Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Selective enrollment public city school v suburbs

[quote=frannieandejsmom]There is no guarantee with CPS program. They have 4 tiers for various socioeconomic areas of the city so all kids have the opportunity. As much as I see this is much needed, my kid would stand out and possibly not see the challenge he needs from the program until high school. There are some high schools that are very selective and not listed (Northside Prep comes to mind).


We would be living in a Tier 3 neighborhood. What do you mean when you say your kid would stand out and not see the challenge?

Have you considered New Trier district? Easy access to the city, room to roam, though perhaps not the acreage of Barrington. I'm thinking ahead to high school, here.

If you choose Barrington, then you are not prohibitively far from Quest Academy, though I don't know much about it and know only one child who attended.

The following provides information on the requirements for each type of program, by grade:

Grades K-4: All age-appropriate students applying for kindergarten through grade 4 will be tested. Note that students must be able to separate from their parents to walk with the examiner to the assessment room. Parents are not allowed to accompany their child into the assessment area.

Grades 5-8: Testing eligibility for students applying for grades 5-8 (except for the RGC-ELs) will be based on the student’s NWEA MAP scores in reading and math.

Students with an IEP applying for grades 5-8 must score at or above the 50th percentile in one subject (reading or math), and at or above the 40th percentile in the other subject (reading or math) in order to be eligible for testing.

Regional Gifted Centers
In order to be eligible for testing, general education students and students with a 504 Plan applying for grades 5-8 must score at or above the 60th percentile in both reading and math.

Regional Gifted Centers for English Learners (RGC-ELs)
Testing eligibility for students applying for grades 5-8 will be based on the student’s previous year's reading and math final classroom grades. Students must have no lower than a B on their final reading and math grades in order to be eligible.

Classical Schools
In order to be eligible for testing, general education students and students with a 504 Plan applying for grades 5-8 must score at or above the 60th percentile in both reading and math.

International Gifted Programs
In order to be eligible for testing, general education students and students with a 504 Plan applying for grades 5-8 must score at or above the 60th percentile in both reading and math.

Academic Centers
In order to be eligible for testing, students must score at or above the 45th percentile in both reading and math.



For my kid on NWEA is well over the 99th percentile for his grade. There can be kids as low as the 40th percentile in his "gifted" class.

I don't get this - this says that those are the cutoffs for eligibility for *testing*, not eligibility for the program? So what is the actual requirement of the program?

I would like to know too. I suspect however with that big a net it is not going to be 99 or even 90%.

From a brief survey of the CPS website, it appears that there are no cutoffs, other than the floors posted previously. Program slots are filled out of the applicant pool for each school/program, with several quotas, one based on pure rank, and then one for each of the aforementioned tiers. So the requirements change from year to year, and school to school.

I found these, for the Selective Elementary Schools (I think this means the Regional Gifted Centers):

The scoring system, up to a max of 900 points, based on NWEA, grades, and IQ. Notice that there is no distinction between 150 and 150+, and that the three criteria are essentially equally weighted:

http://www.cpsoae.org/Scoring%20Rub...Gifted%20Program%20--%202015-2016_v2.pdf

This is an interesting document, on the distribution of scores at different Selective Elementary Schools in the 2015-2016 applicant season. Some schools are markedly more selective than others:

http://www.cpsoae.org/Academic%20Center%20Cutoff%20Scores%202015-2016.pdf

Note that almost none of the students, including many of the top-scorers, in the school with the lowest selection scores would make it, even in the lowest-scoring tier, of the school with the highest selection scores. The highest selection school clearly had a number of students max out the rubric.

So some schools will probably be easier to get into, while others will have a higher likelihood of collecting high outliers.

Unfortunately my nieces and nephews are too young for me to have any first hand knowledge about CPS yet but I think this site would be a pretty good place to ask more questions:

http://cpsobsessed.com/the-basics-of-cps/

Favorite Quote: "Q: If this is all so difficult, shouldn’t I just move to the suburbs?
A: No. It will slowly make your soul wither. And the taxes are often higher. But your suburban friends likely have a different opinion."

Find this discussion interesting since I do have a magnet student in Schaumburg.First of all kids don't play outside freely here and Barrington only being a few miles away isn't going to be much different. In regards to Chicago and suburbs while taxes are higher out here Chicago schools don't have in general the best reputation. You kind of get what you pay for. While New Trier is rated one of the best, better than Barrington and Schaumburg (District 211) but it is very expensive to live. Barrington while rated higher than Schaumburg is a smaller district thus having less higher level class options especially by the time you get to high school. I guess there's pros and cons no matter what you decide.

Aeh, those do not appear to be the gifted schools. Those are listed here: http://cps.edu/Schools/Elementary_schools/Pages/Regionalgiftedcenter.aspx

I haven't been able to track down which test the PEAP administers, though.

ETA: another page about the regional gifted centers: http://cpsoae.org/m/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=72695&type=d&termREC_ID=&pREC_ID=151352

I found this website listing the schools for gifted kids in the greater Chicago area.

http://www.chicago.us.mensa.org/kids/schools.php

We live in north suburbs so they are too far for my kids. However, a few of them are pretty close to Barrington. So you may want to check them out.