Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Subject acceleration testing

Hi - I am advocating for subject acceleration in math for my twins (rising 3rd grade) and would love some advice from the knowledgeable people here. Our school does not have any advanced math option until sixth grade and they are very reluctant to do anything other than in-class differentiation. But I think I may have succeeded in getting them at least to consider testing some kids to see if they can subject accelerate in math in elementary school. The thing is, they've never done this before (hard to believe), so I don't know what type of test they will use or should use, nor do they it seems. I believe they are coming up with their own. What I'm wondering is - what type of testing is usually done for this purpose? The school has already done CoGAT and STAR Math and we have our kids' SCAT math scores as well, though the school has not seen the latter yet. I'm guessing they may do something like an end of year skills test (for the next grade or some other grade, i don't know). Is this a common method? Is there anything else I should be advocating for or considering?

Thanks in advance!

My family has experienced 3 math accelerations. Each one was different in what sort of information was used to assess the acceleration, including informal state standardized test for the year above, KeyMath, WJ achievement, curriculum-based assessment (end of year test as published from the math curriculum), and "meh, let's try two grades up."

I personally find that an 80% or more on the curriculum-based assessment and then patching the gaps on topics missed to be the most satisfying of the three processes we saw. This is also an evidence-based approach. Check out Developing Math Talent by Assouline for more details on this.

My school does a pretest/post test format for math...it takes two session to do it because the test is long. The tests are the same skills pre and post but the numbers are changed.

When my son was in third he was given the pretest for third (and they had WISC scores, WJ ach scores, star math scores) and we were still discussing what to do and the principal had him sit in his office and do the pretest for fourth grade math too (just to see how he would do and the fourth grade had already taken the pretest so he needed to do it anyway if he were to switch). With all the data we gathered we were focusing on the math and still just advocating for subject acceleration but in the end we whole grade skipped him. Best decision ever.

End-of-year (post) test is what our child's schools have done. 80% was the bar, which as geofizz noted is what I understand to be reasonable practice. I also would recommend the Developing Math Talent book.

The book that ConnectingDots mentioned is written by Susan Assouline.

Also, try AOPS - US schools (or perhaps most schools these days - I am long in the tooth) take an excruciatingly long time to cover basic arithmetic. There is simply not that much covered in 3,4 or 5th grade. Instead of butting your head against the wall only to get a one year acceleration in Maths which may not be enough, try stuff outside of school that will permit them to learn at their own pace...