http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/nyregion/30gifted.html
City Faces Many Challenges in Search for New Gifted Test
By SHARON OTTERMAN
New York Times
June 29, 2010

City education officials revealed this month that they would begin searching for a new gifted admissions test in response to complaints about low minority representation in gifted programs and concerns that professional test preparation services skew the results.

But any new test is unlikely to alleviate what many parents consider the most anxiety-producing part of the process � sending 4-year-olds into an exam that could decide their schooling for the next six years. In fact, the city may even begin testing even earlier.

While the city says it is open to considering other options, it will most likely continue to rely on standardized tests for prekindergarteners as the central admissions criteria for the elite programs, and under the new protocol, which would begin for the 2012-13 school year, it could begin testing 3-year-olds born late in the year.

The current test is valid only for children 4 and older, but a new test could work for even younger children, allowing the city to speed up the admissions calendar to make it simpler for parents who are balancing private school deposits and kindergarten wait lists, education officials said in interviews and public testimony over the past several weeks.

Over all, the search for a new gifted test is not an easy one, as the city faces a series of constraints that make selecting gifted students in a million-student system more complicated and political than in the suburbs, city officials said. A look at what happened with the current testing contract helps explain why.

<rest of article at link>

As usual for such articles, well-known facts about intelligence, discussed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence and other places, are ignored.

Blacks score about 1 standard deviation below whites on IQ tests such as the WISC and the Stanford-Binet, and those tests are not "biased" in the sense of underpredicting minority student academic achievement. Hispanics score about 2/3 of a standard deviation below whites, and East Asians about 1/3 of an s.d. above. Intelligence is positively correlated with family income, because smart people tend to earn more money, and intelligence is highly heritable.

There are, of course, bright and dull children from all racial groups and income levels, but there is much evidence that the distributions differ. People should be treated as individuals, and grown-ups should not be shocked by "disparities" that have obvious explanations.

I think that (public) schools aimed at gifted kids should just have open admissions. The important thing would be to ensure that there is absolutely, positively, no watering down of standards.

So, for example, anyone can sign up for the gifted kindergarten, but promotion to the first grade in the same school would require that students meet certain benchmarks (set, say, at around what kids at the 98th percentile would be capable of doing). The kindergartens would use ability grouping and could use materials that are designed for different ability levels (e.g. SRA for reading and/or reading buddies in a higher grade).

Kindergarten might have tons of kids, but all those kids need to be in kindergarten anyway, so a city could adapt by having lots of feeder kindergartens. For example,schools with multiple K classrooms could reserve one room for the gifted program, and kids who clearly don't belong there could be moved into regular K classrooms quickly. Others who struggle through the year could be moved into grade 1 classes in the same building, and the gifted ones could start first grade in a school where everyone is at or above the 98th percentile.

This approach would get around the testing mania, everyone would get a chance, and the HG+ kids would be served.

Obviously this idea would require a lot of planning, but it would serve gifted kids and get around all the problems related to diversity, test prep, and so on.

Val

Val,

I tend to agree with you. Old-fashioned ability grouping would solve a lot of problems. Every step of the way a child either can or he can't. He either knows or he doesn't know. These things are easily determined without the need of an "IQ" test.

There shouldn't be a single "gifted" kindergarten class. Instead there might be one section for students who arrive functioning at about the second-grade level, two sections for those who arrive functioning at about the first grade level, a dozen sections for average kids, and then a few sections for kids who are behind the curve and need to be taught such things as letter recognition and print orientation. Getting students properly placed might take a couple of weeks, but it would be well worth the effort.

I agree completely.

There shouldn't be a single "gifted" kindergarten class. Instead there might be one section for students who arrive functioning at about the second-grade level, two sections for those who arrive functioning at about the first grade level, a dozen sections for average kids, and then a few sections for kids who are behind the curve and need to be taught such things as letter recognition and print orientation. Getting students properly placed might take a couple of weeks, but it would be well worth the effort. [/quote]

In theory, I agree, but in practice, parents would hothouse their kids into working above grade level to get them into the higher-level kindergartens. this is what happens now with test-prep mania over ERB testing in New York. This is why I was thinking about open admissions (but no dilution of standards). Non-gifted kids just wouldn't be able to keep up.

Ability grouping in the non-gifted kindergarten classes (and other grades) would address the needs of all the other learners, from bright kids who aren't gifted to kids who are below average. But, yes, there could be a K classroom that has reading/math/whatever groups for kids who are a year above grade level

I guess this is part of my fantasy school (still needs a lot of work on the details).

Val

There is a real hot housing issue, but I hate to call it hot housing. Parents of more educated and financially well off homes tend to work with their children, playing with ABCs, puzzles, counting to 10 books as a matter of what you do with your baby and toddler.

The whole OLSAT saga began with the Dept of Justice threatening to sue the DOE because it was getting influential at the top gifted schools so they had to get an easy to administer test, that was not too costly, and then all top scoring kids go into a lottery for the most desirable schools. Hence why we got the 2nd choice in our district because there were only 2 spots open for grade 1 in the school we wanted.

And even if a spot opens up, they won't give it to us but to someone who may move into NYC over the summer and test and qualify. It is ridiculous.

So if you go with Val's suggestion, you would require all kinds of "gifted" programs on the west side where 1/3 qualify for the top gifted schools and some districts in the Bronx where no one qualifies and you cannot fill a class in some neighborhoods.
Ren

And there are studies using twins, adoption, and intermarriage that show that black and hispanic kids raised in white homes have the same or better IQ as the white population.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-IQgapgenetic.htm

Mathematically, there are two main problems I see with the race-IQ issue.

The existence of the Flynn Effect contradicts these results. If the IQ ratios between the races were fixed, and IQ is mostly innate, then you could not have a steady increase in IQ across all races. You should see much smaller increases than we do for blacks and hispanics.

And when you look at the distribution of National Merit Scholars, the presence of minorities in the list does not match what you would expect using normal distributions. There are very, very few blacks and hispanics when you would expect a greater presence due to just raw random distribution.

There are some hidden variables and those are nutrition, schools, and parenting - mostly expectations.

Here are the excerpts from the link above:

Reading or playing with puzzles isn't what I meant by hothousing; I definitely wasn't trying to say that! These activities are great if the preschooler wants to do them.

What I meant was this: puzzles, etc. are a part of a good childhood experience and aren't the same as sending a child to a test prep consultant. I define one aspect of hothousing as activities conceived solely by adults that are designed to boost scores on standardized tests.

I kind of doubt that 1/3 of children in a large geographical area would qualify for gifted programs aimed at the 98th percentile and above. But yes, the idea is to serve everyone who qualifies as gifted, and to put other kids into learning environments most appropriate to their needs.

There would be crossover (eg, gifted at reading but struggling with writing). Ability grouping would help here.

Val

Well Val, they do qualify. You have many of the highest income earners in the country, most educated by capita.

And I think what I described with puzzles etc could be considered hot housing. Many undereducated and lower income homes just don't do this. And as Austin pointed out in his contraction on race IQs. You place a different race child in an upper income home, you get a different IQ outcome.

So what really is the definition of hot housing? Preparing your child for life -- which really means school, or a test to get into the best schools?

I know I start a big debate there. But the IQs in NYC due skew to the upper ends based on the percentage by capita of kids qualifying for Hunter, above 98th percentile on the SBV. Particurlarly on the upper west side.

Ren

Good parenting--paying attention to your kids and playing with them--is not hothousing. Just because some people ignore and maybe even neglect their kids doesn't mean that being kind to one's kids is hothousing.

Hothousing is about the parent, not the child. It's about prestige or not wanting to be embarrassed because the child isn't "good enough" or prioritizing the parent's goals over the child's healthy development and happiness. It borders on abusive. Possibly something is withheld if the child doesn't comply, most commonly affection, but potentially even food. If the kid is having fun, it isn't hothousing.

Singing the alphabet song or playing a game doesn't qualify on any of these counts.

Doesn�t this whole discussion go away if the system was built to allow each child to progress at some natural rate?

Allowing a child to progress at some natural rate? Hard on the teacher trying to juggle several different rates.

And who is going to say their child's rate is slower than yours. I am trying to push the CTY at DD's gifted school as an open ended "pull-out acceleration". Anyone can test their kid for it, you can pay for it, so the school doesn't. The program is accredited and recognized so the teacher doesn't have to worry about the material. I got such a nasty remark from one parent because I dare to progress my child. And this in a gifted school. Now that was the exception but it was out there.

It would be nice if there was some adaptable program so that each child could get what they need. I have found great solutions on this forum in that I can adapt what I have to what DD needs. She had an interview at the AMNH yesterday for their afterschool science program. Really hard to get into but a great science program that goes through high school. I called a board member who donated the money for the Rose Center just to get the interview.

I wish things were more available for smart kids. And what about the kids that do not make the cut-off for Davidson by a point or 3 and cannot attend the camps and programs. In a few years, their IQs might test higher and kids already in could test lower. Who knows?

Ren

Well, if a kid is retested and makes the scores, a parent can absolutely resubmit to DYS. It's not a once-or-out thing.

But I completely agree that it would be nice if there were more things for smart kids. Especially local programs that we don't all have to travel for. We're lucky to be in a pretty good spot for programs and classes, but some gifted kids just have nothing nearby.

Well...I'm a bit skeptical here. I live in Silicon Valley, and we have lots of very intelligent people here, but I'd never claim that a third of the people in a given neighborhood have IQs above the 98th (or even 90th) percentile. Perhaps a high pass rate in your area is due, in part, to test prep.

Here's a quote from the New York Times about Hunter:

"In the most recent round, 1,183 applicants took the I.Q. test and 305 made the 98th percentile I.Q. cut-off, a score of about 132."

That's just under 26% of test takers. Even if they all came from the UWS, your one-third claim appears to be exaggerated.




I'm not even sure what this means.

The educational needs of highly gifted children are so different from those of other kids, the term "best school" has an entirely new definition. For many kids discussed on this list, the best school is at home. For a few others, it's the Davidson Academy. For mine, it's a little private school that lets a nine-year-old sixth grader take algebra, and offers to teach him a history course in French because the teacher happens to know French, too.

For me anyway, if a school is defined as "best" because lots and lots of people want to send their kids there, I wonder if the school is a good fit for a child with cognitive abilities past (or way past) the 99th percentile. Mathematics tells us that there just aren't going to be lots and lots of people in the 99+ group in one geographical area.

Just my rambling two cents...

Val

I agree Val.

I think it's important to realize that it's 26% of those who do take the test. I would expect parents have the kids take the test only if they believe the children have a reasonable chance to succeed. This for sure doesn't reflect the average NYC population.

Just to respond to a couple of these studies. The blacks who fathered the children in Germany had to take and pass an IQ test before fathering them! They were required to pass the Armed Services Aptitute Test, which is nothing more than an IQ test. So of course their children would be just as smart or almost as smart as the white children.

Any study which tests IQ, particularly in comparing between races, at the age of 4 is going to produce some pretty unreliable results. Black children tend to develop more quickly than European children (and Asians slower still). So of course blacks will have a much higher IQ in relation to whites at the age of 4 than they will at a later age.

If you have studies showing that black children raised in white homes have IQs equal to those of the white population, I congratulate you on finding them; but there are many more which show just the opposite.

I do believe that through the equalization of opportunity and the adoption of better parenting methods the IQ gap can shrink, but it can't be eliminated.

First of all, I do not understand the math if 26% of total achieved the result, but 30% of the UWS participants couldn't?

And I did say all of NYC, sorry. Can I smile and say that we Manhattanites forget the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island are also included? I did comment about upper income earners on the upper west side. Considering real estate is going down all over the country but 4-30 million dollar townhouses are going fast on the upper west side.

And the article did state that they were using national norms so many skewed to high scoring and maybe they should use their own norms? That was in the article.

The problem with NYC is that they have less minorities in their gifted programs using this system than the old.

Ren

Normally, I'd say "gotta cite?" for an unsupported assertion like that.

Given your other comments and your username, I think I'll limit myself to, "Your statements are based in racist opinion, rather than fact. I choose not to engage in arguments that are primarily derailing, but I will point out that that's occurring."

It's extremely unlikely.

Bottom line: you're going to have to show me proof that one-third of the residents of a precisely defined area in the UWS of Manhattan have IQs that are two standard deviations above the norm. When I see proof, I'll believe you. Though I'm not really sure why it's such a big deal.

I'm trying to focus on learning environments for gifted and highly gifted kids and how they can be developed more widely. This was the subject of my first post in this thread.

And I stick to what I've said before: test prep for pre-schoolers is (way) more about the adults than it is about the children. Parents can make all kinds of excuses for how it's about the kid or his future, but I'm not convinced. Test prep and other forms of hothousing seem to be about what the adults want the child to be, not what the child wants to be or who the child is. If the child isn't begging to go to test prep and if Mom is lecturing a child about the importance of a standardized computer-scored test, it's not about the child.

As a parent, I have a responsibility to make all kinds of decisions about what's best for my child. But, and this is a big one, I also understand that my kids aren't my property. I can guide them, but past chores and dental visits and homework and suchlike, I have no right to force them to do things (like, perhaps, test prep) that make me happy but make them miserable.

Again, just my two cents.

Val

Not true.

There was no passing score for the GT test then and nor today. The score only qualified the soldier for a given set of Military Occupational Specialities or MOS. Whether you were drafted or allowed to volunteer depended upon not only your GT scores, but the scores on physical and psych evals and the local draft board.

In general, in WWII, blacks were not considered for any jobs other than services or quartermaster. It was only later in the War that blacks were allowed into other MOS, most notably the Infantry. From a careful reading of the history of the war, I cannot find any reference to a black man taking the GT test.


While IQ will change over time for an individual, it is random, so age at 4 or 7 or 11 does not matter.

I'd like to see the cites for the assertion about development.

I doubt this for a number of reasons.

In general, a kid just gets smarter over time as knowledge accumulates. If any group were smarter, you would expect to see them raise to the top ranks faster.

Physical development is not linked to mental development.



Actually, their IQs are higher than the population they are raised in.

You have provided assertions, but nothing to back it up.


If the Flynn Effect is constant over time across all groups, then there cannot be an IQ gap based upon genetics. The Flynn Effect tells us that eventually all groups will converge.

Consider this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blacktest_score_rise.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

A couple of thoughts:

Test prep for anything that's supposed to be an "ability" test, in my opinion, invalidates the legitimacy of the outcome. As someone who is trying to understand my child, it's a frustration of mine because when I try to look at her results in the context of other peoples' results, I don't know how much to account for scores that have resulted from extensive preparation. Understanding how rare (or not) my child's abilities are is important to me not because I want her to be the "best" (whatever that means), but because I don't know how to evaluate her needs and progress without some sense of how usual or unusual she is. Should I trust the assurances I'm given by the school? Is it likely that there really are scads of academic peers available--or does that mean the school doesn't get my child? Is the progress she's making what I should expect? Or is it underacheivement? Is she learning or going through the motions?

Bottom line, our education programs have to get better at meeting kids where they're at and giving them rich, challenging experiences. The fact that families feel a need to compete for an appropriate educational experience is unacceptable on so many levels. There shouldn't be a sense that you have to "get into" school X or your child won't get what they need. Parents shouldn't feel like they have to deprive their child of a joyful, play and interest based childhood so that they can prep them (at age 3 and 4!) to score at a certain level on some high stakes test. Ick. Testing at that age should, IMHO, be done because the child is truly surprising to their parent or teacher and there is a strong need to UNDERSTAND the child vs. a need to QUALIFY for something. I have many complaints about our local school system, but I am incredibly grateful not to be living in a place where children are routinely tested and placed before they've even had the opportunity to go to school. I can't imagine the pressure that this must place on families. It must be very, very difficult to be a parent of a high average or moderately gifted child and maintain a non-competitive child rearing approach. I'd like to think that I still would have let my children's interests and wants direct their pre school age activities and time, but it would have caused me a lot more anxiety!

This competitive approach to placement creates too many problems---not the least of which is that the tests stop being able to reveal rarity reliably because outcomes are always less rare when large groups of people invest a lot of time practicing in order to reach those outcomes. That's unfortunate, because in order for us to understand our children it's helpful to have a sense of relativity. A child who recieves rare scores without preparation absolutely has different needs than the child who prepares in order to get those scores. Unfortunately, as long as scores of "prepared" and "unprepared" children are pooled together, that reality is often going to be invisible to the families or the schools or both.

As to the question of rarity within or between populations (by race, ethnicity, neighborhood, etc).....
Even if you take the various studies out there at face value (which I personally do not), the identification discrepancies far exceed the scope of of any supposed differences. Further, since it is impossible to fully disaggregrate race and class, and because we have such an uneven race/class distribution in this country, access to test prep can only exacerbate the problem.

<standing up and applauding>

Yay, Taminy! Well-put. Yes, yes, yes, from start to finish.

I totally get what you are saying Tammy but I look at all these posts about parents meeting with the schools, trying to get appropriate programs. There is a lot of pushing going on to get the appropriate learning environments.

What if you lived in an area that wouldn't look at any scores except the OLSAT test. So your PG kid wouldn't get a shot at great accelerated program unless they scored in the 99th percentile (which has a poor correlation with IQ until later grades and they had to do this in pre-K). And then all the 99th scoring kids went into a lottery for those spots.

No amount of cajoling would change anything and you lived in a neighborhood where kids were struggling with learning to count 1-10 in K. What would you really do?

I think that until you face that, theories are fine but not actionable. Since the Dept of Justice threatened with the lawsuit, the NYC DOE set down the strict guidelines and no exceptions. My friend's child had a raw score of 167 on the SBV for the Hunter test and didn't get in because he didn't interview well and I have met the kid but the competition was tough. In our case, DD just said she didn't want to go there in the interview. And the OLSAT was terrible last year. She would have needed special ed based on the results. This year, 99th. And our options last year was the Jesuit school where she became the teacher's helper -- in K. And that is a really good school.

I think as we go through serious budget cuts across states, the gifted programs are at great risk -- just like the 70s when the majority felt gifted kids could manage. And whatever I have to do to try and give my kid the options, I will do.

And to Kriston's point, yes a kid could test again and get into DYS, but what about the other way, where a kid that is in, doesn't score so high later on but a kid that always scores at that level doesn't ever get in. What about that kid, who at 140 would really benefit also? Since the other kids in the program drop to that level and benefit?

Ren

I guess that's my point. Having to compete to get an appropriate education is unacceptable. The idea that even if you "qualify", you have to leave it to the chance of a lottery, is unacceptable. The fact that under those conditions already disadvantaged kids are further disadvantaged because: a) they have had less enriching pre school experiences and b) they can't afford test prep or private testing, is unacceptable. I DON'T accept that that's how it has to be, and there are plenty of districts that don't sort kids based on a pre-kindergarten test.

Yes, a lot of people are having to advocate to get their kids' needs met, but I think test prep creates a circular problem. People prep their kids because they don't trust the schools to recognize their needs, the schools don't recognize their needs because they don't get giftedness and they think gifted programs are elitist, schools think gifted programs are elitist because they are faced with the fact that families who have the means are paying for test prep and--in their eyes--buying the outcomes they want.

I still maintain that prepping kids for ability tests invalidates the results unless there is a way to factor in that preparation. I understand that there may be a sense of need to do so if there are a lot of other people prepping their kids. Circular problem number two.

What would I do if I lived within such a district? As I said before, I'm glad I didn't have to make that choice.

I don't agree that budget cuts need to result in loss of services to gifted kids. Most educational strategies that are actually meaningful don't cost more (acceleration, clustering, guided independent studies), at least in a medium to large sized school or district. These kids need a teacher whether they are gifted or not, so it doesn't have to be more staff: it just has to be adequately prepared/educated staff. I don't believe that the difficulties we face in getting gifted kids' needs met are primarily financial, I think that the difficulties we face are philosophical. There is a widespread lack of understanding at the administrative, classroom AND parent levels that giftedness is something other than being a high achiever/good student. To me that's the real battle ground--and I would argue that for the reasons I've already given, test prep is a significant barrier to forward progress.

Simple solutions? None to offer....

I don't know where you heard this. There absolutely is a "passing" score, a score below which a person is not allowed to join the military because they are just too dull to be any use. Prior to the Iraq war, the standards were quite high; they have been been lowered because the military was having trouble meeting quota. So I don't see how you can say there isn't a passing score when in fact there is a passing score.