I've seen a few article about this new identification tool in use in NYC. Here's a link to the article, and a copy of the response I made to it.
http://www.ednews.org/articles/1486...-Practicesquot-for-the-Gifted/Page1.htmlBoy, was I disappointed to see that your article entitled, "Best Practices" for the GiftedBy Michael F. Shaughnessy Senior Columnist EdNews.org, published 07/24/2007 was not about curriculum or instruction but restricted to identification of gifted students. Mr. Shaughnessy states that there is much fierce opposition to his radical ideas about identification. I doubt that the opposition is to his idea, as much as it is disappointment to see �Media Space� being lent to one of the most trivial and least useful aspects of Gifted Education today. I do not believe that there is any point to having an identification tool that isn�t correlated to the particular programming that is offered in a particular school at a particular time. This view is more elegantly stated in Identification of Students for Gifted and Talented Programs (Essential Readings in Gifted Education Series)by Joseph S. Renzulli (Editor), Sally M. Reis (Editor)
I don�t have a problem with the idea that some kids who are currently in gifted programs may not always stay in them. Certainly many children give up on gifted programs that carry too high a price in terms of social isolation, wrath of the homeroom teacher, or just plain busywork. My problem is with presenting an identification instrument to educators as if that will solve the needs of individual students. I see Giftedness, in a school setting, as a Special Educational Need.
If you want to find kids with special needs due to giftedness, find the class clowns and troublemakers who could score 85% on the end of year tests on their first day of school. Listen to parents of quiet children who have become adept at masking what they can do to fit in and please adults, and entertain the possibility that it may be true. If every teacher had to use a pretest to introduce each new subject in school, and had to act on the information that they collected during that pretest, then we would be meeting the emotional needs of gifted children in school settings! If the resources existed to send a child who has already mastered the scope and sequence of the current grade requirement to a resource room for independent study or the grade high enough for the child�s readiness level, we would be meeting the educational and emotional needs of gifted children. This would allow the flexibility for a child to be at may different readiness levels in many different subjects and for different areas in each subject
No teacher can do this on their own. Teachers need supportive administration to coordinate the day so that during math time, a child can learn with other children who have a similar readiness to learn even if those children are in a different grade. There needs to be adult supervisors, perhaps parent volunteers, who can keep order while the children would on their independent projects, or online learning opportunities. Giftedness is certainly a social construct, but children with special educational needs are real, and they need flexible, individual solutions for the unique mix of educational readinesses they have at any stage of their educational career. So, as eager as I am to read an article about state of the art Gifted Education, do I want to read an interview about identification practices that is divorced from the various programming options that can be designed to met the needs of some gifted kids? No, I do not find this article useful.
If I was presenting to the American Psychological Association to psychologists attending the upcoming APA meeting in San Francisco with an interest in learning more about practice issues related to the gifted, I would want to talk about the levels of giftedness and how to use the current IQ and assessment instruments, as limited as they are, and above level tests as given by talent searches, to develop a fuller picture of what an individual gifted child might need. I would introduce important resources such as the Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual and Re-Forming Gifted Education by Karen Rogers. I would want the psychologists to know the difference between the usual levels of giftedness and exceptionally gifted, how these differences present in person and on tests. I would want psychologists to have printouts of
http://print.ditd.org/Guidebook1.pdf Davidson�s �Advocating for Exceptionally Gifted Young People� and be able to guide parents through it. In so many situations, meeting the child�s academic needs will go so far in meeting their emotional needs!
