Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment they don't want to test for GT below grade 3

Experienced folks, please help me figure out what this means:

I had my 7 year old's public teacher inquire about testing her as gifted. She spoke with the school psychologist and possible also the GT coordinator for the district. The response was that they don't like to test children for giftedness before 3rd grade. I asked the reason and got an answer that didn't make much sense--probably because what the administrators had told the teacher didn't make much sense in the first place. Something about the data not being reliable for younger kids.

Now, I am not particularly surprised that they would resist. The elementary school does not have a gifted program at all, despite the posted policy. I know this both from hard experience with an older child and because the principal admitted it flat out. Why test kids for a non-existent program?

What I would like to know--beyond the obvious approach of not wasting resources testing for services that can't be delivered--is what could be the rationale for not wanting to test younger children for IQ (of course they test for all sorts of other data the school and the government want to know about)? It's pretty nonsensical to think that a child is not gifted in second grade but suddenly would benefit from services when older. I would like to have some examples of reasons that might be offered so that I can think about how to counter them, or ask rational questions about them, before I try to sit down with those administrators?

Thanks for any insights you can offer.

To be fair, in fact, the data are not all that reliable for young kids. Now, an EG/PG youngster is not going to score well on early testing and then suddenly plummet to mere high average two years later (absent TBI, major illness, or some other traumatic change affecting mental functioning), but there is enough instability in IQ scores, and competition for gifted slots, that it makes some sense to wait to identify for highly-selective programs until the scores settle down around age 9.

That's where these policies (prevalent in many school systems across NA) originate from. Unfortunately, they ought to be accompanied by generous support for academically-advanced students K-3, so that GT students don't have to just sit around twiddling their thumbs while they wait to be identified.

Just as, on the other end of the spectrum, we should be generously (in both cases, I am speaking both of intervention admission criteria and of the interventions themselves) intervening with the lower-functioning end of the academic spectrum during the primary years, instead of waiting for them to fail, and then identifying them for special education services.

We can't always pin down who the extremes are in the early years, but since plenty of children off the mean, but not in the tails, would benefit from additional support or challenge, it would make sense to service a bigger slice of each end in the mean time.

I am an armchair philosopher and I have no data to support what I'm about to say; however, I remember feeling quite lucky (dare I say even a bit smug)to be in a district that tested kids for GT when entering kindergarten, and then extremely fortunate to have a place in a gifted magnet for my son.

Then I realized that the program was really geared more toward bright high achievers, and that my son was screaming with boredom in Kinder, where I was told that "what we're really teaching here are social skills, so it's OK...don't worry," and then in 1st, when I was told that "he's really not THAT bright you know. I have smarter kids in the class." To FINALLY in 2nd a teacher who new how to differentiate, managed to challenge my child and admitted that he was more than just quite bright.

Now my child is in third grade. This year's teachers are not as adept at differentiation. But they are offering loads of opportunities for independent work beyond the curriculum. AND allowing my child to test out of sections of curriculum and then work on independent projects.

My inexpert conclusion on this? That most kids do not have the maturity to work independently until 3rd grade, so that is when schools test them because they feel comfortable acknowledging the child's giftedness because they can accommodate without spending a fortune and can allow the kids to work independently even if the teacher is not good at differentiation. It's less of a commitment and less of a risk of failure for the school to meet the (acknowledged) needs of the kids.

You might ask why I kept him in a program that was not serving his needs? The answer is that among my large circle of acquaintances I couldn't find a school better than this one. Even if I was willing to pay 25k per year.

So in my area, I would say that gifted education doesn't really start until 3rd grade, even if they are willing to go through the motions before that, because the portion of the curriculum that goes beyond the basic curriculum relies on the children to be able to work independently.

Call me a cynic, but I think that's the real reason.

My school district wouldn't test kids for gifted till 3rd grade for 4th grade placement. There was no "gifted" placement till 4th grade. They did give teachers the freedom to accommodate inside the classroom, and my sons school did create 'unofficial' gifted clusters in grades 2 & 3. The school also didn't test for LD's till 2nd grade.

Lots of luck to you. Just letting you know your district isn't the only one out there who won't test till the kids are older.

The book "Nurture Shock" has a chapter on this and it's very interesting. Basically the research shows that IQ scores are not stable in children in preschool/early elementary. So a child who is tested at 5 could earn a gifted score, but 3 years later they may be tested again and not score gifted anymore. Or vice versa. It has to do with differences in development (with kids being faster or slower) and also environmental influences. Kids who are in a home with highly educated, involved parents will score higher because they have more exposure to games, puzzles, advanced vocabulary, books, etc. My DS was tested at age 3.5 because of developmental delays, and then again at age 6, and his scores were dramatically different. In between age 3.5 and 6 he "caught up". So I can understand the rationale to wait to test, however school districts should still be differentiating the work for the kids who are advanced so they are challenged to their ability level.

Our school district offers testing from age 3. There is a wide net and a narrow net. In K and pre-K if a child tests at 99.9th percentile they get a permanent gifted label. In K and pre-K if a child tests at >84th percentile they get a temporary "potentially gifted" label and can go into a special program. The latter group must retest in grade 1 (and anyone else can test in grade 1 or later) an must reach the usual 98th percentile to get a permanent gifted label.

It is indeed true that tests at young ages are unreliable, but nevertheless these young kids need a way to move at their own pace right from the beginning.

Our state standards offer testing from age 4 (pre-K and K) but require EG/PG IQ scores to qualify for the rather modest gifted services available to that age group. Beginning age 6, access to a small mix of different gifted services programs are available depending on a combination of ability scores, achievement scores, and teacher/parent input. My DD's school offers a weekly enrichment pull-out for students with high ability scores but normal achievement scores. They offer a daily pull-out for advanced academic work in math, and another in language arts, for those who meet the achievement and ability marks in those areas.

At a minimum, each student qualified for gifted services must be reevaluated through IEP review and a consultation with the teachers every three years. If this process yields concerns that the child may not be properly placed, a full re-screening is triggered. Re-screening can also be done on request.

Our school starts G&T math and reading in 3rd and 4th grades, too, utilizing various ability and achievement tests. Subject differentiation that takes place before this is based on achievement scores, and possibly teacher feedback.

Honestly, in our schools, what happens is - differentiation goes from being very achievement-based and quiet in the younger grades (the school at times seems almost secretive about where they are placing a child - almost a "we know best" policy), to being very public (criteria for G&T is publicly available) after 3rd grade. Quite honestly, the programming itself isn't all that different. DD has always in the "highest" subject groups - since differentiation by subject started, she simply is now "formally identified."

I will defer to the other experts here about the stability of the ability/IQ data, but in our case - the early achievement data was extremely consistent with the eventual ability/IQ data in 3rd grade. We wish the schools offered more for the younger students.

Did they include data on the score variability? Because this makes total sense in a lot of cases, but for extreme outliers on the scale it would seem to be a poor excuse for not testing.

I'm thinking here of children with LDs that would benefit from early intervention and HG/PG children who are waaaaay out of band and not benefiting from school. It seems cruel to make them wait. Not to mention that I always wonder if high LOG kids drop (or "even out" as the premise goes) because they have to spent 4 years of school (K-3) being completely underestimated and not learning anything.

Our previous district tests in like 2nd or 3rd (I don't remember) but they don't do anything with the data anyway, so I don't see why they bother.

I don't think the scores vary that much when you consider the extreme ends of the spectrum. In the book, the concern was that kids who are not really gifed (over the long term) are identified in preschool and kindergarten. So then what happens in third or fourth grade when their scores drop? The school sends a letter home saying "your child is no longer gifted?" Plus, kids who end up being gifted later may never be identified, or the "slots" in a program are already filled up. It's a dilemma.

I read the book a long time ago and don't have a copy, so don't remember specifics, but here's a short summary

http://nurtureshockmoment.blogspot.com/