Who did the testing? Was this done by the teacher?
Not sure, but definitely *not* the classroom teacher. It was clearly someone trained in psych testing. The school tests twice a year, every year: Oct. and March, so they may have a testing company on retainer? Sorry I don't know more!
Were the parents allowed to "nominate" the child for the testing pool or just the classroom teachers?
Yes, parents can nominate, though the process is more involved for parental nomination than for teacher nomination. (I'm sure this is to keep EVERYONE from nominating their kids for testing, which makes fiscal sense, provided the process for parental nomination isn't so onerous that no parent can actually get his/her child tested!)
The parent has to meet with the classroom teacher. Technically, the teacher does not have to agree that the child should be tested, but I don't know how that plays out in real life. I have a sneaking suspicion that if the parents says "test" and the teacher says "no," the teacher's opinion would win out. But I'm a wee bit cynical about our school, so I may not be being fair there.
After the teacher meeting, I think the parent also has to meet wth the GT coordinator. That's when the official decision is made to test or not, and I think the GT coordinator gets the final say about testing before 3rd grade, but I may be wrong here. It's possible that even if the teacher and GTC do their best to talk the parent out of testing, it still gets done if mom and dad stick to their guns.
I wouldn't call this the ideal situation! There's not a lot of teamwork in evidence between parent and teacher, at least not from the few cases I've seen. If the teacher doesn't want to see GTness, it's probably going to be denied.
Case in point: The mom of one boy I KNOW is GT (probably MG, but maybe more in math) met with the same 1st grade teacher my son started with this year. This teacher is not GT-friendly, and she brought to the meeting every paper that the child had made any mistakes on to "prove" that the boy wasn't *that* smart. Ugh. (And never mind that the teacher could only produce 3 pages and the mistakes were of the "missing comma" variety...) As far as I know, he has not been tested yet, though maybe he's up for the March testing.
I would hope your school's process will be a bit less...prickly!
If you could design the method of notification for the parents, what would you involve?
Parents should certainly see the scores, though whether in a letter or at a meeting doesn't much matter to me. (I know there's a 30-day deadline for notification in my state, required by law, so I think that's why they send the "he's in" letter without scores.)
I think an invitation to meet with whomever is handling the GT screening process should be offered regardless of the scores to discuss the results and how the school will serve the child's needs. This would be a good time to start building that team feeling between parent--who may be a bit freaked out by the results!--and school.
As for the informal assessments: do you have to choose between parents and teachers? Could you have both do informal assessments? Is there a problem there?
BTW, I spent the majority of every semester that I taught freshman college English (at I.U.!) teaching my students that just because someone's opinion gets published in a book, it doesn't mean it's right; that it's good to think for yourself; and that considering the position of others and <gasp> changing your mind about your own postion was a sign of being a thinking person, not the sin of being "wrong."
That you started this process with 4th graders is marvelous!
