Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Effectiveness of Kingore evaluations?

Sorry, this is long. We are feeling really frustrated right now and I'm probably giving way more info than necessary.

Our son is in first grade at a public school. He has shown many signs of giftedness from a young age - excellent memory, early reader/large vocabulary, intensities (emotional especially), perfectionism, extremely curious, problem solver, etc.. He's our only, so we didn't have a great comparison of his abilities to grade level stuff until he started kindergarten last year, and that's when we realized that's he's probably more advanced than we'd previously realized. He's reading and comprehending well above grade level (he's currently reading All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot). Nature, especially birds, is his passion. He's always devouring bird field guids and discusses bird behavior, species, etc. with highly knowledgeable adults about birds (local Audubon Birders' Nights and other adult birdwatching groups, etc.). I say all this to indicate it is not just us who have noticed his intellectual precocity.

We have had some issues this year about boredom in school, because things are well below his ability level. He's in a dual language program, which is our saving grace, because the Spanish side is all new to him, so at least that keeps him learning and engaged. His English teacher told us at parent conferences in November that she "doesn't have anything to teach him" so recommended he stay in Spanish all day instead of going to English at all. He finishes his work rapidly and is allowed to read independently while others continue to work. He complains at home about how easy his work is, but behaves well in school and doesn't get in trouble. I also suspect he intentionally hides his abilities at school, as he won't take the books he's reading at home to school for his reading time. In his words, "I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings that I can read things they can't." I don't know if he does similar things with math and other subjects.

Our school district uses Kingore Observation Inventory and Kingore Planned Experiences for TAG identification in first grade. They just completed it and he didn't "bubble up" on the Planned Experiences side, so will not receive a "Potential to Perform" TAG designation, which is required for any differentiation or subject acceleration in the classroom.

My husband and I are both quite surprised. Are the Kingore evaluations reliable for gifted identification? I haven't found much online about how accurate it is, and it's barely even mentioned here. I've looked at the KOI for parents and a lot of the things are definitely descriptive of him. The school does not ask parents to complete the form. Apparently the teachers complete their version of the KOI and they also do the Planned Experiences (which I can't find too much about online).

We can appeal and have the district administer CogAT. Not sure yet if there's a point in that.

We are just really frustrated and not sure how to proceed. Any advice would be welcomed.

So I googled the KOI, and found a paucity of research, with exactly one doctoral dissertation on it, in which the researchers found that there was a significant age effect on the KOI, and a low correspondence to the WISC-III. The age effect is relevant because the form covers a 4-year grade range. The researchers do not recommend the KOI as an adequate instrument for gifted screening, because of both false negatives and false positives.

http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/x...VaughnNeelyElizabethI1994.pdf?sequence=1

That's what I found too. And I couldn't find *anything* about the Planned Experiences.

But I did find lots of schools who use it as a screener. Which makes me a little ????

All I know from the district gifted coordinator is that the Planned Experiences include some "drawing starts" that are supposed to gauge their creativity. I can tell you this - my son gets his artistic talent directly from me, which means NONE.

We've requested the results of his test and a meeting with the gifted coordinator to discuss them.

Honestly, schools like this kind of assessment because it feels like it has good face validity to teachers. The points are derived from tasks and observations that are familiar to teachers. Plus, let's be real, Dr. Kingore has a pretty good seat on the author/lecturer circuit.

Back when I was on the gifted program selection committee, the GT teachers loved their teacher-created equivalent of the Planned Experience, yet it pretty regularly screened out some of the top scoring students on the CogAT (granted, with all of the limitations that instrument has; but at least it's objective).

I just heard back from the district gifted coordinator and was told "all work samples not identified are shredded and there are no formal reports or any data saved for individual students."

Maybe it's because I work in banking, so record retention is a big issue for me, but seriously?!

I guess we'll be asking for the CogAT and be firmly labeled the troublemakers who think we have a special snowflake. Awesome.