Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments How are gifted identified in your schools?

I think a moderately gifted kid with pushy parents would get into this easier than a bored HG/PG kid. If you're gifted, but not dialed-in, you could easily miss #s 2 and 5, and very likely 4 as well.

--S.F.

If they are testing in the third grade and have a higher cut off, like 99th percentile, then by that time, I think that sounds plausible, particularly if you live in an area where boys and girls are held strongly to traditional gender roles.

The thing is, boys are playing more sports with balls (spatial knowledge), boys are given tens more sets of legos (girls get dollies), and they have already had three to four years of implicit bias from teachers to get to the girls.

Not to mention, however we strive to close this gap, at the top .05% of performers in math, the difference between male and female scores is one of the most persistent found in education, across countries, cultures. It's not getting smaller, unlike the differences between average people, for which there are no statistically significant differences if you take multi-nation surveys. Note that among average learners, that difference should be easier to find and more significant due to much higher populations.

There is something about those kids at the far end of the math spectrum. Either boys are truly genetically predisposed to math, or, just as likely based on my experience, we get to those girls very early and they are smart enough to start questioning whether a girl can really do this.

Some experiments in which girls were prepped to think that "this is a test girls do well on", when boys were told that "this kind of math is female-oriented", showed that with such preparation, girls outperformed boys. (The math was from standard assessment tests.) So that self-assessment bias can play a huge role.

Source: I do analytics on education and other social work for a living. I am a woman in a math field and believe me it kills me to say it but it's there. I hate that girls do worse but you cannot explain it away at those high performing levels. It is something that's being looked into. Still, when your three-year-old daughter comes home and asks why she's the only girl in the lego club, and how the boys didn't let her do anything, so she doesn't want to go anymore, and this is in one of the richest, most liberal parts of the world, well... you can kind of believe it just MIGHT be bias against high-performing girls. They can sense our doubt, they can sense that it's not "their" turf.

Incidentally, boys likewise perform much worse than girls verbally. I've always wondered if low verbal IQ helps you do well on math tests, because I've noticed that the questions are very vague, but if you ignore the words and just try to solve every problem like a puzzle, you can do much better. (I did this as a child, and did score with the top boys.)

What if the bias is against boys verbally, because of how their parents relate to them, but that helps them in math tests, which are written by other people with poor verbal IQs?

Fascinating stuff but there are no easy answers.

To the original post:

In my DD13's current school district, I'm not sure what the actual criteria are for elementary or middle school. My DD came into the district fresh off skipping 6th grade and was put right into the gifted program. No one seemed to question that she should/would be in the program, so we didn't worry about how high or low the bar was. Looking at the website, it seems the CogAT (one of the seemingly few tests my DD did not take) is used along with staff observations of students and achievement testing (almost certainly the ITBS and/or Iowa Assessments).

To qualify to take 2-3 high school classes while still in 8th grade, a student needed to have earned a national percentile rank of 90 or higher in math and reading on the ITBS/Iowa Assessments. There is also a separate algebra readiness test for those wanting to take algebra.

In practice, it seemed the cut-off for the HS classes was a little low as some students did struggle. In my DDs observation, it seemed there were more girls than boys in this program. My DD also noted that, even though she was in one of the more diverse middle schools in the area, there were very few minority students in the program.

--S.F.

In our district they administer the CogAT and the ITBS. If they don't score in the 98th% on the CotAT they don't take the ITBS.

To get into the full time program, they must score at the 99th% on the CogAT, 99th% on ITBS math, and 98th% for ITBS reading.

Otherwise, if they score at least in the 98th% for all 3 but don't meet those standards, they are get into the once-a-week pull-out program.

If they're in 2nd or above, they also have to have received grades averaging at least 3.5 (out of 4) on last year's report card before they can even test.

If they don't score at least in the 98th% on all 3, then they are out of luck. No re-testing in the current year or alternate tests accepted, you can only wait and try again the next year.

You hit the nail on the head. Our introverted HG+ son blew 1-3 out of the water but missed #4 and #5 and until he gets those, he's held out of full time gifted. It's ABSOLUTELY what he needs, but he's not going to be the automatic outgoing leader and he's not going to give them more/better work that they're asking for. . . sigh. . .

"he's not going to be the automatic outgoing leader and he's not going to give them more/better work that they're asking for. . . sigh. . ."

Ohhhh, this is my daughter. She can meet any challenge, but she's not going to go beyond that, because she's got drawing to do.

One wonders what they do in a class composed entirely of leaders. Who is going to follow?

Our district still has distinct gifted classrooms that start in 4th grade; they accelerate math by a year and language arts by up to 2 years. They require a 96th% or above on the OLSAT in third grade OR a test like WISC. This year they threw in a lottery to the mix, but fortunately, my child got in!

Our schools screen everyone starting in 2nd grade, but the G&T program doesn't start until 3rd grade.

To move on to the next stage of testing, a student needs to meet 3 of 4 criteria: 1) & 2) MAP test suggests, 3) teacher/parent questionnaire results; and 4) CogAT scores. The next phase involves: 1) abbreviated IQ test by school (required minimum score) and 2) either a high score on the additional achievement test OR their creativity test.

Boys, by far, outnumber the girls in DD's G&T class. I was a bit surprised. At the end, about 3% of students were "identified," but I think this can vary depending on how many students meet the criteria.

Thanks so much for your kind words! I was worried what to do with him if he didn't get in. I don't understand why our district moved to a lottery, of all the crazy things, once the child meets the required score! Whew...
Although our district is working hard to get rid of our gifted program, plus I think Common Core is going to destroy the accelerated math sequence they have in junior high and senior high school!

Here they basically put the kids in order from top to bottom based on ability and achievement test scores, but I don't think anyone really understands how this is done, including the people who are doing it. A lottery system seems crazy.