Is IQ Testing the Best Option?
How do we identify? How do we identify those people groups who are under represented? Gifted has been defined as a function of IQ, but, how reliable is an IQ test?
Scott Barry Kaufman's Book, Ungifted, looks at some of the problems with IQ testing. How accurate is it? And what can we use it for?
With out delving too deeply into all the arguments I want to look at our options for identifying gifted students. Last year our district met to revamp our identification process to try and catch some of these under represented groups, and to try to make a distinction between an advanced student and a gifted one. Much intelligent conversation and study of other admirable districts produced a great rubric for identifying elementary students. We are identifying more of the "groups" we previously did not see in our program, and the students we identified seem to have gifted traits as expected, yet we have not "over identified". Bell curve intact (so to speak).
When we made a decision to create a rubric for identifying high school students, we followed a similar pattern. The comment was made that (in our district) we are identifying so many early on (where we need to catch them) that we probably wouldn't have many needing identified--except those who slipped past us in the under represented groups. An appeal process is already in place, and so we felt confident that these students would have a good shot. But now I am wondering if we have it right...yet I certainly don't have any workable solutions currently in mind--and this frustrates me.
Here is what has happened: With the development of the GT Independent Study Program, interested students must be identified. Previous to developing an actual program for our high school, our GT students were already taking the advanced coursework, so many parents chose to not go through the identification process. Of course with the new program, identification is necessary. It seems common knowledge (from what I have currently read) however, that the older a student is, the harder it is for them to score well on an IQ test. They may not have been in advanced courses, they may not have the extrinsic motivators from home to pursue education, and they may have "normalized" or shut down for so many years that they naturally under perform. This does not even take into account the deviation in the test itself (10-20 points) which could make the difference between a bright student, and a gifted student with specific psycho-emotional needs. Nor does it account for the way a test is scored. Students are normed to a specific age, then placed in a percentile based on others testing around the same time. A student scoring a qualifying gifted score in elementary school, may not even be in the same category as the high school student ten years later. Yet, this is what we have to work with.
Kaufman's book brings up these problems with IQ testing, and suggests that this is only one component. Keeping this in mind, we can consult the rubric which allows students to gain points for high standardized test scores, class grades, or teacher recommendations. But by the time a un-serviced gifted learner reaches high school, they are disillusioned with the standardized testing (possibly to the point of not performing to potential), and bored with their class work. You can imagine what this looks like to the teacher who would normally recommend them. These are the kids who likely spend much of their time sleeping in class, engaged in off task talking or cutting up, or spend so much time in discipline programs the teacher hardly sees them. Let alone knows them well enough to recommend them for gifted services.
A panel of reviewers such as the Roeper School uses would be a great option, but how do you train this panel? And how do you remain objective? What does all of this look like in an explanation to parents? Ok Dr. Kaufman, you have me thinking...
