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    Joined: May 2013
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    I did some digging and found actual stats. The number of kids identified as gifted/talented throughout the district (not just the program that DD is in) is almost 2/3 boys. There are no significant differences between reading/math achievement scores and gender. I couldn't find stats on the CogAT but that has to be what is causing more boys to be identified. It's sad because the stats show that the girls are actually outperforming boys in terms of classroom grades.

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    I wish I'd have pushed for testing for my daughter. But nothing she did really wowed me. She aced standardized tests (even perfect scored many) and that never once triggered any of her teachers to either say something to us or have them push to get her tested.

    We did with our son because the teacher who gave him their screener specifically told us to push for testing for him. So we pushed for both. Our DD outscored him in math by several points (normed for age, of course).

    Girls can be very good at hiding it to want to fit in. But I also think many teachers don't know how to recognize giftedness or assume just because a kid is a whiz at math and isn't taking top scores in other subjects that they *can't* be gifted.

    One mom of a girl in my son's class had to push to get her daughter tested at the school. The teacher insisted her child wasn't gifted. Her scores were also higher than my son's!

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    I won't pretend to have numbers at my fingertips, but I do know that, at the other end of exceptionality, there are many years of research finding that girls are underidentified with ADHD, LD, and intellectual impairment. I think that socio-behavioral expectations for girls, and their ability (as a group) to use those expectations to appear more normative (from both ends of the bell curve) are huge factors. It doesn't help that many of the diagnostic criteria for exceptionalities (like much of psychology) have been developed based on studies of males only or predominantly. I have known many female students whose best cognitive assessment was well under - 2 SD, but were perceived as being essentially normative in intelligence --if a little scatter-brained-- by both peers and teachers. But guess what, she's not lazy, overly social, or distracted--she literally cannot comprehend the material! Boys, on the other hand, (especially those of color) are overidentified as ADHD, intellectually impaired, and emotionally/behaviorally impaired.

    I wonder if teachers are more surprised by boys excelling academically in the primary years, more likely to treat their verbal skills as exceptional (because they expect girls to be verbal, and boys not to be), as well as more likely to notice behavioral symptoms of instructional mismatch in boys.

    I would agree with 2GK that many teachers have misconceptions about the signs of giftedness. Back when I was on the gifted screening team, teachers routinely referred bright average kids and overlooked truly gifted kids.


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    I think that socio-behavioral expectations for girls, and their ability (as a group) to use those expectations to appear more normative (from both ends of the bell curve) are huge factors.

    In my experience this is very true. Boys act up, girls conform. When it's up to the parents they act on behalf of their sons (in general), seeking out alternative options then when pressed to test the sister, discover they're in the same IQ range.

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    I think teachers would most likely see "behaviors" as indicative that the child would not do well in an advanced program and would be less likely to recommend them, while recommending the perfect high-achievers. I think what is happening here is that the achievement scores (which are about the same for boys and girls) trigger a CogAT permission form to be sent home, most parents agree to the testing, and more boys are identified as gifted because kids have to score 98th percentile on it. If they don't go to the highly gifted program, (or opt out) they are at least identified and put into a cluster.

    I have been in DD's class and all I can say is WOW...these kids do NOT seem like perfect high achievers. I felt like I was in a second grade classroom (in terms of behaviors), not fourth. There are some very obvious 2e kids and a lot of the kids in general are very excitable or disorganized/unmotivated. After seeing that, no wonder none of the teachers seem too concerned about my 2e DD. So it seems like at least kids are not being excluded for not being "perfect" which is good. Kids do not really need teacher approval or good grades to get in, just the ability and achievement scores.

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    FWIW...

    At the G&T program my DD attends for Maths the majority of kids are boys. Selection is based on correctly answering 3/5 challenging word problem on tests administered 3 times throughout the year ( do not have the name of the test right now. There is no aptitude test other than that and no teacher recommendations either.

    At the state college G&T program she attends the majority of pupils are boys, too. Here IQ/Standardised aptitude testing provides the bar to entry. Most of the parents that i have conversed with are immigrants (like me) and many of the pupils come from families where more than one language is spoken at home too.
    They come from countries where education and achievement are still valued ( China, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Hungary, Columbia, Germany, Australia, UK etc) and either they have a preponderance of male children or they are self selecting the boys themselves.

    Last edited by madeinuk; 10/24/14 09:39 AM.

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    This thread is making me wonder again if we should have my DD10 privately tested. DS6 was recommended for testing in K by his teacher and (to my surprise) came back with a >99% on WISC IV. I always thought he was bright but never seemed that much ahead of DD.

    They gave DD's class the Otis-Lennon test in gr 4, and since she wasn't recommended for further testing we figured she didn't meet the screening cut-off. They don't tell you the scores, but I'm curious...

    The thing is, she's happy at her French immersion school (mostly), even though several of her friends have been moved to a self-contained GT program at another school. This was hard on her - she misses them. But she's told us she wouldn't want to go to that program (she'd miss her new BF at current school). She also has anxiety, so putting her through a private test may be hard on her.

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    Can2K - Two (nicely contradictory) thoughts.... What, if anything, would you do differently based on the tests? If she's happy and seems a good fit with her current environment, is this information that would help you? Would you make different kinds of decisions? Is there any suggestion that her anxiety might hint that her current fit isn't as good as she might let on?

    OTOH, I have one who screamingly (and I use that word in a most literal sense) fit the gifted profile from literally the moment he was born. He's always been noticeably out-of-sync with peers (too bad I had no clue why until he was 8 - oops). His younger sister, on the other hand, seems blissfully normal, and looks nothing like the "typical" descriptions. Nor did she seem anything but normal at school (until now, at 8. Turns out she has some verbal giftedness with a helping of LDs on the side.)

    Note that I am NOT trying to suggest your DD might be 2E! Just that I have seen several posts ruefully noting, as I am, that a less flamboyantly-different sibling (especially those who aren't into doing crazy math tricks at a young age) may not "seem" gifted when we get used to a particular yardstick. And there's reams of info suggesting group screening can miss lots of kids for a whole variety of reasons. And her choice of peers is rather suggestive.

    And final thought - I'm horrified to admit this, but I think I can already feel subtle changes in my expectations for DD. I suspect I've asked less, and fed her mind less. DS interests are math and science - easy to feed in this STEM-y household. DD likes "soft" stuff - traditional girly things (which I am not very good at!). I think I need to try a lot harder.

    Have I muddied the waters enough yet? Good luck with your decision.

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    Originally Posted by Can2K
    This thread is making me wonder again if we should have my DD10 privately tested. DS6 was recommended for testing in K by his teacher and (to my surprise) came back with a >99% on WISC IV.

    If it is not too much of a hardship, yes, I would get your DD tested. I had DS6 tested primarily because of the outcome of his older sister's test results, and a comment by the tester about siblings often having scores in the same range, and I am very, very glad that I did. They have completely different personalities, different subtest strengths and relative weaknesses, but very similar overall reasoning abilities/score ranges.

    I've come to the conclusion that group ability tests almost always underestimate IQ scores. Although DD did very well on the CogAT, I think she was very lucky, and the score was still a pretty significant underestimate of what she would eventually score on an individual IQ test.

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    And I'll just add that I was that other sibling. My parents had no plan to have me assessed for GT until the evaluators asked if there were any other siblings, besides the two they had already tested. I think my parents' perceptions were quite skewed by the PG-ness of one of my siblings, and the eidetic memory and very strong personality of another. I was always happy and easy-going, and able to "pass" socially. I'm not 2e, but I simply didn't make as much noise, and I didn't look like their other GT kids.

    I don't think not being tested then would have affected my development in language-related areas, which are better differentiated in general ed classrooms, anyway, or in science, because I grew up in a science-saturated household, but I think I probably would have coasted in math, as, at age 8, when I was identified, I was already internalizing the idea that I did not like/was not good at math because I found it not engaging (aka, boring). Children are amazingly quick at taking the blame for an instructional mismatch.

    Curiously, I had previously been administered both the SB and the WPPSI as part of early entry to kindergarten, but my parents appear not to have had access to those results (other than, "yes, go ahead"), because they were surprised by the results of my testing.

    Bottom line, though, I agree with Michelle. First, answer the question, "What would be the function of testing?"


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