Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Just Venting - DS did not get in GT program

DS9 was not selected for the district self contained GT program. He was tested privately 2 years ago at GAI 132 with a very uneven profile with PRI at over 140 but VCI below gifted range. He is my day dreaming child and never complains but i know he will benefit from the GT program.

The selection criteria are mostly achievement tests based such as star reading and easy CBM math and class grades:

They don't release results so it's like a black box, i don't even know where he lacks in particular. I would guess his reading comprehension is probably lower than others at 92% on recent Star Reading Test. His math score is as high as it can be. The class grades would not help him either as he is not consistently getting As as a few other kids.

I wasn't entirely surprised but still sad. Fourth grade is pretty much the only chance to get in . They close out unless there is a spot open later on.
The program is for 4-6 graders and is claimed to support gifted kids who learns differently. But how do you tell by only collecting performance results from achievement tests.

Just venting a little bit and trying to think though what to do for the next three years for my little guy.

I'm very sorry to hear this. IMO, any student w/a GAI of 130 should be entitled to special education services for high-IQ students. Our district has a 133 GAI cut-off, but that's probably because there would be significantly more students in the "gifted" program if the the GAI cut-off was 130.

Is there any chance your DS may have an un-diagnosed LD? Could you have him privately re-tested now, using the WISC-V (assume he took the WISC-IV 2 years ago)? Perhaps more current scores would be helpful in advocating.

Others will come along who offer better advice, but I personally would request all test results from the school (request in writing, results given in writing) and also request a meeting w/DS's teacher & GT teacher to review what the GT requirements are, exactly, and why your DS is not being admitted.

Are you in a position to change schools or school districts?

These are random thoughts and I hope other posters are more helpful. Hang in there!

Thank Jewel.

Thinking about retesting with WISC V, hoping he would do very well on the newly added subsets, as we try to bring him to summit with my DS11.

I've had my share of frustrations with the school district for my DS11, and is aware of how inflexible they can be with dismissing any requests of advocating. We ended up putting him in private school. DS9 likes current school have has friends. I am worried that his friends got in but he is left out. I just don't have the confidence right now to even start imagine the advocating process.

It is a common story. Gifted programming is for bright high achievers not those who test gifted.

The frustration is unlike some other school districts, which might use Cogat or OLSAT as the main screening tests. This district not only does not look at private administered IQ score, but they only use the achievement based tests as the ones I listed in my original posts. DS is no where close to a few high achieving and bright kids who consistently get A+ on tests. He is not at all motivated by grades.

Note: the ceiling on EasyCBM in math is basically the 90th %ile, so he may or may not have a significant difference between math and reading achievement. The data set does not provide enough information to determine that. (EasyCBM is intended to identify low achievers, so it doesn't need a high ceiling for its designed purpose.) If you look at this copy of the 2014 norm tables (http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED547421.pdf), you'll notice that, in winter of grade 3 (presumably the norms used for this determination), 6 points separate the 90th and 99th %iles, 6 points separate the 50th and 90th, 10 points separate the 10th and 50th, and 26 points separate the 1st and 10th. Clearly, item selection was slanted toward the bottom end of the curve. Out of 48 possible raw score points (16 each in three sections for NCTM math assessment), over half of them are distributed across the bottom 10 percent of performance.

That the school uses an instrument with that low of a ceiling (equivalent to about standard score 120 or so) to ID math GT students is quite telling; I believe it indicates that they are not looking for math-gifted students. And I agree that the program might be more accurately described as an academically advanced program than a gifted program.

Aeh, this is helpful information! I agree that with this kinda of math tests, he would show no advantage at all or might be lower than others as he makes careless mistakes. However, when he does Beast Academy problem sets at home, he routinely goes directly to the most challenging problems and skip through the rest, with no repetition needed.

This is a description of the program: (deleted)

In the past, math was taught one grade level higher than regular class and mathmatically advanced students were allowed to move up further. With the implementation of common core last year, the math curriculum is now kept at grade level and go "deeper" with no student allowed to skip . So I agree this program is not for a math gifted kid. As DS is only slighted higher than grade level in reading and writing, so there seems to be so benefits the program can bring after all, except for maybe social aspect, that he will have better chance to find like minded peers.

Purpleviolin,

Not sure if you realize this (or even care), but when you cited the program name, not only does your exact school district come up on a Google Search, but this post does as well. You might was to obfuscate the program name (by editing your post) if you care about preserving your general anonymity.

Oh, I didn't realize. Thanks for the reminder George. Just edited the post.

We don't have gifted classes we have extension programmes. Access is generally based on a one off achievement test.