Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Mismatch between class grades & MAP test results

Hi all,
I'm new to this forum and I did a cursory search for this topic in the past posts, but I didn't find anything using the search terms that I chose, so please forgive me if this topic has been covered before. (And direct me to the thread!)

My DD8 is at a public school that has "gifted" in the name, but it's really been a struggle for her to get appropriate differentiation. The entire third grade class does fourth grade work, which seems to be the way that the school "accelerates" the gifted children.

Her report card and recent standardized tests came home and she's testing in the middle of 11th grade for reading, above 8th grade for science and beginning of 7th grade for math. However, her report card grades are MUCH lower. (Because she is not compliant with doing ALL of her classwork & homework.)

I think that she's bored doing work that is not challenging to her, but the refrain that I've always gotten is that she needs to comply with doing the work that she's assigned so that she can move on. She has made great improvements with doing her classwork and homework (she does all of it every day now.) But she's still not being accelerated.

Does anyone have advice for how to navigate this? The teacher has interpreted DD's lack of work to the fact that the work is too hard for her, but I think the work is too easy for her.

FYI, we live in a state that does not allow gifted children to have IEP's and really does not have a lot of resources for gifted education. Gifted education is essentially an "unfunded mandate" in our state.

Thanks!

It works better to understand test scores like this in terms of how well a *strong* student does at each grade level rather than how well average students do. (Average adults top out at fractions and decimals in math and read at a 5th grade level, so comparing the achievement of a gifted child in any grade to that of an average high school student isn't helpful.)

So instead of looking at how a gifted child compares to students at the 50th percentile, I prefer to look at how they compare to students at the 90th percentile (so strong students). If you do this for the scores you posted here, it looks like they would be equivalent to a 90th percentile 4th grader at midyear.

That is probably more in line with what you know to be true about your daughter and makes a more realistic starting point for advocacy.

That said, I don't know how to help with the non-compliance issues.

Welcome!

One other caution on interpreting test scores is that this is probably the MAP 2-5 rather than the 6+, so it doesn't actually have 8th grade skills on it (might not even have 7th), let alone 11th grade content or skills on it. Percentiles are more meaningful than grade equivalents, in this case (and many other cases).

The confounding of rapid work completion and high conceptual aptitude is, unfortunately, pervasive in GT programs.

And based on Kai's norm-checking, it looks like your DC is probably still under placed by about a grade in instructional level.

We got our DD to comply with work she found beneath her by letting her know how it was in her best interests. We know who she is and what she can do because we see her every day, but these people don't know her or her capabilities, stories are easily disbelieved, but if she shows them what she can do, they can't argue with the evidence.

Then we backed up our words with actions, because when the school refused to cooperate with our very reasonable request for a full grade acceleration (which we'd already been making for two years, and had given their half-baked alternatives a full chance) we yanked her out of public school as a 2nd grader, homeschooled her for the rest of the year, then had her sit the state's end-of-third grade standardized achievement test. Then we went back to the same school the next year, declared her having mastered third grade material, showed them the test scores that proved it beyond all doubt.

I gained traction by getting my son's scores compared to other gifted kids at the same school. National norms don't mean much for high performing schools.

You may need to have a meeting with with your daughter in attendance to come to agreement about what criteria are necessary for acceleration.

You already got great responses that addressed important considerations. I will add one more - MAP is multiple choice and untimed plus bright kids are good guessers. Class work can be far more challenging, particularly from an output perspective. I would make sure that your DD's writing and executive function skills are up to par (preferably superior) compared to her co-horts. If you can show that her work products are noticeably superior to her classmates, that may gain you more traction in a quest for acceleration/differentiation.

Your DD sounds exactly like mine! I see how far ahead she is at home (and she also tests high), but when she is asked questions in school she replies "I don't know" and underperforms. She also complains of being bored at school, so then I look like an idiot when I advocate for her to have more challenging work despite her not achieving the work she is doing:( I would suggest finding out why she is not performing at her level. For my DD it is because she is shy and wants to just blend in with everyone else. I see other kids who think it makes no sense to do work they learned years ago (can't argue with that logic!!). Maybe working at the level of why she isn't complying would help, then you would have more traction with her teachers.

Can you clarify what this means? What tests were used? Our schools uses NWEA, where if "middle of 11th" means 50th percentile, that score is about 94th percentile for 3rd grade.

I'm also curious about "ALL" in caps. That implies, or at least I infer that it means, that doing assigned school work is somehow not an expectation. To be frank, completing assigned school work isn't the trigger for acceleration.

Has any formal testing for gifted-ness/IQ testing taken place?

Grade skipping is not a panacea. Both my children were recommended for it by our school and we allowed it for math but pulled my son back and my daughter will probably need to repeat. Here's why - son was lonely and felt like an outsider. He's awkward and couldn't fit in socially. He felt like it was a punishment. My daughter enjoyed it socially but has never really liked math. This year she is in 7th and doing 9th grade math and she's pulling in C's. They keep telling me they don't understand why she's struggling when her MAPS scores are so high. It is because she doesn't pay attention to details and she doesn't like her teacher. She's gifted but not organized or motivated. So here's what I recommend - grade skipping may be helpful but for the 4 people in my extended family who did it, it was socially a mistake. Remember you'd be sending your 16 year old to college one day!

We pushed for in class accommodations to the extent that our children wanted it. Don't worry about grades until high school. My boy never needed spelling so we presented the teachers each year with SAT vocabulary lists starting in 1st. He took their tests but did the homework (and turned in) the enrichment we provided. In math we introduced the teachers to khan academy and sumdog websites and asked if he could self direct.

If you're determined to grade skip, the easiest thing I know worked in our district was to request that the child be given the end of the year tests at the beginning. That is the knowledge that she will need to know - and if she already knows it, than you have a more compelling argument for acceleration or enrichment.

There is no solution that is a panacea. As long as the educational cultural expectations of our society are tied to age-locked cohorts, every solution inside the system will be a compromise of some sort. Like any other solution, grade-skipping done well can be appropriate for some families, but not (even done well) for others.

And sending a 16-year-old to college is sometimes the better option--for example, than having a 16-year-old disengaged from high school due to instructional underplacement, or having a 16-year-old drop out of high school after years of meaningless classwork, or a 16-year-old turning to "self-medicating" by misusing substances.

(Full disclosure: every one of the five members of my extended family who entered college at 16 or younger would do it again. The apparent social tradeoffs were well worth the benefits in having a critical part of oneself recognized and fed.)

The key, though, is grade-skipping well and appropriately. I would agree that placement based on demonstrating mastery of the actual curriculum used in the district has a higher likelihood of success than decisions made in a vacuum. My parents started an approach with us which included placing below instructional level when grade-skipping, where a child would skip into instruction that was about 1-1.5 grades below their actual instructional level, so that a significant amount of mental energy could be devoted to the increase in executive functions that usually accompanies grade acceleration. Obviously, this means that only students already functioning at least two years ahead would be considered for skipping.

Well thought out grade or subject acceleration decisions can be very successful, which is one reason the Iowa Acceleration Scale is so frequently cited here.