Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Precocious Learners / Early Ed vs. Actually Gifted

Maybe just general conversation, as I'm not sure what I'm looking for here.

Our HiCap program has started IDing kids in Kinder, using NNAT2, school-wide screening. In 1st grade, they begin using NNAT2 or OLSAT based upon age/grade for all new students and by nomination. I'm unsure of the cutoff, but I believe it may be 90-95th percentile for acceptance into the HiCap program.

My DS9 (almost 10) is in grade 4...

In this elementary school only there are 4.5 grade four classes (one is a 3/4 split). Enrollment in grade 4 was shown at the last school board meeting to be at ~120, including projected new students. I don't know the actual count, but let's go with this as it's likely correct +/-5.

There are 17/120 kids identified in HiCap in grade four. This means they have identified and are attempting to offer services to ~14% of the population for grade four in this school.

Statistically speaking, his school might expect 16 kids with an IQ > 130 in the entire school population (2% of 800). That may look like 2-3 per grade ... ish. By now you likely see where this is going...

Is this very early testing picking up a pool of kiddos that are precocious learners, or, more likely, due to demographics (dual income families), have had multiple years of academic daycare or preschool? Can you call a program that identifies this way a "gifted" program?

Part of me believes that early screening, and whole-population screening is great. As I see this actually unfold in WA state, I'm starting to think the grade 3 screening is much more appropriate and I appreciate more the wait and let the evening-out happen from these kids with a preschool advantage.

Thoughts?

Consider the possibility that your school just has more gifted students than would be explained by a completely random distribution. There could be many possible reasons for this - high SES area, nearby universities that have a significant number of faculty living in your town, other high-tech industries that attract intelligent, educated people. What fraction of the town is college graduates, and how does that compare to the average nationwide?

Or it could be that they are picking up on academic daycare/preschool experience. I'd probably bet on the former, though.

If they were screening based on academic achievement, it would make it more plausible that these were hot-housed or otherwise educationally-advantaged children, but since they are using the NNAT, which is more of an ability measure, I would think it is less likely that the early educational experience is the cause, and more likely that the early educational experience is an effect of coming from high-potential parents.

A number of factors could lead to families self-selecting for higher-ability areas. And if the cut-off is 90th percentile, then 14% isn't that much higher than expectations. The question is whether that's really a gifted class at all.

If you're in a high performing district, it is not a stretch to assume that the distribution is shifted up about ten points. When you do this, about 15% of the local population is at the 96th percentile or above.

Until recently WA has defined the top 2.314% as "highly capable" and provided funding to districts as though that number of students are being identified. This means that districts use local rather than national norms to identify students. In my district, this means that only about 7 students per grade are identified even though about 10% of students (30 per grade) are actually gifted (IQ ≥ 130). (Apparently this past summer the percentage funded was increased to the top 5%.)

If you live in an area with a higher number of highly educated parents this doesn't shock me at all. Especially if they are using 90th%ile in which case statistically it should be ~10%. 17 is higher than 12 but not crazy.

My kids started in a school of ~500 kids (spread out over 8 grades). They don't screen until 5 year in but some families end up testing privately before then because their kids are going off the rails (we started this adventure because school was a disaster and they were convinced DS was ADHD and told us to test). I know 5 kids that all transferred out of this school (3 are in the same grade) into a program in another board with a 99.6% WISC GAI or FSIQ cut off. We didn't meet until we had all moved out of the school. They all ended up testing under similar scenarios to ours and in these cases, no one was testing in the hopes of accessing gifted programming since we all didn't know there was anything like that until after testing. There are books in their houses and attentive parents but we are not talking hot housing in these cases.

Statistically, that is way higher than the ~2 kids expected but we live in a place where masters and PhD's are common. People moved here from all over the country/world for work, met highly educated partners, gravitated towards good neighbourhoods and had children. It turns out the bell curve is a little skewed in some areas.

14% of students at 90th percentile or above wouldn't be unusual in the area I'm in. Since an ability test was used for screening, I doubt you're looking at hot-housing but rather the general makeup of families that are sending students to this particular school.

The one thing that I don't see mentioned above (I just glanced quickly) is the school's response to parents who's kids don't make the program cut-off (wherever it falls). In our district, it's sometimes possible to advocate your child into the program not through scores, but through semi-close scores and a parent who's extremely determined to get the child into the program. I think you'd see more of this in early elementary... it's just my experience but when my kids were in K-1 it seemed like every other parent we were around thought their child was gifted.... and that's one thing that definitely dropped off by third grade (the parent-thinking-child-was-way-gifted factor).

Best wishes,

polarbear