DD was also offered some enrichment in K. We opted not to screen her in K, on account of this is what the requirements look like for pre-K to K, and if your child doesn't make the cut, they can't test again for an entire calendar year:

    ALL of the below are required:

    1) 4 points on the RIAS (2.5+ SDs)
    2) 3 points each on math/reading
    3) 10 points total

    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    As for the gender breakdown, in my limited interactions with the gifted classes it appears that girls are slightly better represented than boys, at something like 8:7, which lines up nicely with overall population ratios. If I had to guess why they seem to be breaking stereotypes, especially in the gifted math class, I'd suggest that the district is getting to girls before they've experienced enough gender pressure in general classes.

    If there's anything to my entirely unscientific observation, it could become a strong argument for pushing services to well before 3rd grade (as if there weren't a ton of good arguments for that already).


    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Originally Posted by madeinuk
    I also see elementary (majority female) school teachers actively encouraging boys not girls to the point where it makes me sick. More so given the amount of women that act as though women doing worse/having less confidence in Maths in part of some sinister male conspiracy.

    I am putting my money on something (Oedipal) that makes the female elementary teachers treat the girls differently which a lot of girls see as disproval for being good at Maths and once this is internalized it is hard to turn around.

    My DD9's gifted math teacher is a woman. One project the kids were assigned this year was to research a famous mathematician, and write a report on who they were, and what they did to advance our knowledge. When I heard about it, I immediately started to think about the ancient Greeks and Arabs, but a couple days later DD had been assigned to Mary Pensworth Reagor. I took this as a subtle declaration to DD that, "You WILL have positive female role models."

    In another thread I recently said DD has had a couple of awesome teachers... this lady is one of them.

    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 2,639
    B
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    B
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 2,639
    Originally Posted by BlessedMommy
    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.
    A property of normal distributions is that even small differences in the means of two different normal distributions can produce large differences in the tails. A 3-to-1 sex ratio is not implausible if the gifted math program is very selective. What fraction of students are selected for the gifted math program? Where I live the middle school math team is closest thing to a gifted math program, and the sex ratio of students selected for math meets based on their scores in tryouts exceeds 3 to 1.

    Page 1 of 5 1 2 3 4 5

    Moderated by  M-Moderator 

    Link Copied to Clipboard
    Recent Posts
    Detracking
    by indigo - 03/16/24 08:23 PM
    Gifted kids in Illinois. Recommendations?
    by lll - 03/07/24 06:51 PM
    Chicago suburbs - private VS public schools
    by lll - 03/03/24 10:14 AM
    Patents and Trademarks and Rights, oh my...!
    by indigo - 03/02/24 01:03 PM
    529 savings for private high school?
    by lululo4321 - 02/27/24 05:28 PM
    Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5