Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment To test or not to test...and a little more.

I'm new to this board, and posted a note on the Explore thread, but had a general testing question.

I have a daughter (10) and a son (8). My daughter has been 'identified' as gifted at school since third grade (according to grade level achievement test being 98+%), but has received basically no interventions because our district does not have a gifted program, only a 'red folder' system where teachers are told of the 'red folder' kids and are asked to differentiate for them.

My son is in 2nd grade, and I just advocated (read: bugged the teacher and principal incessantly for 7 months) to have him bumped to 3rd for math and he is doing splendidly. (Looks forward to it every day...)

My basic question: my son was acting out and telling us he was bored, so we had his IQ tested. The scores were varied, but the GAI ended up being around 135 (I don't have the actual scores with me now). This testing was part of what finally pushed the school to bump him to 3rd for math.

Now, I wonder if I should get my daughter's IQ tested. As a parent, I firmly believe hers IQ is likely higher than her brothers...but she has had many more years to regress tot he mean and become disillusioned with school. Her Explore tests basically tell us she scored right in the middle of kids who take the test (with an outlier English/Rhetoric score). Everything was above 80 except for math, and her English/Rhetoric was high.

So, do I test her IQ, or do you think she would be served to just keep taking the achievement tests?

One note: she is a kid who doesn't think she is smart. If asked, she will tell you that she thinks she is a little above average (and mean it) although her test scores have always told us otherwise. She HATES being singled out at school and wants to blend in more than anything. She would rather be bored, than have people think she was 'different'. I hate that she has had to come to this conclusion already in her life. Has anyone had a situation where a kid seeing their IQ score actually helped them to realize their potential??

Thank in advance for any help!
Sarah

Your story is so similar to mine that I had to post. We are also new to this board after getting back EXPLORE results for dd11(she got a perfect score in both parts of Reading and English and well above average on Math and Science.) She has also been identified since 2nd grade in a district that does little more than the red folder you speak of in your post. Although, they have a G/T curriculum it is up to each teacher to implement and is not enforced. In fact, we are not even allowed to request above grade level curriculum/skipping a grade, as they feel this would leave nothing for the next year's teacher to work with. What is highly pushed though is teaching the state academic test and the criteria that are on that(yuck!). We have worked within/fought within this system for 3 years now and have recently made the decision to homeschool next year based largely in part on the EXPLORE results and our dd growing frustration/boredeom with school.

To your final question, we do show our daughter her testing scores because I feel it validates what she already feels which is boredom and frustration with her situation. I'm not sure if it encourages her to realize her potential but I think it does help her to know why we advocate so strongly for her to be challenged and why we make the decisions we do regarding her education. I completely understand the disillusionment with school and the 'regression', we have definitely seen it in her this past year.

On a side note, we too have an extremely bright younger sibling dd9, that the school would like to test for GT. And, she wouold probably qualify but we've have held off due to the school situation.

It's really a sad situation when the public school system is so scared to address the needs of this group of children. Not sure if this helps any, but just wanted you to know you are not alone!

Heather