Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Talent search every year?

Last year as a fifth grader, DD took the EXPLORE test through NUMATS. Ohio Achievement Assessments are terrible, and I wanted some useful information about her math abilities because our district starts tracking (though they don’t call it that) in math in sixth grade. When I got her results, I met with the guidance counselor to discuss her math placement. NUMATS recommended Algebra, but DD has serious anxiety issues and a bad case of perfectionism, so I was asking for placement in seventh grade math. The guidance counselor said DD would have to take another above-grade-level test to confirm she could handle the placement. I found out afterwards that DD had to take the OLSAT, grade-level Stanford Achievement Tests in math, reading, and science, and above-grade-level Stanford Achievement Tests in math, reading, and science. The guidance counselor later explained that they had to administer the OLSAT and grade-level achievement tests to establish giftedness before they could consider subject acceleration (even though the gifted program was eliminated a few years ago in budget cuts), and they tested her in reading and science as well because her EXPLORE results identified her as gifted in reading, science, and superior cognitive as well as math according to Ohio’s criteria for gifted identification (so now she has three sets of test results that all identify her as gifted in math, reading, science, and superior cognitive). DD is now in seventh grade advanced math, but, needless to say, between taking the three Ohio Achievement Assessments and seven other tests last spring, my child who hates taking tests is tested out. I was thinking of taking a year or two off from additional testing and perhaps doing NUMATS again when DD is in seventh or eighth grade to take the ACT or SAT.

I wanted to get a sense of how other parents have their children participate in a talent searches. Do you have your child participate every year, periodically, or only once? What do you think are the benefits or drawbacks to yearly participation?

I didn't have my son do it last year in 7th grade (would have been ACT or SAT) for Duke. I felt like he has too much anxiety and it would piss him off to see the math stuff he hasn't been taught. If he could have done all sections but the math I would have had him do it (he has Asperger's and I didn't want to spend years undoing a potentially horrible experience and have him wreck his chances of being successful later when he did have the proper math instruction behind him). He is a logical mathematical thinker and looks at a lot of life through a mathematician's eyes but the reality is if you haven't taught him, he doesn't know how to do it. But he picks it up quickly.

I probably will do talent search with my younger son. But he doesn't have the challenges that come with Asperger's and has tons of confidence and not much perfectionism (he is perfectly fine with making a mistake and moving on). He is in third grade so I haven't figured out much about the talent search yet.

My mother though said there is some sort of special summer program at the Naval Academy and she wants to find out more about it and send him to it. It is special things like that that I would want him to qualify for (but we might not have the funds to actually send him, so my mother offering to pay was very sweet and thoughtful).

My eldest, now 10yo, is a competitive kid who likes standardized tests (like me at the same age). His math score will likely approach the upper 700s without further direct preparation, so now the foci are his verbal and writing scores, which were in the 400s as a 4th-grader. They will rise too as he matures, but I am having him go through a vocabulary series by Shostak. I've told him that when he completes the series he gets to take the SAT again. So we will likely have him take the SAT every two years to measure progress, although he may not test through a talent search.

That is a lot of tests!! Plus it seems weird that they wanted so many--I guess they're trying to limit how many kids get tracked?

The only reason we've had DD tested was initially because her teachers requested it due to her subpar social skills, so she got the SB-5 and later the WISC-IV. Then we realized she was gifted so we had her take the test to qualify for CTY in case that was helpful, but we haven't done any of their courses or anything. She also had to take the OLSAT for the admission package for a local school, and will need to take the ISEE this Fall for a different school. Plus our school district does end of grade tests in 3rd grade and every couple of years after that. But if we hadn't had other reasons for her to take the tests, I don't think we would have done any of them. She's doing well enough academically (for now) that I'm not worried about what her scores might end up being, although I'm sure she'll do some studying for the SAT when the time comes.

For a kid who hates tests, I wouldn't test any more unless you really need numbers for something.

We did EXPLORE once, in fourth, because we wanted to get a math level on DS (didn't work, he topped it out). Those numbers eventually proved useful for us in further advocacy about science placement.

DS now 11 adores taking tests and is not at all stressed by them. We will probably let him do the SAT at 13 (is that still standard in talent searches, as it was when I was 13?). But right now there's no need for more, nor would results do anything further for us, so we won't continue to test.

DeeDee

We did it back to back years after DS did Algebra 1 & 2 and Geometry in one year to see what kind of growth he gained on ACT in Math. We otherwise would not have bothered. He also doesn't mind testing or have any real anxiety associated with it. Unless you have a specific need for the information, I would take the year off.

On Ohio requirements, it seems like overkill all the test she was given. The state does not require all the additional GT testing. ODE has guidelines for the Superior Cognitive Ability label using Explore or ACT. The only required test is the annual OAA. OAA is a joke as you know and the grade level assessments using OLSAT & SAT wouldn't tell them much about curriculum levels. The state certainly doesn't require all of the testing they did. We had acceleration without it. My DS was required to take course exit exams in order to completely skip courses, but they were short and limited to the subject area. The exit exams were not required until he was skipping High School level classes. In the future, I would challenge them on the number of test they are administering to her. At the very least ask the administer testing aligned with the curriculum she is skipping over.

I generally believe in testing when there's a purpose, and you are planning to do something with the results. So, for my older kids, one took the SAT in middle school because her school pushed for it (part of the gifted program) and another chose to opt out. Since we weren't planning to do anything with the results, we were fine with that. Ds11 took the EXPLORE in 4th grade at school request, with our full agreement, because we had to make a decision on whether to bus to the MS the following year. He is in Algebra now and doing fine (which is one year ahead of our own gifted program, which does Algebra in 7th), but I think he'd probably be fine in Pre-Alg, too. He got a perfect score on the math section in 4th, but that by NO means meant that he was ready for Algebra the following year. A lot of it was maturity, making silly mistakes, carelessness, etc... a multiple choice test can only tell you so much! For my ds13, he took the SAT through the school as the older ones did, in 6th grade. I really didn't have any reason to test either of them again last year. We weren't planning on making any changes. This year, ds13 has expressed some interest in taking the SAT again, just to see where he's at. I think it's a comfort thing, going into HS (he's in 8th).
I know a lot of parents use them to advocate, but for us, we feel like our sons are being challenged and doing interesting stuff. Are they really using their full potential? Probably not, but that's only part of what we want them to do in MS. I'm happy if academics are generally good and they can also do music and sports and clubs, and of course, friendships. So, I understand why some parents want to do them every year, and why some parents only do them once. I think it just depends on the child and what you want to do with the information.
BTW, the child who opted out managed to get a very high score when she needed, and sailed through college, so although a few practice tests might be helpful, I honestly don't feel like kids need to take many tests in order to prepare. I think my opt-out dd's test anxiety at the time (when she was in 6th) might have resulted in a score that didn't really reflect her abilities (in other words, high, but not as high as her siblings, even though she is every bit as smart). I'm glad we listened to her and let her make the choice!

We're another family that considers tests a tool, only useful if there's something you're working on. We opted out of screening DD for giftedness at age 5, because she'd have had to hit 2.5 SDs to qualify, and failure to qualify would render her unable to take the test for another full calendar year. At age 6 the requirements went down, so she took the RIAS, and whatever achievement tests they used, and qualified easily.

The next time she tested, she was 8. We pulled her out of public school as a 2nd grader and skipped her into 3rd. As a way to inarguably establish her completion of 3rd grade, we had her take the 3rd grade iLEAP (it's a Louisiana thing) and the SB-10 at the end of the year.

DD loves taking tests, but it's probably smart not to overdo it.

Thanks for all the feedback. I had no reason to do it again this year, but I wanted to make sure that there wasn't a really good reason to do it that I was missing.

Jtooit-- It was our county ESC that required all the testing even though DD already met state criteria through EXPLORE. The county ESC person and our district Special Services Coordinator also required her to do testing in sixth grade math in August to check for gaps, but the principal at our school was in charge of it. He pulled questions from the sixth grade OAA. After my daughter answered a few questions, he sat down with her, and they talked through the rest of the test together. She was happy because it wasn't like a test at all.