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WPPSI - Caught Cheating?
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Anonymous
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OP, go ahead and cheat you probably won't get caught now.
A few years ago, a St Albans' senior was caught cheating during the SAT. The school found out from College Board and expelled him immediately that Monday morning. Makes you wonder if his mummy/daddy trained him in test cheating early on. |
Anonymous
What "ample evidence" of large numbers doing prep? And why do you want to deny that many do well with no prep? The only evidence I've seen of prepping is that (1) you can buy materials on eBay, and (2) some people here think it's "fair" to prep. I'd bet that very few kids nationwide are prepped, but there is still a sizable number with 99% scores. So most of those 99% scores were not prepped. |
Anonymous
| Yup, few kids nationwide as the 3, 4 and 5 year-olds make the same choices as kids in the D.C. area. They are not interested in your private schools and do not view this a their pathway to success. |
Anonymous
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"OP, go ahead and cheat you probably won't get caught now.
A few years ago, a St Albans' senior was caught cheating during the SAT. The school found out from College Board and expelled him immediately that Monday morning. Makes you wonder if his mummy/daddy trained him in test cheating early on." What scrap is this. The kid was expelled because he took 3 prep courses, studied every night until midnight for 2 years and prepped for the exam? I guarantee you he was not expelled for prepping. This is exactly what you did in school so do not pass this off as cheating. Get your facts straight. Your mom and dad also trained you to study, review and prep for exams. You must be a cheater. You clearly inherited this syndrome....and got away with it! |
Anonymous
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Just stop the insanity. Sure, you could probably cheat and get away with it. You want to be that kind of parent, go ahead. There will be ample opportunities to cheat in the future and get away with it.
I don't think most parents cheat and I don't care if they do. This is not the kind of person I am and it is certainly not the kind of person I want my children to be. If you even think this is a tough call, you need to do some soul searching. Seriously. |
Anonymous
There is a lot of evidence out there: - In 2005, NY Magazine reported that over 200 families interviewed, "and over half reported doing some level of preparation,” says Quinn." - Wechsler blocks, older tests (both WISC and WPPSI which share many of the same questions, even from previous versions) are frequently sold on Ebay and elsewhere - There are educational consultants who are charging upwards of $150/hour to prep kids for the test - A NYC-based company has put out a WPPSI workbook for $500 which has nearly identical questions/puzzles to the WPPSI - In my town, while interviewing nannies, another mom reported that the nanny said she had a lot of experience in getting kids ready for the test (this is what actually was the key in my changing my mind about this whole prep thing.. ) So there is demostrable demand and evidence that people have been prepping/cheating for years. And in NYC scores have been getting higher and higher every yera on this identical test. Must be something in the water! The test, as has been stated here - has been compromised and is often sold on Craigslist an Ebay, though Pearson will pull down the most recent version if it is reported to them... This isn't about soul searching. It's about being pragmatic and getting through a tainted admissions process. The WPPSI wont tell me anything I don't already know about my child, but faling to give my child every chance for a great school - despite the admissions process - is what I am focusing on. |
Anonymous
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Its cheating. You can rationalize all you want. Its still cheating. And as much as you tell yourself that everyone does it, that simply isn't true. Most people don't do it. You aren't a failure when you decide not to cheat, you are a failure if you do. And if you can't get your child into a "great" school without cheating, then maybe you need to expand your definition of what a great school is.
You clearly have very young children. Have fun negotiating the moral decisions of the future. |
Anonymous
Nonsense. There are Pre-K's which feed exercises and puzzles to the kids, teach them words that appear on the test... If you happen to attend that pre-K, are you "cheating"?? Because the test is tainted, and those with deep pockets who can pay for a $500 workbook (and not talk about it on DCUM), etc., then leveling the playing field for your child.. is just that. This isn't an SAT, this is a Pre-K/K admissions test of learned knowledge (almost exclusively).. and those who have been exposed to the words/questions/blocks - will do bettter than those who haven't. The process is unfair and the schools should do away with this test. |
Anonymous
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Great story on WPPSI, DC Educational consultants, etc. Apparently schools "rely heavily" on this test...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11702932 |
Anonymous
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From NPR's author chat transcript:
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=11702932 ==================================== ROBERTS: Well, you know, when we first started talking about doing this show, one of my first thoughts was, well, who even uses IQ as a standard any more? But then, I have children applying to private school, and they took this WPPSI test, which you cover in the first chapter of your book, which is, by and large, an IQ test. What can you - I mean, little kids. How can you possibly tell something valuable about a child that small from a test? Mr. MURDOCH: Well, I'm not sure that you can. And the WPPSI is the standard test for kids at around the age of 3 and 4, and again, it's used in admissions to private school. And it does put a lot of pressure, not just on the kids, but on the parents as well. It produces a lot of anxiety. And the main problem with the WPPSI and other tests, really - but especially the WPPSI - is that it's not predictive, especially at such a young age. So really, IQ tests are being used at the time that they shouldn't be, I think. And that's because IQ tests don't settle, really. Your scores go all over the place until about the age of 16. And really, in that context, it's interesting - I interviewed a psychologist in Washington, D.C., where a lot of these tests are being used for these fancy, elite private schools in the area. And she said to me essentially, no, these tests are used to weed out 90 percent or so of the applicants of these schools. They simply have too many people applying to them. And these institutions need a way of saying, right, we're not going to look at nine or ten kids in this way. And they believe that the IQ test is one standard form - standard metric in which to say, we're doing this fairly, but we're really going to - we're not going to look at that 90 percent. |
Anonymous
| That's quite different from saying the 99th percentile kids are in and the 95th percentile kids are out, which seems to be OP's concern. |
Anonymous
If most of the applicants are getting >90, and this test weeds out 90% of the applicants, then that's entirely possible - it could weed out below 95%'s... We just don't know the cutoff... |
Anonymous
| It's not that high and/or it's not that rigid. Plenty of people have reported here that their kids got in with scores below the 95th percentile. And even if they're weeding out most of the kids below the mid-90s, that's still different from saying your odds go up significantly as you move from the 95th to the 99th percentile. You're grasping at straws here. |
Anonymous
Who knows how this is applied? Are the ultra wealthy put into one pile? The "diverse" students into another? The financial aid into another.. and then apply the 90% test-based elimination? The point is, we know the test is important in the process, but don't know what the cutoffs are, how they're applied, etc. |
Anonymous
| Let it go. You have a long life ahead for your kid. Make the decisions in life you wouldn't feel bad talking about in public. |