Reply to Why obsess over getting into gifted program?

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Why obsess over getting into gifted program?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No one is saying studying in general is a bad thing.  One does not grow up without training to be a scientist. However, studying should be for the long term goal.   There is no way to study for the CogAT and NNAT; you can prep for them by doing repeated practice tests (which some people do).  That does not have long-term benefit.[/quote]
I agree with this poster.  Training or prepping for tests like CogAT, NNAT, WPPSI, WISC defeats their intended purpose, which is to measure the abilities of students for placing them in class setting appropriate for their current abilities.  Of course there's nothing wrong with educating your child or exposing her to lots of things.  However, if you specifically train your child to score high on those tests, such that her test score is not really reflective of her actual abilities, then you're rendering the tests useless.

To use the sports analogy one other poster on this thread likes to cite, it's great for an athlete to train hard to do well in all aspects of his sport.  But if an athlete knows coaches focus their athletic evaluations on just a few narrow measurable abilities as a proxy for overall skill at the sport, and the takes steps to improve just that one measurable aspect of his athletic ability, then the athlete is improperly gaming the system and will ultimately fail.

One example of this would be a football player who wants to be drafted by an NFL team, and who puts all his effort into running the fastest 40 yard dash time possible, without developing his overall football skills.  This football player might hire trainers specifically to help him boost his 40 yard dash time, run sprints at high altitude, sleep in an oxygen tent, and maybe even engage in less-legal methods of performance enhancement.  In the end, all this effort may allow our football player to run a very fast 40 yard dash, and he might be drafted even though his football skills are substandard.  Now in reality, since NFL teams are pretty savvy business enterprises, they're willing to spend the time and money to test draft prospects in many different areas, and intensively evaluate their football skills.  So most teams would weed out our "track star" if he lacks real football skills.

But in the public school GT testing system, that one test carries extraordinary weight, so the system can be inappropriately gamed by some unscrupulous parent who wants to prep her child for the test, even though the child lacks the overall academic skills to match that test score.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics