Good points and here's the link to the book it's in. Our library doesn't have it but I'll try ILL:
Robinson, N.M. and Robinson, H. (1992). The use of standardized tests with young gifted children. In P.N. Klein and A.J. Tannenbaum (eds). To be young and gifted (141-170). New Jersey: Ablex.
http://www.amazon.com/Be-Young-Gifted-Pnina-Klein/dp/089391956XHere's the Ciha, Harris, Hoffman and Potter study you mentioned.
http://gcq.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/18/3/191Yes, it shows that parents tend to overestimate their own child's ability but it also shows the kindergarten teachers were only 22% effective and missed identifying many of the gifted children. This may be why some places tend to err on the side of identifying a larger pool in order to avoid missing too many of the truly gifted kids at an early age. Parents are obviously not infallible but they still do a pretty good job, especially if you consider over-identifying a lesser evil than under-identifying.
Other info on parent/teacher identification:
"Research continually confirms that parents know their children best (Silverman, Chitwood, & Waters, 1986). For example, Jacobs (1971) found that parents could identify 61% of their gifted kindergarten children. By contrast, their teachers identified only 4.3% of these children."
Consulting with parents. Since about 80% of the parent population can identify their children's giftedness by ages four or five, a short cut to finding these students is to consult with parents. They have spent hours every day with their children over a consecutive number of years, observing them closely and interacting with them in a variety of contexts. In most cases, this makes them the most realistic predictors of their children's abilities and needs.
In 60 years of teaching, counseling, and assessing gifted children, I have met few parents who wrongly judged their children to be gifted. Even in cases where children failed to meet the cut-off score for giftedness on the intelligence scale, they exhibited other signs of high ability, and usually demonstrated giftedness in some areas assessed (Silverman,Chitwood & Waters, 1986; Silverman, 2008).
In the last 30 years, the Gifted Development Center has assessed over 5,500 children from all over the globe, brought to us primarily on the basis of parent referral. At least 84% of the parents who perceive that their children fit 75% of the traits in our Characteristics of Giftedness Scale [http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/characgt.htm] test above 120 IQ (Silverman, Chitwood & Waters, 1986; Silverman, 2008). This percentage increases when we include the parents of twice exceptional children, whose composite IQ scores do not accurately reflect the full strength of their abilities. Over 95% of the parents had children who demonstrated peaks in the gifted range in some areas. In actuality, parents have proven to be reliable and accurate identifiers of giftedness in their children (Robinson,2008; Silverman & Miller, in press).
