Private school testing for kindergarten?

[Anonymous]

I am not a fan of the wppsi, however it is worth noting that the ERBs used for admissions in NYC are derived from the WPPSI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

As someone else already noted several posts ago, most of those are group tests, not individually administered. And I don't think any of them is targeted at the same age group as the WPPSI.

Do you have a problem with group testing? When your 4 or 5 year-old is in the private school is group testing inappropriate and not age appropriate? Or do you prefer a test in which parents shop for the "right' tester and "score" that at the end of the day has no prognostic worth? The tests mentioned by other posts would have significantly more worth don't you think? Those exercises are not dictated by the gender or facial hair of the tester. Don't you think the mandatory $400/child test used for admission purposes is a scam?

I have no problem with group testing. But my understanding of "best practices" in the testing community is that group tests are considered less accurate. Many people out there (not me!) actually study testing issues and talent identification for a living. They seem to say that the most efficient way to evaluate large groups of students is to give a group-wide test to all students, and then follow up with individually administered tests for those students who meet some prescribed cut-off on the group test, and also look at subjective teacher assessments. That way, the school saves money by paying for individual tests only for certain students. Also, since students must do well on two different tests, it helps weed out those who just got "lucky" on one of the tests.

While that best practices process is efficient for something like at a big public school deciding who to send to a program for talented students, it needs to be modified in the context of individual parents seeking admission to a new school (especially for very young children who be less focused in a group test). So it seems like most admissions people just skip the group test part, and go straight to the individual tests. Since parents rather than the school are paying for the tests, there is less need to use the group test to save money. And the admissions people pair the test results with teacher evaluations too. The only thing they miss is having two different tests to confirm the results. I suppose they could improve accuracy by insisting parents take children to two different tests, but that probably would get people pretty annoyed. Don't you think?

I don't agree with your claim that the scores have "no prognostic worth" -- I assume that's rhetorical hyperbole on your part. Of course the value of these scores is subject to some noise, due to some parents prepping, due to the young age and variability of the children involved, etc. But I assume that's why admissions people look at scores + teacher recs + playdates + essays, so they can gather many independent variables in evaluating a child.