Kids First, Test Scores Second

BigAppleDaddy · November 1, 2007, 4:09pm

Pardon my rant:

I’m getting tired , really tired, of educators assessing kids numbers and not kids. The latest travesty from New York, New York: Educrats plan to start testing every preschooler for admissions to gifted and talented programs, choosing only those that make the top 5%.

We could start by wondering about why preschoolers need to be in G&T programs at all: it is 1st grade, after all, not Harvard. Might be nice to, instead, offer a strong educational diet to all kids at that age before sepearting out the wheat from the chaff.

Its the tyranny of the numbers, though, that really bothers me. And its a bigger problem than just local. Numbers just don’t tell you what you need to know most about kids – at any eduational level. The top 5% kid can be lazy, ornery, unimaginative, or hold any of a number of other attributes that would make him unsuitable to take advantage of a rich, accelerated curriculum. Meanwhile, the C student might simply be bored to death (though hopefully not befire first grade), have learning disabilities, have lopsided academic interests, a tough family life, or whatever, and be desperately in need of a top academic setiing where he would not only shine, but flourish, once given the opportunity.

Doing it all by the numbers is a bad tradeoff: lots of transparency, but no flexibility to find the students best suited to a high-level program–G& T kindergarten, an accelerated MS, a selective HS, or even, yes, a college.But if you lose the transparency, however, and give educators some flexibility you will end up with hordes of whining parents, convinced that their kids weren’t chosen because of whatever flakey reason they think of to convince themselves that little Susie is really the next Doris Lessing or Madame Curie.

So question: Are public school selections elsewhere so greatly numbers-driven? Should they be? Some of this is, of course, is NCLB, some of it purely local NYC nonsesnse. Does the rest of the U.S. just ignore kids and make the big crucial decisions about kids’ educations based almost solely on their numbers?

Christcorp · November 1, 2007, 5:03pm

Personally, I believe that with the exception of a small percentage of children with actual phyical/chemical/biological imbalances; most children in the primary formative years of Birth-4yrs old, have much of the same potential.

Therefor, those that are being tested at 5yrs old and being recommended for gifted and/or talented programs, are really just rewarding the parents. Chances are, the parents took a much more active role since their child’s birth in developing communication skills, imagination, sensory perception, emotional contact developement, etc…

Now, does this mean that they are putting the other kids at a disadvantage? Not really. Those kids will be with the other 95-98% of all children. But it does give the few they choose an academic advantage over the others.

This advantage however is not necessarily always a positive thing. Many times, these children do better in academic areas but do worse in social developement. They don’t mature at the same rate or level that many of their peers who are considered “Average” do. Many parents are aware of this. The very first suggestion that most parents of kids in gifted, talented, advanced, etc… classes; including up to High School when some get into the International Baccalaureate program; that you balance your children’s social life. Ensure they get to play and hang out with “Average” kids their age. I.e. Neigborhood kids, make friends outside of actual classes, involve in YMCA, youth soccer, school sports, Boy/Girl scouts, and other areas where academics aren’t involved.

So, that brings back the original question. Is there advantages to gifted/talented type programs in school; especially elementary; or would it be better to offer such a set of academics to all the kids. Personally, I think it is a good thing. Yes, parents who have had more interest in their child’s early developement, have given their children a head start. It is common that if their academic interests aren’t continued to be stimulated, they will resort to the “Norm” that the other students attain. That isn’t right either. I would like to see the 3 stages of schoold developed better. Elementary school can have their gifted/talented programs, but they should be trying to get the “Average” kids to a higher level. Then the junior high schools can work with the students that now have good academic and study habits and develope their maturity. Then they will be ready for advanced AP/IB classes in high school. My son was never in gifted/talented classes in elementary school. Yet, he has maintained a 4.0 gps, Class rank of #1, High SAT/ACT. IB Program, etc… He’s maintained a 4.0gpa since the 7th grade.

It all goes back to the parents. If they take a more active role in their children’s developement from birth to 4yrs old, the children have a much better chance at advanced academics. If the parents keep up with that interest, the kids can excel beyone that. If not, the kids will probably be average.

wharfrat2 · November 1, 2007, 5:17pm

Politicians, the public, and the media virtually force schools to be almost exclusively data driven. How often do you see/hear/read about a school sytem’s reputation based upon test scores? I would venture almost exclusively.

How often do your local papers, or even major metropolitan ones for that matter publish school the test scores of school systems. When they do the public instinctively makes judgements about the quality of the schools on the basis of those numbers.

As a teacher, I agree completely that we are too test driven and too numbers driven, though I will concede that those numbers are often the driving force behind instructional improvements.

While it frustrates me to no end professionally and personally, the situation is what it is and until there is a shift in our national attitude (the degree to which that would be desirable or beneficial is another discussion altogether) we have to live with it.

emeraldkity4 · November 1, 2007, 5:30pm

my daughter attended a private school for “gifted children”
entrance test was an IQ test- which she had, because she had been part of a( high risk ) special study at university of wa ( the school had also been originally part of a Harvard study of gifted preschoolers- and after the study ended- the teachers and parents continued the program)
Otherwise, I would have had no motivation or knowledge about that sort of testing.

I think all kids can benefit from “enriched” instruction.
Her school just happened to be " for gifted kids"- but we looked at many schools both public and private- we did find one public school we really liked- but she didn’t get in ( it wasn’t for * gifted* but very popular)

I had never considered private school for her- even though she had taught herself to read books at three & had an extensive vocabulary.

However- when I looked at our local public kindergarten- I liked the teacher- but the way the class was structured it wasn’t possible to have different learning stations or do individualized work. When kids were learning letters- she would be learning her letters- and the teacher advised me to find another school. ( as did the psych who was in charge of the UW program)

Kids come in at different levels.
Headstart used to be more available- but I haven’t heard of a program for years. Kids need to be on the same page when they enter school- if they aren’t , it is too difficult to catch up and they are always behind.

I wasn’t even expecting the other kids to be reading in K, I just didn’t want her to have to sit there and be bored to death. there is enough sitting and waiting around in public school, and 5 year olds don’t need to have that as a guarantee.
The choices in our area- were mind boggling and eventually I had no idea what was the best choice- so I just asked D which one she liked the best- and that was what we went with.

What I would like to see- are smaller classes- and totally restructure the schools of education. My older D was able to attend primary with small classes and more than one age in a classroom- elementary had three “grades” in classrooms So work was more experiential, every one had something to contruibute and having the same teacher for more than one year, eliminated much wasted time at beginning of school year.
Different style of teaching however, than worksheet oriented. ( these characteristics were also part of the public schools that I liked- however- with testing emphasis- they are more likely to try and be much more structured)
It actually was almost a cooperative,( lots of parent involvement in the classroom- even to the point of requiring hours) which I had been familiar with, as cooperative preschools were affordable and numerous in our area.

My younger daughter also attended a private school for K-2. If you read the autism thread, you’ll see why I knew that a typical kindergarten classroom of 28 with one teacher, just wouldn’t have worked for her.
I was fortunate enough to find a school of 24- from preK to about 3rd-4th grade. Instead of being assigned a teacher- kids were divided into mixed age groupings of 8 kids, and would go from class to class. Reading( inc social studies)-Science- Art.
Because it was so small it was able to be very flexible and was really a great find- no desks- lots of collabrative work.

I feel that kids aren’t little sponges and need to have information squeezed into them- but little scientists and they need tools to learn how to learn but then have opportunities to use those skills during their day- rather than just regurgitating back what we have decided they should know.

shyanne · November 1, 2007, 5:44pm

I use to help out at my son’s school. There were kids entering kindergarten that could read and kids that didn’t know a single number or letter. My son could read and when the teacher found out (which took awhile) she let him join a first grade class for reading. The older kids picked on him and then he refused to go. Gifted and talented classes put kids that are alike together and makes it easier for them. My son finally got into them when he was in 4th grade.

JHS · November 1, 2007, 6:14pm

I am not an expert on this at all, but my understanding is that G&T programs are essentially mandated by the federal Education For All Handicapped Children Act, high IQ being essentially another way to be “differently abled.” Of course, they have a real constituency in the parents whose children populate them and the teachers who teach them, but I suspect lots of school boards would love to scrap them.

As for testing, wharfrat has it right, I think: No one has come up with a better way to have accountability and assessment. Also, tests are often the battle front between local school boards, principals, and faculty, all of who are jealous of their prerogatives, and state and federal officials who take political heat for the sorry state of much American education. Tests are the way the non-local officials impose their will on the recalcitrant locals.

BigAppleDaddy · November 1, 2007, 6:32pm

I’m not one of those zealous anti-test people who think tests are useless. Every kid has to show what they know at some point. In classes there are lots of opportunities to do this and ithose tests should be taken very seriously. Where the standardized testing thing falls seems to fall down to me is that it can be somewhat predictive at very high levels and also at very low ones, but practically useless for most kids in between–especially at a very early age. EVen given a group of kids within the same ethnic and socio economic cohort.

I think JHS has it right. Tests are just easy for educators to deal with. They give them simple answers – whether to individual students, schools, or whole districts – for numbingly complex problems. And , of course, us parent peons, being deemed too unsophisticated to deal with it, either go along, hunting for the high-scoring school or gifted program, or become cranky troublemakers, or go private.

Did not know that gifted ed is mandated by federal law. That really true?

wharfrat2 · November 1, 2007, 7:05pm

My wife who is a gifted ed teacher says gifted ed is primarily state mandated. NCLB does address gifted ed however it is very vague in its wording.

Somewhat unrelated to my earlier post but pertinent to the original topic is this. Testing and test scores are the ultimate political football. Politicians raise the roof about the state of public schools in their district/state, etc. They then mandate tests which inevitably result in low scores to which they then point as proof of the sorry state of schools. Equally inevitably with time most schools and school systems figure out the assessment and develop strategies to get higher scores, many of which involve ways to “beat” the test. Scores go up and then the aforementioned politicians point to the improvement as evidence of their visionary leadership that helped pave the way to better schools.

marite · November 1, 2007, 7:48pm

Really? Someone should alert the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts where there is no funding for gifted ed. Zippo, nada, rien, rien, rien.

my3girls · November 1, 2007, 8:06pm

Gifted ed isn’t federally mandated. A state can choose to have programs and then will get some funding, but not full funding, or a state can chose not to have a program. And a state can choose to have gifted education be part of its special education program (and then students need multi-disciplinary evals to be placed and IEPs to continue) or have gifted programs be a different thing with other kinds of rules and regulations.

mathmom · November 1, 2007, 9:17pm

Rules for gifted ed vary by state. NY says you have to test kids, but you don’t have to do anything about it. I’ve got mixed feelings about testing - I’m pretty sure the instruments they are proposing to use in NYC are not very accurate. Kindergartner’s are young enough that there are all kinds of issues that can get in the way of good results.

Our school system tests kids in 3rd grade, but also has (or had) other measures based on achievement and a couple of failsafe teacher recommendations. My older son was a shoe-in, my younger son only got in because of the recommendation.

My oldest son was a terrible misfit for the first three years of elementary school. He’d taught himself to read at two, and was at least two years ahead in math as well. With great difficulty his first grade teacher persuaded the powers that be to let him go to a third grade math class and he had a reading group with one other child. The truth was that most gifted programs wouldn’t really meet his needs. Ours certainly didn’t. He really only enjoyed school once they started letting him accelerate more classes in middle school and high school. My younger son is gifted with processing and memory issues and didn’t do particularly well on the 45 min. quickie test used for the gifted program entry. Luckily he got a teacher recommendation using the Renzulli scale. IQ testing looking for LDs confirmed he was in the right place. (And confirmed the exact same weaknesses as the quickie test - they just didn’t count so heavily against him.) He thrived in the gifted program.

teriwtt · November 2, 2007, 12:54am

<a href=“http://www.gt-cybersource.org/StatePolicy.aspx?NavID=4_0[/url]”>http://www.gt-cybersource.org/StatePolicy.aspx?NavID=4_0</a>

This is a nice website that shows how gifted programs vary by state.

jessiehl · November 2, 2007, 9:45am

I would have loved to have a better G&T program as a young elementary schooler - the one I was in wasn’t especially good.

I think that it’s perfectly acceptable to start offering G&T programs at very young ages. No point in forcing the smart kids to stagnate. However, I think that there should not be one point at which kids are tested and tracked. You should be able to test into a G&T program when you’re 5. You should be able to test into a G&T program when you’re 8. Or 12. Kids start to “bloom” at different points.

I also think that everyone could do with the sort of “enrichment” that is common in G&T programs, not just the G&T kids, and that the point of such programs should be instead to allow their students to move through academic subjects at a pace more appropriate for their individual talents.

curmudgeon · November 2, 2007, 11:24am

teriwtt, thanks for the link. What conclusions do y’all draw from the map on teriwtt link? The South and Midwest do remarkably better when it comes to GT programs/funding than the West Coast or the Northeast? What’s happening here? The obvious answer seems to be that it is political but for the life of me I can’t decipher the pattern on the map. Think of “blue” and “red” states, like the election maps and overlay that on this GT map. What is this saying? It sure seeems to suggest that blue states have little love for GT programs, doesn’t it? If not that, then what? I guess I should have been paying more attention. This makes little sense to me.

jessiehl · November 2, 2007, 12:42pm

This connection had never occurred to me, and of course I still don’t know whether there’s a causal effect or it’s just coincidence, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all now that I think about it. Many liberals, and I say this sadly as a fellow liberal who disagrees, dislike anything that they believe to be elitist in education, which would include G&T programs. As a high schooler in the top local public magnet school, I usually agreed with our local newspaper’s liberal editorial page on the issues, but to my dismay they launched an attack on my school at least once a year.

Another possibility is that states which believe themselves to be more intellectually enlightened, which in my experience means blue states, are complacent about education - they think they already have it made. No idea if that’s true, just speculation.

curmudgeon · November 2, 2007, 12:47pm

jessiehl, I was having some of the same thoughts.

Christcorp · November 2, 2007, 12:57pm

Jessie, you are definitely on to the right idea. The difference however in the Red states, is that “Most” still believe in the premise that from the time you are born, no matter your race, sex, color, ancestry, religion, etc… that you can attain anything you want in life. Self employed, to blue collar, to white collar, to CEO, to president. That you can attain as much wealth and prosperity that you individually are capable of doing.

The Blue states don’t like this premise. They want the select few to be “In charge” and the rest of the country dependent on them and that it’s a social environment where everyone shares. Thus negating the initiative for self advancement. “Except for themselves of course. The In charge want to be able to build as much individual wealth as they desire”.

G&T classes, AP classes, IB programs, etc… allow individual students to excel. But, in all fairness, these programs are most definitely needed. NOT because of the “Educationally Advanced” students. But because these “Advanced” classes actually were the NORM in academic complexity 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago. Our education system has had to “DUMB DOWN” itself so much, that they had to create “Advanced” classes. Not to show kids as “ADVANCED”, but so the kids that were DEFICIENT felt “AVERAGE” and not DUMBER than the rest of the classes.

My son is in the IB program in school. My daughter also did it for 4 years. The IB program is considered quite advanced and difficult. I have found that most of what he is learning is stuff I learned in High School. We definitely didn’t have any IB programs or advanced classes. That was 35-40 years ago.

So, while the “Motive” was to assist advanced students stay challenged and capable of excelling; the main REASON was because the education system had become too DUMBED DOWN and many of the kids were becoming TOO Bored and complacent.

MomOFour · November 2, 2007, 1:18pm

I question the ability of schools to pick out the gifted at a young age. Completely anecdotal, but one of my kids didn’t make the first cut in a very average elementary school but is now a high-scoring top 3% of her class kid in high school. Her math abilities just weren’t picked up on early elementary assessment tests. It’s very interesting to look at those early identified G&T kids. Some have continued academic success, some are in the cosmetology vo-tech program now (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Some of this is purely developmental or even trainable. I’m sure we’ve all known parents who drilled their kindergarteners with multiplication flashcards. The kids know their times tables beautifully but don’t have a clue what the concept of multiplication means. I’m not sure most elementary schools can be trusted to understand the quiet kid in the back of the room measuring the length of her desk in crayons is actually the gifted kid.

mathmom · November 2, 2007, 1:39pm

This blue-stater believes that we are a combination of our inborn gifts and what we make of them. My older son really was a precocious kid, his younger brother in an almost identical environment was not. But the jury is out on who will get further in life, because younger brother has so much else going for him. I don’t think a gifted program has failed just because some kids choose not to pursue higher education. I just would like to see schools that ensure that all kids are learning - whatever level they start at.

JHS · November 2, 2007, 3:54pm

Here’s another way to look at it, beyond red-blue states. Of the 10 states that provide no funding for gifted education, 6 are in the top 12 states (25%)for per-pupil funding, and those 6 represent the vast, vast majority of the aggregate children in non-funding states, since the exceptions (NH, RI, SD, OR) are low in population relative to the others (NY, NJ, PA, CT, DE, VT). Only one of the no-funding states (SD) is in the bottom 50% of states by per-pupil spending. Of the six states that mandate and fully fund gifted education, none are in the top 25% of states by per-pupil funding, and at least two (maybe four) are in the bottom 50%. Among those states, only GA has a large population.

In other words, the states that don’t fund gifted education are already funding all education at a high level, and the states that fully fund gifted education are not.

Kids First, Test Scores Second

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