So Ducky,
How much can you spend per 100 hundred children? Do you have a child in mind that you are trying to accomidate? What brand of NCLB tests does your school use, and can you get ahold of them to use as 'above level tests?' Do you have someone who can administer a WISC IV individual IQ test?
Do you have a kindergarden screening before the children start school? We do. At the end of the process, DS was so thrilled and excited, our last stop said: "It looks like your child is certianlly ready of kindergarden."
My instant thought was, "It looks like he's ready to TEACH kindergarden!" but I just smiled. This is strange, because I was in such gifted denial - it was a sort of Freudian Mental Slip because it was the first time I could acknowledge how excited he was from being in the school environment - with all the posters on the wall, adults to met and figure out...I went right back to my trusting state of denial.
Anyway, what I wish was done was a few higher level questions thrown into the Kindergarden screening process, and the ones who scored the highest in reading, color naming, math that shows thinking. Does your district collect this data? If so, you can just modify what you are already collecting to create your screening pool. Take a look at Ruf's "Losing our minds, Gifted Children left behind," for more specifics of what young children may be able to do, and that yes, some early milestones are generally predictive of later giftedness - the ones that show problem solving skills.
In my case, nothing was done except clustering, and a summer birthday, which I think would have been great for the majority of gifted kids, but for my Highly gifted child just never was enough. Also he was highly asynchrounous: Able to think abstractly, but not much interested in writing the answers to his worksheet questions in 'full sentences' - plus some motor delays and an assertive personallity - elementary school didn't go well, and in meeting after meeting there way much hand wringing but little relief.
Personally, I think one of the changes that is about to occur, is that people will start to understand LOG, levels of giftedness. Part of what mades pull outs 'look bad' was that there has to be 10 to 15% of kids who were still grumpy from boredom and social isolation, which is how my son was in his cluster group, even with the summmer birthday, and the many many bright boys who were held back for 'immaturity' reasons in our town (Redshirting) "Gifted is a group with so much variability, both within the individual, and between the individual."
I would urge you, BTW, not to ask for the Highest and the Lowest kids.
1) our school did that for 2nd and 4th grade, and it created a really weird view of the world, remember if you pull off the top level of kids, they are going to be very aware of the differences, so have trouble socially, AND get a weird message about themselves. I think the 2nd layer, 120-125 IQish would make a much better group of peer-tutors, and develop a lot of satisfaction by being leaders and not having the first layer inhibiting them all the time.
2) It misses the chance for the kids who are only gifted in one area, but very strongly gifted, to be part of the flexible grouping within the class in their area. These kids may be excellent social companions even though they are not strong readers, or have handwriting delays, or trouble with memorizing math facts. Since your main interest is providing programing not a lable, leverage your efforts by including kids who have 2E "twice exceptionalities" or spiky profiles, but have the abstract thinking abilities in at least one area.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
I'm going to ask again about what kind of
