Last year our district started identifying kids for "high ability services" according to MAP test results (95% cutoff in either math or reading on the winter test). DD was identified and so we received class placement for this year(3rd grade).
The problem is there are only 8 girls and 21 boys in the class! It is extremely lopsided. Not only are there 21 boys, many of them are foreign born and DD says she has trouble understanding them as well as them understanding the material they've been given (language issues).

A 2nd high ability class that DD mentioned to me does not look like this. That is the class where many of the kids she was formerly in class with last year or year's before went for this year (ie. PTA board members children, etc.).

DH and I had an awful time with the school system last year and I don't want to get into another struggle this year, but this just seems really unusual to me. Also, with so few girls DD is having trouble with the friend issue again.

Why would a principal create such a lopsided classroom? Why not try and spread high ability kids more evenly instead of lumping all the foreign boys and a few girls together? I would expect to see this in college engineering classes but at the elementary level it seems extreme and unusual. And with the makeup of the 2nd class, not even necessary.

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that the class your DD is in had the higher test results in math. I would not be surprised, from your description, if the other class was more heavily weighted toward hot-housed children and those from influential families--i.e., not quite as high ability, intrinsically. Consequently, more even in academic achievement. Alternatively, this is the high math class, and the other is the high reading class, and those who were high in both were placed according to their higher score. Probably would have the same correlation postulated above.

As you say, a little like the composition of some selective colleges, actually: lots of privileged legacy-type students, and lots of top-tier academic foreign-born or first-generation immigrant students.

Maybe they are considering more than one aspect of the MAP results. If they had high ability groups setup like:
(1) Very High Math
(2) Very High Language
(3) Very High Math + Very High Language

I'd anticipate the sort of configuration you are seeing for a classroom structured for the example group 1 above.

Was your daughter perhaps identified in only Math?

eta: guess a margin too late to say "Jinx"

Some of the "privileged legacy-type students" are also top-tier academic students, since IQ is positively correlated to parental SES. I cited some stats about Harvard in a post at http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....ch_college_and_does_it_m.html#Post195611 .

aeh and Zen, you both concur, so it must be math identification.

My problem is that her 2nd grade teacher sabotaged her reading portion of MAP and her score fell dramatically at the end of the year. She went from 99th percentile down to 90th (being the only one forced to finish a test quickly in a class of wild kids before you have to go home for the day will do that!) . Math increased because the teacher had no influence on that part of the test.

Is class placement really that simple? Which ever score is higher and there you go? I really feel that DD excels in both areas and it would have been clear had it not been for her previous teacher.

Bostonian, thanks for the link, I had not seen it over the summer.

If you use test scores as one factor to group students but also try to balance classes based on sex and national origin, the parents of high-scoring students who did not get into the high-scoring class will object that their children were discriminated against.

If she has other reading MAP test scores that suggest that the winter test was as anomaly (other years, fall or spring scores?), I would mention those to the school. Multiple data points are better than just one. Still, I know our schools "select" a test period to "count," too. I doubt, however, that any of them could keep a straight face while telling you that multiple test periods are not a BETTER measure.

DD's G&T reading and language class was also very boy heavy (orginally, DD was one of 2 girls!). I was very surprised! In retrospect, I think the testing crieria (long process, cut-scores, variety of tests) favors boys, although we often (stereotypically) think of girls as being as strong or stronger in these ares.

I concur that it is probably the high math/higher intrinsic ability group. On the plus side, your daughter will probably get used to the accents over time, and, if the kids are recent immigrants, or non-native speakers, their language ability will skyrocket in just a couple of months (my son went into pre-k practically without speaking any English). Of course, 8 girls is not a lot, but some kids are in classrooms with just 16 kids, say, so also don't have more classmates of the same gender.

Very true.

And, to your other post, yes, SES is correlated with academic achievement. But I think it's fair to say that those who have maximum opportunity to develop their innate gifts (for which we use SES as a proxy) are different from those who do not have maximal opportunity but attain the same achievement, in terms of the remaining ceiling/potential. For the situation named above, alternatively one could consider whether the overselection of male, foreign-born students in the (putatively) high-math group reflects their differential opportunity to develop math talent. That is, the (putatively) high-reading group has not received optimum support for developing math talent (say, due to being educated in the broken North American math pedagogy system), while the foreign-born students have benefited from supplement by parents educated in other, more-effective math instruction systems. The preponderance of males might reflect cultural biases in the home culture towards math and boys.

Of course, we don't really know if the first class is high-math, nor do we know if the second class is high-reading or high-both.

More productively, there might be value in examining the fit of the current ELA instruction with OP's DD. If that is a problem, then perhaps one could start a conversation about re-testing now, or adjusting her placement after the fall MAPs.

BTW, I found some resources that suggest that MAP scores become less accurate with frequent re-administration, due to a reduction in item pool. I suspect that that implies further that the decrease in accuracy may happen more quickly with high-achieving students, since presumably they would use up the top of the item pool more quickly.

shifrbv, as a side question... I went back and read your original post relating to MAP and reading and spoken language. Given the response to accents and your other concerns, have you had a chance to explore a possible auditory processing disorder (APD)?

First question I've seen is: how often has your daughter had ear infections as an infant and toddler?

Possible symptoms: Difficulty with accents, trouble speaking and listening in busy/noisy environments, problem localizing a sound, difficulty coordinating into a conversation, and other factors.

I'm personally familiar with many APD symptoms. Though until I started reading here, I never realized these were likely related to ear infections when I was young and not just overexcitabilities or idiosyncracies.

In the gifted program in a neighboring town, a large percentage of the kids accepted are Indian immigrants. Based on what I know of this culture, and similar Asian cultures, it's very important to them to achieve in math and academics in general, so the parents are probably supplementing at home, getting their math achievement scores up. Depending on how a district selects students, they may or may not be high-IQ. Some districts don't give any sort of IQ or cognitive abilities test. In this scenario (of the OP), they may actually be more "hot-housed" than the other group.
DD was in a school where the entire grade was imbalanced. It was about 2/3 boys (must have been something in the drinking water the year the kids were conceived!). There have been some classes with 8 girls. Since you've had problems in the past, I guess I wouldn't fight it unless she is really not making any friends...then I would figure out a way to diplomatically request a class change (probably by stating that she's not connecting with the kids and is unhappy). Good luck...

Correct. All we received last year was a letter from the district stating DD had qualified for high ability services in math and ELA. No description of what those services might be and very difficult to get anyone to quantify anything.

DH and I did speak to the teacher on intro night and she stated to him that the class was all high math with only 1/2 high reading.

However, as of now, it's the end of DD's second week and she just came home with her next week's newsletter and the content doesn't reflect "high ability" in anything. They will be spending a second week on rounding! DD says since the start of school nothing has seemed "high ability" at all.

I know it can take time before ability is assessed, but surely the students must have been placed in there because they had some understanding of as simple a concept as rounding that it would not require weeks of study to master!
The district knows who the high scorers are as they sent them all letters! It seems absurd.

This is my first time with any of this and while I read these forums and try to glean information, it seems so many schools are different.

Could it take awhile before we start to see results? (as in the teacher is just very slow to implement?) Is she waiting on fall MAP testing? She is a teacher with 6 years experience and has high ability training on her resume so she should be well versed in this.

DH and I have already struggled with the school system last year. I don't want to be in that position again.

What grade is your daughter in and what math curriculum are they following? Typically rounding is a 3rd/4th grade skill and its only your second week so they can't have spent an inordinate amount of time on it yet. As an aside, I usually write off the entire first week of school as far as academic activity goes.

My guess is that the other class is all high reading with 1/2 high ability in math (approximately)....but the only way to find out for sure is to ask. Is this third grade? You may find out that if she switches classes, the math in the other class is even worse. Is there another parent you can ask about what they are doing in math?

Rounding can be a 4th or 5th grade skill--I think it depends on the place value. Rounding to the nearest 10 for two weeks would be a lot easier than if it's all mixed up with hundreds, thousands, hundred-thousands, etc. (still really easy, though-- my kids both understood it in minutes).

DD is going into a class with all gifted kids, and here I hear the opposite, where if a kid misses even a day they can fall behind. They supposedly go super fast and accelerate through all that basic stuff. So I'm not nervous it will be too easy, I'm nervous it will be too hard. We shall see.

DD is in 3rd grade. They are using enVision math for common core. It's 4th grade level. With DD testing last year at the middle of 5th grade on MAP I didn't see anything new to learn. This is a major concern of mine. The book looks too easy.

I'm concerned about "reteaching" for a good amount of the school year.

As far as the other class, I know that DD's only friend from her class last year who was in a lower reading group than DD but also took the CogAT at the same time as DD ended up in the other class.

I would like to ask but they already know me and I don't want to look like I'm prying.

Can you chat with the parent of the friend? Informally compare textbooks... Of course that's a bit awkward too.

Rounding can be challenging the way they teach it these days. My DD, who is pretty high ability in math, has been tripped up by it more than once. It's not the way you might think of it, or at least it wasn't for me. That said, if she is 99th% and they are only teaching one grade up, you aren't going to be happy. Curricula are in flux, though. DD's math (one grade up--she is in a high ability program) has been all over the place in terms of difficulty, IMO, but they keep switching textbooks. 3rd grade (really 4th) was poorly edited and sometimes too hard, 4th grade (really 5th, and a diff curriculum) was much too easy, and now 5th grade (new book AGAIN) appears to be surprisingly hard, coming from last year's basis. I don't know if this is somehow related to Common Core, but I see CC objectives listed on her work.

I think you should just approach the teacher and tell him or her that you're confused about class placement and that you want to understand the classes. I wouldn't approach it with any judgement-- just a need for clarity.

If there is a LA emphasis in the other class, is that where you want your dd? I can't tell if your concern is the gender issue, or the difference between a possible LA vs. math emphasis.

FWIW, I completely understand your concern about the gender issue. Like blackcat, my dd's school is only gender-imbalanced. (She's also 8 in 3rd grade.) She only had 3 girls her age in class last year, compared to 20 boys. This year, they have 7, so that's a improvement, and they're down to 16 boys. My dd isn't a princess, but she prefers to play with girls so this has been tricky when the 3 girls last year weren't a great friend-fit. Hopefully there are more opportunities this year. But we make sure we schedule playdates on the weekend with her true friends so that she gets the emotional fix she needs.

Yes!!

I would drop by and have a conversation with the principal. You can always present it as concern for your DD' adjustment to the class dynamics and by the way, why that particular distribution of students.

We did enVision math grade 3 last year, partially in school (May and June) and partially at home (July and Aug). We haven't done 4th yet but I'm assuming each level is set up the same way, so:

* Keep in mind that MOST kids "lose" learning over the summer holidays. Gifted kids tend to learn rather than lose, but this curriculum is not designed for gifted kids. Since DD started the 3rd grade curriculum mid-year, her teacher had her skip the first 4 topics entirely because they were heavy on review material.

* I checked out 3rd grade enVision textbook, and rounding was covered in only 1 lesson, back in the 2nd topic, which would've been in the 1st month of school. Even gifted kids might benefit from a review of a topic they didn't touch last year.

* DD actually has some trouble with rounding. It can be complicated, especially if they're rounding decimals. And the 4th grade enVision curriculum seems to spend a lot of time on decimals.