Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Got scores, hoping for feedback

giftedcypher, we I think are in a similar district. A lot of educated smart parents with probably smart kids. Everyone thinks their kid is gifted and who am I to say, maybe they are right. What I have pieced together about our district is that about 5 yrs ago, they got dinged by the state for having too many children in the GT program so they changed the criteria to have a hard cutoff on testing of two scores above 97 %tile (ie not just full scale or verbal or perf but 2/3) in order to reduce the size of the program. They also looked at portfolio, teacher rec, grades but nothing could get past the testing. I have heard of kids being 99%tile in one or the other and not making it. They don't communicate well about private testing and the parent really has to work to find out information about appeals of the screening test providing portfolios, etc.

I could write a long extended story but I guess my main complaint in districts like this is if the kids are so smart why do they not group the kids to allow teachers to accelerate those that can handle it? Teach more in the regular classroom. Maybe this is too complicated or not PC. I know that classrooms are supposed to have a mix so that the lower kids want to achieve. At work one of my co-workers called it "No Child Gets Ahead" vs NCLB.

But really when I took DD8 to public school amid claims that they could "differentiate" for her, I got 1.5 yrs of single digit addition that she knew 3 yrs prior. Since I didn't know any better it took me a while to come to the conclusion that it was ridiculous that she couldn't start doing more she already knew the basics of mult/div/fractions so we started Aleks. All of this in a district where I would guess greater than 70% of the kids have at least one parent who is an engineer, Dr or lawyer.

Mschaff- I have a friend in a similar district. THe cutoff for their GT program is 136 or else the program would be too large. I do find though that their curriculum is more advanced than ours.

Right, I would have a lot less to complain about if I thought the regular curriculum was advanced. DD8 did get in but I wonder about those who didn't and how slow it must be for them.

Also, our program is only a pullout for 1.5 hrs/wk until 4th/5th when they spend 1 semester of each yr going for a fullday to the college for mini courses. Then Jr high magnets and high school are supposed to be wonderful. I'm thinking why not be more flexible with the actual score (ie look at the whole picture) and have an elementary magnet? anways.....

Just adding, I don't hate everything about the school, and DD8 loves it, she is very social and adept and modifying her behavior to fit a given situation. Not sure if this is good or bad. The main thing is just the lack of individual assessment or exceptions and communication with the parents. I do think they try and I am very pro-teacher my mom was one for 30 yrs so I know they are over worked and underpaid....I have also been told that parents on the other end of the bell curve also have difficult times getting services which I hadn't really thought of until a friend brought it up. Made me realize how messed up certain things are in our system.

Oh yes. Don't underestimate how messed up the system is at the other end of the scale!! I have several friends that can vouch for that.

Howdy, writing back because we now have some WISC scores, remarkably similar to your ds' GTC -
We are looking at a GAI of 124, vci being stronger than pri by a bit and definitely low processing speed (88?). I think the term is 'average low'. Sorry I am writing without the scores in front of me.
Wmi is average, so basically the tester wrote up a brief report to get to the school by the deadline for assessing for next year's gt program, but with VCI being his highest # at *only* 95 percentile, unless we have really good reading scores or something similar in writing, he might not edge into the program.
Ah well.
We are still waiting on WJ scores, and more info from the doctor as to what the big picture and outlook for ds is going to be. But, with a psi below avg., he said we have to look at requesting accomodations on any serious timed testing going forward. Isn't this WISC thing timed, lol??

I was very happy to see an Arithmetic score of 13, coming in rather better than the 35(!) percentile score he'd gotten on the Cogat quantitative - that had me really wondering. I guess that Cogat is really boring for some kids!

Anyway, I do wonder about all this working memory and speed being 'set for life', as you have wondered gtc, and the doc has mentioned adhd and aspergers, we have filled out form after form, diagnostic, etc. Whew. He indicated that, yes, this is fairly set...but still my own experience has been different and you gotta wonder about the stuff they didn't really know about the brain just a couple of decades back.
OTOH, if accomodations on the SAT,etc., are available, I will definitely look into them, I won't put my nose up to that!

Hope this post makes some sense, dashing off to make dinner...