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How did the teacher recommendations compare to test score results?
If test scores had candidates at 30% Asian, 50% white 15% Hispanic and 5% black, and the teacher recommendations mirrored that, couldn't it be that teachers were making their decisions based upon merit?
Please show us the divergence between scores and teachers recommendations since you appear to be making that assumption.
Now there are 2 very good questions.
How much the data correlated with teacher recommendations was very much dependent on the teacher involved. There were teachers whose recommendations we treated lightly, and teachers whose recommendations were almost gospel.
As to teachers making recommendations based on merit...covered in last paragraph.
Your third point -- I don't remember our system ever doing such a study, and even if they did, I can't go back to my pre-retirement days and dig it up.
But the teacher is often the weak link in the whole process. Some get too involved with a student or a family. Others have no real idea what gifted education is really about. For example -- gifted education is not just harder work. It is not just bringing junior college work into the middle or high school classroom.
We also had teachers who "claimed" they should teach the gifted kids because they had been at the school the longest, or because they had the highest degree (but no training in gifted education), or because they were the toughest graders, or because they had the highest grades (which might simply mean that they graded easiest). Or in one case because the teacher had been the Student Teacher Of The Year in West Virginia. I could go on.
Decent test scores and decent grades isn't gifted. Our school requires top 5% of standardized testing to even be considered for testing. Then you have to go through a battery of tests and meet certain criteria, including IQ above 142.
Most school districts no longer have a cut-off IQ score because the definition of "gifted" has broadened to include various skill sets.
I agree that most have the top 5% of standardized test scorers but as stated above, many times, they do not flag the minority students who score in those ranges.
Usually a district is required to flag those students and refer them to a gifted program coordinator. Many districts don't have such a coordinator or have a limited staff who oversees their gifted programs (usually it is just one person in many districts I know about) and so they just don't take a lot of action on minority kids to get them fully assessed and instead just pay attention to the loud parents who want their kids in the program.
The issue is not "Black and White" any more. Can affirmative Action bring more giftedness to those beneficiaries?
All Affirmative Action does is continue to separate people based on their skin color or ethnicity or gender. If we are trying to end that, why on earth do the people in this country insist on keeping something that does nothing but separate?
Here's the problem. In our system -- considered one of the best in the nation -- there were numerous things considered. Test scores, grades, and the biggest of all -- teacher(s) recommendation. We got very few minority students "highly recommended" for our program by teachers. There was pretty much room for all in our middle school program, because I could just make the number of sections what I wanted when I would build my master schedule. I began taking a chance on some minority students who seemed to have decent test scores and decent grades, but were not highly recommended by their teachers. Once they got into one of our two gifted programs, they did just as well with no more of a "drop out" rate than the rest of the students.
So I guess it comes down to how you measure merit. If teacher recommendation is included -- and I think it should be -- then you are mixing in that judgement by perspective issue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
That's fine. That wasn't our school system's criteria.
In fact, the saddest thing was big mouth parents who got their way.
ITA with both of the above.
And especially so in regards to teacher recommendations. I feel there is too much bias in the classroom based on how some teachers see their students or their student's families for their recommendation to be the primary basis for consideration for gifted program admittance.
I especially agree with the red and I do believe that many people IRL and around here on CD who speak about this issue just don't understand that the most "active" parents are the ones who get their kids into these programs for the most part. I know in our district and the last one I lived in we had a single person handle the gifted coordinator position whereas he/she was the person who set up the additional testing/criteria based on the protocol for student admission into these programs. One I got to know really well and she told me that much of her time was spent speaking to parents who were basically trying to bully her into getting their kid in a gifted program when they weren't qualified. Most of the time, eventually they got enough tutoring or they had the kid tested through some educational psychologist or outside agency in order to push their kid into the program.
Handling all of that silliness took her away from looking at kids who didn't have those bully parents and who were probably more qualified than the kids of the bully parents.
It sounds like what you are describing is the standards for gifted students are being dumbed down. Why am I not surprised.
Actually they aren't. They just took out the old IQ test and added additional components. In our district a kid has to score 98th percentile or above now on standardized tests to get into a gifted program. When I was a kid it was 95th percentile with an IQ test. So they raised one portion and took another away. They also added the CogAT, which I believe is just a different kind of IQ test that is updated and more accepted in todays environment so in a way they increased the standards. In another district my son was in, they added a test for creativity. My son scored high for creativity and on the standardized test (ITBS). But not at the "gifted" level for CogAT. He was still recommended for the gifted program but I didn't put him in it as I didn't see the point as it wasn't much of a gifted program IMO.
IMO there is no such thing as "colorblind" in regards to honors/TAG/magnet programs in school. In many ways they are heavily influenced by the income levels of the parents, due to the fact that higher income families can "make" their kids "gifted" by giving them additional tutoring via Kumon or Sylvan and other centers so that they can excek on one or more tests for admission into gifted programs.
FWIW, I was in a gifted program from K-12. I was a black female born to a single mother. It was a surprise that I turned out to be "gifted" because I had been labeled as "mentally retarded" by a pediatrician.
Too often, many of you are unaware of the fact that many actually gifted minority children are not even considered for these programs even though they would qualify. I believe that this may be the case in Maryland. I had many non-TAG program friends who scored very high on the Iowa Test back when I was in school when that was the only standardized test we took every year. There were also many minority students who scored well on the creative assessments we took. However, none of those children were referred to the TAG program. I only was due to a barrage of test, including IQ that was given to me in Head Start to see how mentally retarded I was and to provide services to retarded kids. I actually remember the meeting with my mom where they told her I was gifted. She had doubted I was retarded anyway since I could read kid novels at aged 3. They never believed her that I could read. If I had not been labeled by the pedia as retarded and instead just entered into regular kindergarten without the gifted designation I was given in Head Start, I highly doubt I would have been invited to participate in that program.
My brother was also a VERY good student. We had a very health nerdy competition as kids (in basically everything, we drilled each other on multiplication facts and spelling long words and reading long books to see who could finish first and taking stuff apart/putting it back together to see if it would work), however, he was never referred to the gifted program even though he always had scores above the 98th percentile on standardized tests like ITBS. I also have a little cousin who is currently a high school student who was never referred to the magnet program even though he also scored in the 98th percentile or above. His mother had to push for 2 years to get him accepted into the gifted program in their district. Many minority parents are not aware of those programs or how to get their kids into them. My mom, via later conversations we had when I was grown felt that both my older brother and my younger brother should have gotten the opportunities I got via the gifted program. But she never knew that she could request to have them put into those programs.
A few years ago our district lost a discriminatory lawsuit filed by the black parent teachers organization in our city whereas it was found that black children were not provided the opportunity to be in the gifted program in our district. Also majority black schools did not even offer a single AP course for black high school students and it showed that the district committed discrimination against black students via these methods. They have since taken steps to remedy this and now offer AP classes at the high schools that are over 90% black and they streamlined/refined the process for qualification for the gifted program. The criteria was not changed, but each school was tasked with singling out their top talented students for consideration into the program and it is an ongoing process which has increased the amount of both black and hispanic students in TAG.
So in regards to the article, I don't think that criteria should be changed to enter into the magnet programs. I do however feel that talented minority students should be targeted for admission or referred to the program based on their performance either in the classroom or on standardized test or on creative assessments (there is a such thing as being "creatively" gifted). Contrary to what many of you on these forums believe, there are very smart black and hispanic children and they should be allowed to participate in these programs because they offer a very high level of education. I know without my program, I would have been thoroughly bored in school. My brother was and he had issues later on in school as a result. My younger brother did as well and my mom had to put him into a private high school where he went from Ds (from just not going to and turning in schoolwork because it was "boring" in the public school) to an A/B student.
Also, I feel that too often many of the kids in these programs are labeled as "gifted" when they are not. I knew many Asian kids in my own program growing up who were good students when we were younger, but by 5th or 6th grade, they weren't all that great of students anymore. They were never kicked out of the program and parents know that once you get that label of "gifted" on your kid, they carry it forever in many districts and they can never be kicked out of their special programs. This is why they get those kids all the tutoring mentioned above, so that they can pass those tests and get that label for the college applications in the future.
One of the best posts about public education I've ever seen in this forum.
We were in a very affluent county (although we also had our share of poor neighborhoods), and many of the affluent parents put their children in special after-school and summer "schools" to prep them for getting into the middle school gifted programs. The poor kids, of course, couldn't afford such programs.
I had fraternal twins the first year I taught, both extremely good students, but the boy was really good through very hard work, while the girl just had "it"...critical thinking skills abounding, always asked the most penetrating questions, a nerd to some degree (although very popular). She was an example of how overall boys tended to be the better students in earth science, but the very top students in my classes for 13 years usually were girls. One day I mentioned to the mother how brilliant the daughter was and she told a similar story to yours -- daughter had been diagnosed as mentally retarded at a very young age and put in a "home". Someone on the staff, after several years, realized a terrible mistake had been made, and the girl came out to regular schools and living at home and blossomed into an absolutely super student.
And you're right -- often, deserving or not, whatever label is first attached sticks. Our county's program also pretty much left students in gifted education regardless of how well they performed. Once in, always. Once not identified in 6h grade, almost never looked at again UNLESS the parents were very pushy.
Here's the problem. In our system -- considered one of the best in the nation -- there were numerous things considered. Test scores, grades, and the biggest of all -- teacher(s) recommendation. We got very few minority students "highly recommended" for our program by teachers. There was pretty much room for all in our middle school program, because I could just make the number of sections what I wanted when I would build my master schedule. I began taking a chance on some minority students who seemed to have decent test scores and decent grades, but were not highly recommended by their teachers. Once they got into one of our two gifted programs, they did just as well with no more of a "drop out" rate than the rest of the students.
So I guess it comes down to how you measure merit. If teacher recommendation is included -- and I think it should be -- then you are mixing in that judgement by perspective issue.
So you (I assume you were the principal?) looked at the pool of students who had decent but not outstanding grades and test scores, and were not considered gifted by their teachers, picked out the non-white and non-Asian kids, and arbitrarily labeled them "gifted"? And if they didn't drop out you labeled this move a success?
So you (I assume you were the principal?) looked at the pool of students who had decent but not outstanding grades and test scores, and were not considered gifted by their teachers, picked out the non-white and non-Asian kids, and arbitrarily labeled them "gifted"? And if they didn't drop out you labeled this move a success?
Yes, the principal. But as for the rest of your post, as usual, you assume incorrectly because you are trying to push an agenda. I'm just telling you what our experience was. And BTW, the success of our program was monitored closely by the school system, and we were ALWAYS considered to have one of the two best GT center and GT base programs in the system.
We de-emphasized teacher input (didn't ignore it, but de-emphasized it) when it appeared that the teacher was not providing realistic recommendations. You know, like the time one of the recommending teachers said that she really didn't think Johnny Jones was gifted, but that his parents put a lot of pressure on her and had sent him to all those supplementary learning programs over the years.
There was no evidence that any race of child dropped out of our two gifted programs more than any other race.
Yes, the principal. But as for the rest of your post, as usual, you assume incorrectly because you are trying to push an agenda. I'm just telling you what our experience was. And BTW, the success of our program was monitored closely by the school system, and we were ALWAYS considered to have one of the two best GT center and GT base programs in the system.
We de-emphasized teacher input (didn't ignore it, but de-emphasized it) when it appeared that the teacher was not providing realistic recommendations. You know, like the time one of the recommending teachers said that she really didn't think Johnny Jones was gifted, but that his parents put a lot of pressure on her and had sent him to all those supplementary learning programs over the years.
There was no evidence that any race of child dropped out of our two gifted programs more than any other race.
And the incorrect part of what I said was...?
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