Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Explore results

FinalFor - those are great scores and I believe he qualifies for Davidson Young Scholars Program if you also have qualifying IQ scores.

EXPLORE

Grade 4
English 19
Math 16
Reading 18
Science Reasoning 18
Composite 17

At least three of the five scores listed, including the composite score
He qualifies with English, Math, Reading and the Composite.

I just got my DS Explore scores (tested through NUMATS), and since others are sharing I thought I would too.

5th Grade
Composite 23
English 22
Math 21
Reading 25
Science 25

They look like they might be high enough to be invited to the CTD Award Ceremony. Can anyone who has been there tell me what that is like? Is it worth a 12 hour round trip drive to Chicago?

WOW those are great scores Shelly! Looks like your Explore days are over and it's on to the ACT!

I don't know about the ceremony, sorry, but I had a few questions, if you are willing to share (and anyone else whose child has taken the test). First of all, your ds did amazingly well- congrats to him!

As we look at our son's scores and try to figure out what they mean, I was wondering:
Do you think that the test is an accurate reflection of his abilities?
Is this his first time taking it?
What is your schooling situation? I am trying to figure out how accurately the tests reflect our perception/reality of our kids. Can a smart kid who is in a regular 3rd grade curriculum extrapolate that knowledge to a high enough level to do well on the EXPLORE, for example, or is it a test where you must have been exposed to the material through acceleration or accommodation?
Anyway, just curious...
It sounds like a long trip to Chicago, but it might be fun to do a road trip/mini vacation for the weekend. I've heard it is a beautiful campus.
Theresa

We had to drive up the night before and stay at a hotel for testing. Testing starts at 8:30am and it was 1.5hr drive for us and I didn't want DS9 being tired for the test. It was nice alone time for us (he has two siblings who stayed home w/ DH). He is in 4th grade and homeschooled. He was in PS for K-2. This was his first time taking the test. I think for the most part it is a reflection but he didn't have enough time to finish math and science. That really hurt him, especially in science since it seems he got most of them correct that he attempted. Science is mostly reasoning and analyzing data which is where DS9 shines. DS9 is not particularly accelerated - his science knowledge is pretty broad from reading and watching NOVA. I think the young kids are extrapolating. The time limit really hurt him. He'll be doing NWEA Map testing and it'll be interesting to see how he does on an untimed test.

Have you looked at the sample questions for the Explore? That might give you a better idea about what the test is measuring.

For those HSing and whose DC took the Explore, will the test results change anything for you?

Hi Theresa, thanks for the interesting questions. It is interesting to contemplate what this all means. So I would be willing to share.

I do think he has a high ability. He is also generally curious about Science topics. This is his second time taking the test. He took it in 3rd grade Composite 15, English12, Math 14, Reading 16, Science 18.
His schooling situation. He is in a regular 5th grade class. The gifted services are once a week pull outs for verbal and match. The school he is at is a title one school with a larger minority/low-income population so it has more emphasis on the other end of the performing spectrum. The school hasn't had some of the extras that other schools in the district have like Math Masters or Destination Imagination. Not an ideal situation. His teacher says at conferences that he spends lots of time reading (sounds like my entire school career) and occasionally the teacher would like his attention but also admitted that he is getting the material. Next year should be better. He is going to be in a highly gifted middle school program. Basically a choice school where the gifted kids are collected in one middle school class which allows the teachers to go at a faster pace. My DD was in the highly gifted middle school program and it was good for her.

I think generally it has been noted that Math scores are not as high on this test because they haven't been exposed to the material. One thing I noticed when I did the practice test with my DD when she took the test is that the Math portion is that she didn't make use of the calculator and tried to do problems by hand. That seemed to be one of the biggest problems is lack of judgement on when to use the calculator ... rather important on a timed test. Her scores in 5th grade were good Composite 18, English 18, Math 15, Reading 17, Science 20. Not as good as her brothers. I think exposure to the test in 3rd grade, hearing me mention the calculator issue several times, and maybe being identified for gifted services earlier may have contributed to his better score. Or he could have just been having a better day ... it is hard to say with testing.

Shelly

We HS. I don't think the results will change much. It is nice to add to the portfolio of tests that show what we already know.

I do have another meeting with the Director of Curriculum for our school district, we do this every six to twelve months to discuss options, so it will be nice to have in hand. Sadly for our area, I don't see it making much difference.

That calculator was an issue for my DD too. She felt like it would be "cheating" to use it. I thought after not finishing EXPLORE and our conversation about how the calculator is actually assumed to be in use during the test, that she would "get it". Apparently not--only a few weeks later she told me she was the last done for a math placement test--she didn't want to use the calculator if she thought she could figure it out on her own (I'm realizing that we are missing an emoticon--where's a good old mental head slap when you need one???). While mental manipulation of number is a relatively strong point for DD, she is far from instant in her processing....

The whole question about how to interpret is tricky. For instance, it would appear that DD got almost everything she actually got to correct (I think she had 2 wrong on reading, 1-3 on science depending on how many she actually left blank). On the one hand, that seems pretty impressive to me. On the other hand, there are obviously plenty of students who are able to do that AND finish the tests, which she did not.

When I look at placement recommendations that are based on EXPLORE scores they seem--with the possible exception of DYS--to be somewhat low relative to DDs performance. Yet,the idea that DD has exceptional math strengths has been dismissed pretty consistently by the school, and up until this year, she has received precious little in terms of acceleration (mostly random independent work for 2nd, 3rd and 4th without monitoring/guidance/feedback).

So I find myself confused. Are the majority of (out of level) EXPLORE test takers actually not from the upper end of the acheivement/ability pool? Do all mildly/moderately gifted kids test well above the mean in most subject areas and it is really only the 20+ scores that indicate anything out of the typical range? And then I wonder about the time factor. If she were really gifted, would she finish everything (keeping in mind that she is 10/5th grade)? I wasn't surprised when she didn't finish everything last year, but this year I have to admit that I didn't expect so many blanks. If she were really gifted, wouldn't she just know the answers and move quickly through the questions? Or, is her lousy sense of time/pacing not very relevant and the telling factor is her accuracy with what she has done? She grew in both english (3 points) and math (2 points) as compared to last year, despite having LITERALLY no instruction in either for her 4th grade year, and little in the way of writing this year (her growth was all in style/rhetoric--she had already hit ceiling on grammar/usage). If the test is out of level and she grew without instruction, is that meaningful, or is it just to be expected because she's a year older? She didn't grow at all in science and she dropped a couple of points in reading, but both reading scores were above 20, so pretty much at ceiling there.

I don't expect anyone has the answer to these questions, but I'm thinking maybe other parents with kids somewhere below DYS levels are pondering the same questions, so I thought I'd muse obsess out loud...

One of the thing it says in the results is that in the third grade, and I would think a few grades later, the comparison are against other children who fall in the high ability ranges. So, for instance, my child got a 10 in one item, which is like 20% for the kids taking the test. But, then you have to consider the fact that the kids taking the test tend to already be in the top ~5% of the population of third graders. On the other hand, he got a 16 in Science which according to the results, is about 80-something %, once again compared to other high ability children. Keep in mind that either score is high enough to get him into any class in CMITES.

Does anybody know if they send additional info later? I'd like to see some stats of how peers did. The score sheet just shows data against 8th graders. It would be interesting to see the scores within his peer group. I think it helps paint a more complete picture.