Cricket2
They kind of squished together different tests and different schools in this article. THe private schools use the ERB which is pieces of the WISC, Hunter uses pieces of the SB V and the public gifted system had used the OSLAT and Bracken and switched to OLSAT and Naglieri.
The private schools are independent so their interests and use of the tests are different. They do not purport to be for HG or above but some get good differentiation.
The public schools have two tiers - 90% on combined score gets you regular GT which gets enrichment. 97% and above gets you citywide gifted. Citywide gifted is accelerated not just enriched. In practice all citywides need a 99% score to get in and in the last years there have been more 99s than seats in the 5 schools. In some areas the regular GT can be classes of 99s as well as they were shut out of citywide.
The parents of pepped kids think there is little difference, as its a question or two on a test on a given day, and then the kid is in a great school. In he regular GT classes I doubt it's a problem. After all, 90 is pretty different from 97. However in the citywides, the prepped kids are fairly obvious to the teachers, and to the kids after awhile. They need much more support to move as quickly or as deeply. It's such a disservice to the kids but the parents do it because they think the schools are so much better, I think because they see the stuff and the curriculum not the speed or the effort required.
A high end HG or PG is not challenge as much as they could be by this system but its still a lot better than being in a regular classroom. There is a lot less boredom.
So my view is that the regular GT works well for kids who can work ahead but The teacher really matters as they haven to work with a range in their classroom. The citywides really challenge the regular bright kids and hit a sweet spot for a lot of HG kids. I think the high HGs and even PGs could be served as well but that's more dependent on other factors. What really makes the citywides valuable is the range of skill sets is narrower so a lot less problems for the younger kids about bad fit with classmates.
DeHe
