Reply to Do Montgomery County HGC and magnet programs ever "counsel out" students who are struggling?

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[quote=SAM2]It's interesting to see this thread revived after lying dormant for almost a year.  The thinking behind my original point was that there seems to be a big inconsistency between two ideas:

(1) The claim from many people on DCUM that all these standardized/normed intelligence tests (WISC, SB, CogAT, Raven, etc) are all badly flawed.  These critics often argue that scores are wildly inflated, and easily skewed.

(2) The fact that once children are admitted to a gifted program, most of them generally stay on a gifted track throughout school, and very few are moved back to the general student population.  I've seen this claim expressed in a number of research papers on education and giftedness, and many people on this thread repeat it.

There seems to be an inconsistency between these two ideas.  If the intelligence tests really are fatally flawed, then lots of those students initially admitted to the gifted programs later will be unable to keep up with the challenging work.  Even if the tests are mostly accurate -- say 75% accurate -- then still 25% of the students who score highly on these tests will later struggle in the gifted classrooms because they don't actually meet the criteria.

How to reconcile the seeming inconsistency?

(A) One possibility is that the gifted classroom teachers are willing to "carry" the not-quite-gifted students based on their inaccurate test scores, and permit them to earn good grades even though they cannot keep up with the work.  But this seems hard to stomach, since it means these teachers are allowing these not-quite-gifted students to occupy seats that should be filled by other students.  Also, if the academics are as rigorous as everyone claims, then carrying a marginal student would be hard.  And those marginal students almost certainly would bring home mediocre grades if they are struggling with the academics.

(B) Another possibility is that the gifted classrooms are not really that advanced after all.  If some percentage of the students are not-quite-gifted, but all of them are doing well in the gifted classroom, then maybe the academics aren't quite as challenging as some parents like to claim.  (I doubt anyone here will like this theory, but please save your flames, since I'm just brainstorming possibilities, not attacking your child!)

(C) A third possibility is that parents on this thread reject the premise #1 above: they really do believe the screening tests are accurate.  Maybe I'm seeing lots of people on DCUM criticizing these screening tests, but none of the critics come from the parents of children in the MoCo gifted programs, since all you parents believe the screening tests are accurate.  But even this possibility is hard for me to swallow, because several people here are saying hardly any students ever leave the gifted programs for academic reasons (only for personal preference, "organizational issues," or personal tragedy).  If that's true, then that suggests the screening tests are nearly 100% accurate indicators of academic ability!  Is that really what people here are saying?

Sorry for the long post.  I'm just trying to spell out my thinking and curious questions on these issues.  I'd appreciate any insight on other ways to reconcile these seemingly inconsistent ideas.

Sam2[/quote]

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