http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/n...d-to-drop-dreaded-erb-entrance-test.html
Private Schools Are Expected to Drop a Dreaded Entrance Test
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ
New York Times
September 19, 2013


Too many Bostonians in NYC .

I agree with Steve Sailer's comments on this article, "Private Manhattan kindergartens to replace IQ admissions test with ... something" at http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/09/private-manhattan-kindergartens-to.html .

New York City is a special place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/e...umbered-a-95-just-wasnt-good-enough.html
Your 4-Year-Old Scored a 95? Better Luck Next Time:
Abandoning E.R.B. Test May Also Put End to a Status Symbol
By WINNIE HU and KYLE SPENCER
New York Times
September 25, 2013

It says some will drop. But since most of those parents also do the modified SBV for Hunter Elementary, they will probably go with those scores. That was the problem for many people is that you ended up doing the public school test, the ERB and then SBV.

The public school test was the OLSAT but do not know anymore what they are doing now.

Public school is now half OLSAT half nnat (naglieri). But with the Pearson grading scandal last year rumor was they were going to change it but haven't as of yet. And hunter is talking about creating their own test because they are so fed up with the prepping - according to DS's tester.

DeHe

I think creating one's own test and changing it every year is the only way out for these schools. Otherwise it isn't fair. This whole thing is bonkers.

Although--is it possible to prep for IQ tests in the same way? The content is very closely guarded, right? I assume it isn't as much for this ERB test and that's why it's so out of hand?

Jeez, at some point they should probably just pick names out of a hat. It would probably turn out about the same.

Does anyone watch Bang Goes the Theory? They did spatial reasoning tests and then had them do brain exercises for a few weeks and retake the test, the results were remarkable.

I think all parents on this site were active with their babies, talking to them, reading to them, doing wooden puzzle shapes. If you did nothing but feed and change them, how different would their scores be?

My understanding is that gains like that can be realized through brain exercises, but are usually temporary and specific.

I don't think there is much difference between the ERB and IQ tests. Any test that becomes an entrance exam will be prepared for.

Amazon has a book for <$10, "Testing for Kindergarten: Simple Strategies to Help Your Child Ace the Tests for: Public School Placement, Private School Admissions, Gifted Program Qualification" by Karen Quinn. Chapter 4 is titled "The 7 Abilities of Highly Successful Kindergarteners: What every test measures and what your child needs to know: language, knowledge/comprehension, memory, visual, spatial, cognitive, and fine-motor skills". I don't have the book, but the index lists many pages for both Wechsler and Stanford-Binet.

I consider using a book sold openly on Amazon to be fair game. Test publishers would sue the book publisher and/or Amazon if the book revealed trade secrets. There are probably sites and people, especially testers, who go further than this and cross the line.

Successful kindergartners?

To me, this seems like iron-clad evidence of an education system that left the rails long ago.

Unfortunately there are some who value making a buck more than they value ethics, so some have created IQ test rip-offs, look-alikes, and preps. There are also parents who do not value ethics, and/or rationalize by conflating "IQ test prep" with "providing stimulation and enrichment in the child's area of interest".

In general:
- achievement test prep is fine and provides accurate results
- IQ test prep is not OK as it does not provide accurate results

While private schools may do their own thing, often justifying high tuition by creating a marketing situation in which demand exceeds supply, a shortage of seats in private schools may indicate that there is sufficient demand for an enterprising capitalist to invest in opening another local school offering advanced academics.

On the public school side, rather the current "divide and conquer" practice of having families compete with each other for a seat in an academically advanced program, consider what fixing this rut in the road would look like.

Instead of accepting the all-or-nothing gatekeeper approach by tests and lottery, might the supply of advanced academic education be increased to meet demand? Ask yourself:

Is there a building shortage? (Y/N)
Are there enough school buildings, classrooms, and seats for all children? (Y/N)
Is there a teacher shortage? (Y/N)
Are there enough teachers? (Y/N)
Is there a shortage of continuing education credits? (Y/N)
Are there enough professional development programs for teachers? (Y/N)
Are there enough self-education (autodidactic) opportunities for teachers, including Davidson Educator's Guild and YouTube videos, SENG webinars (SENGinars), free information on Hoagies, expert blogs, parent forums, local and regional parent group meetings, and more? (Y/N)

With a sufficient supply of buildings, classrooms, seats, teachers, and teacher educational opportunities, the solution to fixing this rut in the road may be utilizing more of the available resources (buildings, teachers, continuing ed opportunities) to offer more units/sections/classes as advanced academic education, individually tailored to each student's progress... Re-purposing general ed seats for advanced academic seats to meet demand.

In increasing supply to meet the demand, some elements might include:
Cluster grouping in each subject by readiness and ability.
Use of online programs which allow students to progress at their own pace.
Establishing relationships with nearby college/university for upper level classes as needed.
Considering "school within a school" concept when appropriate.

Innately gifted kids, hothoused kids, those with high potential from impoverished backgrounds would all benefit. Moving the ceiling up helps all kids, as hard workers in the middle may see that there is something to strive for when the ceiling is lifted.

These are not new ideas, they have all been implemented previously to some degree.

Here is one book which may be of interest: Inevitable, Mass Customized Learning, Learning in the Age of Empowerment, by Charles Schwahn & Beatrice McGarvey (link- http://masscustomizedlearning.com/) Some may especially enjoy the chart on Control Theory / Support Theory found on page 83. A snippet from a statement of strong belief on that page, reads, in part:
"...Teachers are intelligent, capable, and caring people who would love to have all intrinsically motivated learners who would achieve and achieve... but they work in an outdated, ingrained group-paced system that makes it nearly impossible to take advantage of our natural motivation to learn."

I have to say I did very little to help our kids "learn" other than sitting on the sideline watching them explore. The younger one never had a book read to him yet he still figured out how to read phonetically right after he turned 2 ...about the same age his brother was when he figured out how to do math addition. They both like PBS tv shows, ebooks and video games as their preferred source of "education". I'm sure they could do even "more" if I was more actively involved in their learning but even without it, they still stand out a lot when compared to their friends / age mates.

... I should add ... it's not that I didn't want to be involved, they just did not let me. Any help from me would turn into big meltdowns and attitude.

Well, maybe not.

CB's own data from 2013 shows that over 40% of the members of the high school class of 2013 who failed to earn a 1550+ score on the SAT (about 60% of test takers earned those scores) had taken Honors/AP coursework.

Hmmm... so ~24% of test taking, presumably "college-bound" high school students got pretty much no discernable benefit from "advanced coursework" which was available to them.

Just putting butts in seats isn't really helping anyone if the heads attached don't have reasonable fit with the environment. It also doesn't benefit those who DO belong in that environment for instructional time to be wasted on the 1 in 4 who shouldn't really be there.

the ERB is the WPSSI but with a few sections removed just like Hunter does for SBV.

For the privates - its not picking names out of hat - or maybe just a special hat - then it becomes money, parental connections, do you like the kid at the playdate - this gives a measurement - not a perfect one but at least somewhat objective.

DeHe

these questions are not the issue in NYC - because in NYC the money follows the kid - so its choice to set up these programs or not - and right now the chancellor of the system does not believe in gifted ed - and says this directly. But he is gone soon and in comes the new mayor and education is present in the current election so who knows.

DeHe

Hmm. So if it's that easy to game an IQ test, at least for a 5yo, what does that really mean?

Could the system be similarly gamed for an 8yo? A 14yo?

What does this suggest about the validity of IQ tests for young children?

(I was imagining this ERB as a rather obtainable list of rote knowledge/skills--count to 20, write the alphabet, ID colors, tie your shoes, read these 40 sight words, add to 10)

Absolutely agreed!

Please accept my apologies if I was unclear. To clarify, my point was about increasing the supply of advanced academics to meet demand for advanced academics. Cluster grouping based on readiness and ability was mentioned, as was individualized pacing, school-within-a-school, and a book about customized learning with a chart and quote about not squelching internal motivation. Please understand I was not addressing heads without a reasonable fit to the environment of advanced academics.

To be politically correct, and to score well on the news media's public school rankings which award points for unrestricted access to courses/programs such as AP and IB, many high schools will allow and encourage students to stretch and take courses for which they do not have readiness or ability. Possibly you are addressing this practice? The statistics you shared may be reflective of this.

Understood. To simplify things, I made this about advanced academics, not about gifted ed (not trying to discern between intrinsically gifted, hothoused, hardworking, nor high potential from impoverished backgrounds).

Meanwhile, what is one article that you would choose to introduce someone in that position to the existence of gifted kids and their need for an educational experience paced differently and including true peers?

Exactly-- just hothousing to appear ready isn't the same thing as being ready.

Testing only identifies the appearance of the thing. Ergo, it is subject to "gaming" the system, which skews things markedly on the side of high SES and test-prepping insanity. Which is why I strongly suspect that the situation is actually far worse than CB's statistics would indicate, since that test is quite coachable and since those stats blur the picture produced by the practice of super-scoring.

Allowing open access to high-rigor programs is fine on the one hand, because it removes the prestige associated with acceptance, and it's an important step toward a more equitable arrangement with low SES students and those from circumstances that have limited performance...

But not so fine on the other, because it really does water down the instructional/learning environment if 1 in 4 students has no business in that environment to start with.

Kids taking AP English really should not need 2 weeks of instructional time on formatting and course policies, KWIM? And no, that is not a hypothetical example. That is from a real AP syllabus.

My major problem here is that ultimately, meeting demand probably is intrinsically operating at odds with meeting NEED. The two things are definitely not the same.

I don't think there is a bright line separating test preparation and what most in this forum would consider normal parenting. A 5yo who knows his letters, numbers, colors, and shapes will do better on an IQ test than one who does not. Middle and upper class parents will teach these things as a matter of course and will provide toys and books to develop these skills. Studies have found that adoption can raise the IQ of children but that much of the increase dissipates by adulthood. The adoptive parents in these studies were not raising their children with IQ tests in mind.

Brain exercises, mental workouts, practice in critical thinking, challenges in creativity, and physical exercise are said to sharpen one's measured performance. Meanwhile stress, sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyle and skipping meals or eating non-nutritional foods may decrease performance. Much of this is lifestyle choice and has an impact throughout the lifespan. Some of the biology and neuroscience explanations can be very interesting.

One concept brought forward by recent research is the relative flexibility or malleability of IQ, being responsive to changing internal/external conditions throughout the lifespan.

That being said, it is really not easy for a 5yo or anyone to "game" an IQ test. That would require an adult purchasing and utilizing preps, which some may see an analogous to purchasing an answer key. While the information may need to be memorized, the test prospect isn't coming up with the answers by his/her own spark of creativity or original thought applied to the problem. "Teaching to the test" in this case may result in admitting some pupils who subsequently cannot keep up the pace, and do not possess the intrinsic curiosity to fuel their ongoing motivation for learning.

I think the validity is fine as long as the tests are taken as they are meant to be taken - without advanced preparation.

If a parent wants their kid to test as gifted on an IQ test and goes about prepping that kid for the test then the results are spoiled. They might as well have just made themselves a certificate that says "I have a gifted kid".

True but in NYC there are 300 gifted citywide seats - the schools only took kids with 99s and then did a lottery from the 5000 (yes you read that right) who scored at eligible levels. For entry to K there were 2800 who scored at 97 and above (although only 99s get in). And as I said, the money goes with the kid - so there is demand and clearly need - you set a criteria - all these kid met the criteria - and then you just say tough we don't have seats. But you could - you just need to designate the schools to meet this need and demand. And based on the number of teacher applicants to these schools - teachers want to come.

there is also regular g+t which serves 90% and above on the tests and then you have defacto citywides because in some districts the number of 99s who didnt get selected go there. So if you are a 95 you likely end up in a regular classroom. Is this bad - no not necessarily - but when something which seems like it would serve this kid better is dangled in front and they miss an opportunity because of 5 questions at the age of 5 you can see why parents get so upset. The other 3000 applicants are usually kids in 1st, 2nd and 3rd who got 99s and didnt get in so they keep testing hoping someone moves!
DeHe

Thanks for the link, Indigo. Definitely the court I'm in, we must get to customized learning. It will happen, but not from a fixed content model. And definitely not in a measure every twitch environment.

I'm not sure, though, that the numbers there reflect actual need so much as they reflect demand.

I'm not necessarily saying that meeting demand would be wrong. But it would definitely be lower in my personal value system than meeting authentic need, which should take into account those children who don't (for whatever reason) score as well as they "should" as well as those whose scores are being artificially inflated by all manner of external leveraging.

The problem is that there's only so much ink in that printer, though... so the gifted kids who don't have all those advantages don't wind up getting their certificates... (See DeHe's post)

Agreed.

Agreed! Demand would need to be a sustained demand. Both cluster grouping and school-within-a-school can be utilized to address this. Unfortunately initial artificially high demand may be fueled by media hype and pressure by those who would like to operate in a divide-and-conquer mode. The power/influence of these forces upon a school may be mitigated by use of flexible cluster grouping and school-within-a-school.

At the moment I am thinking of a high schooler who's parent passed, resulting in temporary disruptions to home life until new roles were established and some healing had taken place. For a time, the lack of continuity and support at home rendered the student unable to function at their previously high level. The student's mind was simply occupied with other processing, and rightly so. Placement in a different cluster may be useful until the student is ready to take on additional challenge. Emphasis on readiness, ability.

Oh, I'm not saying that if you can be prepped to test gifted, you ARE gifted. I'm saying--dang, it's a blunt instrument if it's that easy. But really, I guess I already knew that.

I have to say, I lost faith in IQ tests' ability to tease out the tails a long time ago. I mean, a solid 90th% kid is probably going to be a different kid than a solid 99.99 kid. But as far as an inconsistent kid with some 99s and some 95s and a random 67 just for fun? I don't know. How do we pit that kid against a 97th all around? You factor in squirrelly kid, bad tester, shadows on the ceiling--it starts to look ridiculous. I also say this in part because I know 30-some kids who tested 98th% and up (DD's grade) and they are...wow, a really diverse bunch of kids for the top 2%! Let's not forget about one's ability not to eat the marshmallow (sorry for the shorthand if not familiar with that experiment).

I see why parents are going nuts with this.

Please consider not accepting things as they are: a limited number of seats for advanced academics, combined with a competitive, divide-and-conquer, winner-take-all mentality.

Economics teaches that there is market stability when supply=demand.

Instead of parents accepting that there is a limited supply of seats for gifted education and/or advanced academics, parents can unite and request seats be re-purposed from gen ed to advanced academics. This may be a meaningful educational reform: Increase the supply of advanced academic seats to meet the demand. (Here next to the word "demand" I will also add NEED, an important concept discussed earlier on this thread.)

It sounds like NYC needs about 5000 seats converted from general education to teach advanced academics, disbursed throughout the city? Who has a handle on where the qualifying students live, and which neighborhood schools would make the most convenient "magnets" for housing school-within-a-school programs? Does the school district have those figures? Does the media? Is anyone in touch with a school board member who might like to explore the concept, including exploration of gifted resources like Davidson, Hoagies, SENG...? Might there be some 200+ teachers excited to learn about advanced academics, even giftedness, and who would look forward to cluster grouping, acceleration, curriculum compacting, independent study, and more?

Improving access to education is said to be important to social justice. Helping NYC educate its 5000+ well-qualified students who are underserved would surely raise the bar.

Poor choice of words to say "pit against"--what I meant was that I don't think it's really reasonable to try to determine whether one of those kids is meaningfully smarter than other or needs more in the classroom than the other, especially considering many other variables that are less definable on paper.

As to whether we all agree--I don't know. I think some posters here would not agree that those 5000 kids are all deserving of gifted ed.

I find this topic immensely confusing myself--do we advocate for separate HG+ programs, or what?--so I have no answers.

I agree, especially with the winner-take-all mentality. I also see huge barriers to implementation. I'm sorry to say that many educators I've met aren't knowledgeable at all about the needs or capabilities of gifted students.

For example, I can claim that my DD needs advanced academics, but the school might not believe me, because the teachers and administrators are either clueless about giftedness or have a rigid, exaggerated definition of it (e.g. "That article in Time said that Janie was writing symphonies when she was 3 and yours wasn't, ergo, she's not gifted). Or maybe they acknowledge that she's smart, but they might assume that a bit of pre-algebra used as spice on a 5th grade curriculum is advanced. Well, it is...but not advanced enough for DD9.

On top of that in the public school system are the demands of NCLB and its forced focus on the bottom performers. This is huge.

I don't either, UM. I just know that the situation as it stands has so much prestige attached to the label-- and such emotional investment because it's a parenting issue-- that I'm not even sure that it can be modeled effectively with a simple market approach.


That's what has gotten us to this pass with college-entry frenzy, after all.

Agreed! Consider that creating more seats for advanced academics provides access and removes barriers.

This may provide an appropriate education for some, sustain and nurture internal motivation to do well in others, while also removing an inclination to blame the system for trapping well qualified students without educational opportunities... as this would no longer be the case.

But what do you do, functionally, to limit the phenomenon of parents who insist that Janey/Johnny be in the "top group" (whatever that means), but then complain bitterly until teachers/administrators water down content to make it "more accessible" to those students?

The Cuckoo effect, as I like to think of it, is actually quite a problem here. It's the basis of that entire industry; the majority of parents pushing their kids through expensive and time-consuming prep prior to late high school are not parenting HG children, and in many cases not even MG ones.

But they want those seats (labels) for their kids either way.

And if the parents of just one in five of the kids in the 85th-95th percentiles behave in this manner, each school administrator will have dealt with at least two of these hothoused children for every one of the truly HG children they encounter. That does justify a certain amount of healthy skepticism on their part.

Of course, this forum is full of examples where skepticism was indulged in unhealthy levels of excess...

A great question, and one that many may have. There may also be many answers. What I'm aware of occurring is...

1) based on believing these students are indeed cheetahs who've been contained and not previously able to run, they receive a bit of help before being released into the wild to run. This may be in the form of educational supports, an extra class for organizational skills, note-taking, study strategies. The support class, being held on the side, allows the rigorous academic class to continue on pace. Parents may also be required to sign an agreement which details duties of their role in supporting their student and attending progress meetings (things which other parents may have learned by observing what their own parents did a generation ago). Some students will benefit from this and really exert themselves, expending energy to learn every morsel, and dig deep within themselves to meet the challenge. Others will attend with a sense of entitlement to an easy grade.

2) based on believing it is mutually beneficial to cater to parents wanting extra credentials for their child, often especially those who are able to make donations to the school/district in support of various causes, an additional number of children may be enrolled in educational support classes. Some of these students may have a history of being hothoused. Again some students may rise to the challenge of earning their credential, while others may attend with a sense of entitlement to an easy grade.

How these scenarios may play out... ? In some cases, the students in an educational support program may have access to the redo opportunity, raising their grades. Meanwhile other students in the rigorous course (for example, possibly the gifted and hard-working middle students) may not have access to the redo opportunity. In the end, with support, the top GPAs may belong to the students having support to complete their rigorous course. This may not correspond to their scores on the AP exams. In the eyes of some, this helps to spread the credentials around to a broader bunch of students... some have their AP scores, others may have higher GPAs. Therefore some districts have no desire to limit this. It all depends upon what the district is trying to accomplish.

On a recent thread I have shared my personal view that a redo opportunity ought to be offered to all, or to none.

Agreed! When supply=demand, there will be no prestige to the seat/label. That's when the gifted kids can soar.

The point made was that market stability occurs when supply=demand. That being said, every kid is deserving of the best possible education. Each child needs the most supportive, academically challenging education for which they have the readiness and ability.

It's quite likely that in keeping with the general flow of the conversation you meant to indicate that not all children for whom qualifying scores were presented may actually benefit from a curriculum of advanced academics? That some may have been hothoused or coached, creating a temporary boost which resulted in qualifying scores?

Yet I'd gently caution that to any parent whose child qualified but did not get a seat... and to any parent whose child did not win an educational lottery in their own city, the concept of "deserving/undeserving" may open deep wounds.

I think it is a sad commentary on our society that we remain relatively silent while 5000 children (in one city alone) suffer the withholding of advanced academics for which they present themselves as prepared.

IMHO, prestige is a nemesis of gifted education. Prestige may perpetuate the myth of exclusivity which is a huge impediment to gaining broad-based support. Giftedness (and aptitude for advanced academics) occurs in every ethnic and SES demographic. Looking at the statistics provided by another poster, if I understand correctly 300/5000 qualifying kids in NYC receive seats for advanced academics, 4700/5000 qualifying kids receive seats for general ed? This means only 6% may get an education appropriate to their readiness and ability, leaving some 94% unserved or underserved.

The numbers are huge, the stories behind those numbers... heart-rending, I'm sure. This is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where every person can work hard and get ahead. Rationing education is simply not philosophically consistent with this.

I see this issue, from the administrators' perspective, as being the intersection of two concerns: resourcing and needs identification.

On the first front, at the risk of sounding simplistic, with a theoretical population of ~5k students, NYC has a scalable opportunity to provide HG+ programming at cost parity to general ed programming. To my thinking, this is just a matter of districts doing their operations due diligence before implementing a reallocation of general resources to gifted ones. Note I didn't say "expansion" of gifted resourcing, as that connotes more total resources being required, which isn't the case.

Regarding separating the truly HG+ from those who only appear to be, incentive compatibility could be achieved by actually implementing HG+ curricula. Make the course content so challenging that failure is all but inevitable for those students not targeted by the program. After a few years, parents pushing for non-HG+ gifted enrolment would have the reasonable expectation that their children would be failed. You might never get the non-HG+ contingent down to zero, but you could be successful directionally.

indigo, what I meant was that not everyone here believes that kids below the 99th% should be in full-time gifted programs. (I didn't say I was personally among them.) There are some feelings that high achievers/MG/hothoused kids dilute the programs and make it impossible for HG+ kids to get what they need.


I think the article indicated that kids who qualify but do not get into the special schools would still receive programming in their regular schools.

Agreed!

Gifted ed is not one-size-fits-all, and cluster grouping among gifted students helps accurately assess the readiness, ability, needs, and performance/achievement of each student thereby helping students to be with their LOG in each subject (among the HG+, still all are not globally gifted, some may have asynchronous development or be in a plateau phase... they are still cheetahs).

Some have found it much easier to form effective cluster groups when the whole pool of students is gifted, and the range of abilities is not as wide as typically found in a general ed classroom.

I'm probably among the people who believes that, based on what I've seen locally and in my state, which has a fairly generous identification protocol, and nothing beyond it to differentiate, say, PG students from those who are the 92nd percentile.

Many administrators here genuinely believe (or have said to ME that they believe it, anyway) that there is "no real difference" between those two students.

While I agree that those students who are operating at a high level of achievement/performance among agemates deserve an appropriate education just as much as those who are HG+, I don't necessarily think that they have the SAME needs.

Personally, I think that is just as ridiculous as claiming that there is "no difference" among learning disabled children with low academic potential. There are clearly children that belong in mainstream classrooms, some who probably require pullouts for specialized instructional time, and those whose needs are best served in full-time programs.

MY ideal for gifted educational practices looks very much like Special Education. I'd be fine CALLING it that, come to think of it, because in my mind there really isn't any difference in terms of how "out of the box" education needs to be for a student in the 2nd percentile versus those in the 98th.


Ideally, both groups would get their needs met. Also ideally, neither group would be taking up so much time and energy from a frazzled classroom teacher who is trying to keep 30 children learning within their individual, proximal zones, either. Let's just be realistic-- it DOES make it far harder for a classroom teacher to have a 'spread' of abilities that ranges from 98th to 5th percentile. It's way more productive to have children placed in a classroom that spans one or two standard deviations in ability, which is why I am a huge fan of ability grouping and flexible tracking (maybe even by subject/skill).

Unfortunately some may be content to know these kids are both "above the ceiling" of certain tests/assessments/measures, and do not look any further to distinguish. By analogy, among kids considered tall, some kids are pretty tall and some may be really, really tall like a professional basketball player therefore may need a different size of desk or chair to sit in class.

Agreed!

Yes! A collection of success stories from which parents may choose examples to present as positive societal norms, when advocating... may establish a new societal norm... rather than the current reality of insufficient meeting of the needs of gifted students?

I'm curious if anyone has seen this done. My DD attends a full-day gifted magnet and one of its flaws is that there is very little tracking or grouping within the magnet. (They did do two groups for math once, but that's all I know of.) Interestingly, my DS attends the SAME school but is not in the magnet (he is in K and the magnet starts in 2), and he is ability grouped. I suspect they do not group the GT kids because parents might flip their lids about it, but that's just a theory.

How does the grouping manifest - in DS gifted school they read at their levels and supposedly get homework in reading spelling and math tailored to their assessed levels. But since parents aren't comparing homework sets how do you know they are doing different work? Having a math class move faster is apparently a very touchy subject with the parents but they do have it in the upper grades, but not for anything else, which is kind of disappointing..

DeHe

At a local private Gifted school with which I am knowledgeable, they accept only 95+% (WISC) and each grade is grouped in 4 levels PK-K. Groupings are done separately for Math and Reading. Beginning in the 1st grade, 2 grade-levels participate in grouping together allowing for a total of 8 differentiated placements. That arrangement was the best we have had for appropriate curriculum for our 2e PG guy. Unfortunately his "2e" was labeled bad behavior before we understood what was going on and the classroom became so damaging he was literally pulling his hair out.

The local public is very one-size-fits-all gifted. I sure wish we could have our Gifted School academics with the age-appropriate level of physical activity of our public plus the appropriate accommodations for his disabilities that we found at neither.

I don't think it can work so well when you row and file desks with thirty kids facing front. This year in the GT program, the teacher sees the individual variations and gives DS direct support on writing stuff, extra harder math challenges, and access to some move at your own pace online coursework. There are less than twenty in the class.

When it comes down to it, I think it is unfettered teacher skill with adequate professional development that can make it happen.

and
Agreed. Unfortunately parental pride gone amuck may be the nemesis of gifted ed, thwarting cluster grouping by readiness and ability, and creating one-size-fits-all rather than appropriate curriculum and pacing. Associating prestige and anticipated future success purely with advanced academics may tend to discount equally or more important aspects of what the child is learning: such as grit-vs-entitlement, growth-vs-fixed mindset, ethics-vs-cheating/gaming the test, a propensity toward sense of humor or defensiveness, and myriad other things observed in various human interactions, contemplated about what is experienced by self and others as a result of how the system operates, and honed in the child's own emerging sense of equality/fairness/equity.

When the preponderance of parents can accept multiple definitions of success and multiple paths to successes, they may be less focused on competition (undermining, excluding, or elbowing someone else's child out of position as a means to advance their own). When kids can try one level of math, move down to another, or even up a level, then freely determine at which level they are most comfortable with both the overall challenge and the balance in their lives with other interests, they are learning to take responsibility for their learning and shape their futures.

For a child to get a message that their self-worth is defined by their academic achievement, and/or their academic achievement relative to others, is a travesty. Many find the book A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children to be a helpful resource.

[/quote]

Totally agree with this.

We are not in a gifted school, but in a public with very limited pull-outs. Despite this, we have had some very successful differentiation. The district does a lot of professional development and support in this area, and some of the teachers have been wonderful. (We have also had a few who are not "on board" with differentiation- with the expected results).

The most successful things for our kids have been spelling- a program called words their way, which uses a pre-test and sorts kids into leveled groups. What made it work for us, though, was the teacher recognizing that DS and 2 others were beyond the program and offering them lists with Greek and Latin roots, and vocabulary instead.
We have had pretty good success with reading/writing as well- kids read their own choices and writing is often related to what they are reading. (Example- one year DS's class had to write a weekly book letter to the teacher where they had to answer at least 3 questions or prompts from a list; the teacher would then answer each letter with appropriate responses, including questions for the kid to discuss in the next letter).
The times when the class reads one book all together have been the least successful- the format doesn't lend itself well to differentiation in my opinion, and things always seem to move at a snail' space.
Some of my kids classes have used an online site called Teenbiz- it's a non-fiction reading/writing support site. The kids take a pretest and are assigned via lexile level various articles each week; they complete activities such as answering comprehension or vocabulary questions or writing response questions which are evaluated by their teacher. My DD hated it, but this was because it was the first time she encountered anything close to "hard" in school.
Math is tougher- the best differentiation we had here was a teacher who grouped and re-grouped kids constantly, in small groups working together on variations of the same general idea (one group could be practicing finding area of a quadrilateral, while DD would be trying to derive the formula for area of a parallellogram, for instance). The nightly homework was basic, the same for everyone, but there was frequently a long-term challenge problem they were assigned with multiple parts, requiring some writing, they were expected to participate in an ongoing class blog about the challenge and give hints or advice to each other, etc. They also had to complete written "portfolios" at the end of each unit which involved fairly in-depth discussion questions, sections where they had to analyze any mistakes they made on the test and discuss, etc. Obviously these were done with varying levels of depth and thoroughness- my DD knew the teacher expected more from her and she worked hard at it.
All of this is greatly helped by what ZenScanner observes- the classes are not too big and the teachers are fantastic. Also, our school has lots and lots of support for struggling kids- there is an "extra help" period every day after school, and kids who need more intensive help are assigned to math and/or reading lab periods instead of some electives or study halls. In a few of our classrooms, there is an assigned special ed teacher in addition to the main teacher, to help facilitate everyone's needs. It requires a lot of flexibility and patience, and a tremendous amount of work from the teachers.

That sounds pretty great, cricket3!


I knew there were two math groups in DD's gifted class last year because the teacher told us. I think she just figured--get it out there. It was determined via pretest. Reading, spelling, and everything else have all been lockstep.

In my DS's case (he is in K--NOT in the gifted school yet), he is being differentiated through color-coded work presented in boxes. Much of their "work time" happens when they get sent to the boxes and work independently. DS and his classmates all know to look for the work with their colors on it. The box time is quite a long block of his day--75 minutes or something. Then he also has differentiated reading and math groups that meet with the teacher. So, as as a gen ed kid, he is far more differentiated than his sister.

DS has reading in his box but seems to me that the reading work is the same but applied to the different levels - like asking them to write so etching about the book they are reading but all are reading different levels. I guess that is differentiation but it's only in their reading boxes it doesn't extend to social studies or anything. But it seems to work.

DeHe

I found it very interesting that they do it this way for DS5 and wondered if it meant change is afoot and grouping was coming back in. He also gets differentiated homework--in fact, his HW is at about the second grade level most days, but I believe his teacher is making a special effort for him there.

DD9 did not get any grouping at all at this age, though she was at a different school. DS's teacher is young. I believe this is her third year. DD's teacher was probably on year 15-20 and very much operated in "This is how I do and this is how I have always done it" mode.

The only differentiation that we've seen with Connections in secondary (or primary, for that matter) is pretty blunt.

a) "special" electives-- in Literature, grades 3-8. Which is great. It was definitely a highlight for my DD, but then again, she LOVES reading, and loves analysis. Lots of discussing, sharing special (individual) projects, etc. Junior Great Books. Which I mention only because many of those same literature selections have reappeared throughout the honors/AP high school curriculum. Yes, that's right-- apparently not only do kids at high LOG not get much in the way of authentic differentiation to meet their needs, they also (unlike the kids who aren't designated gifted) get to see things TWICE. DD was not slow to pick up on this, by the way.

b) Math-- compacting and acceleration, but NOT self-paced. Well, okay-- sometimes, but only if they know you and you ask, and it costs them nothing because you will be doing all the work and supplying materials. And even then, it may not make it onto a transcript. Self-paced work is discouraged in secondary. Strongly discouraged.

c) secondary, all science is "leveled" as honors/GT, standard, or basic skills. No differentiation beyond that, and you MAY NOT work self-paced. Social studies is leveled in high school courses. Nothing else is, however-- not electives, not languages.

d) AP coursework exists-- kind of. That is, they have a pretty list of courses on their marketing materials, but what they don't tell you is that about 30-40% of that is actually available in YOUR state. At best.

On the other hand, they DO allow acceleration pretty readily-- but mostly that happens in primary, because in secondary, they expect students to work synchronously. The honors track in secondary is most appropriate for bright-not-quite-gifted students. You can imagine what that means for an EG/PG student, even one who has been accelerated.


Cricket's description sounds lovely. I've never heard of anyone in our state getting anything close to that.


Oh, and UM-- I do think that tracking/grouping is coming back into vogue. That is how Connections does things with their "Honors/AP" track, after all-- it's just that if that is all that happens, it may well be inadequate, and in some ways worse than nothing at all, because administrators turn it around and tell you "Yes, but.... advanced group! Shiny!"