Reply to S/O - Potential defector from ACPS to APS, how does the gifted program work?

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Reply to "S/O - Potential defector from ACPS to APS, how does the gifted program work?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Something like 80% of kids in Arlington are identified as gifted by middle school so the reality is the "programming" doesn't amount to much. If the label is what you're after, you'll probably get it. But if you're looking for genuine services, you may need to go private. [/quote]

Is this true?  Genuine curiosity, not snark.  [/quote]

No.  The average county-wide is 8%.  The range county-wide is between 1 and 17% of a given elementary school's population.

Interesting reading here for those like OP who are interested in how the GT program is supposed to work, and the facts and figures behind it. 
https://www.apsva.us/planning-and-evaluation/evaluation/evaluation-reports/
This appendix breaks down the numbers.  https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/APPENDIX-C-GIFTED.pdf

The 80% figure relates more to the fact that once a kid is referred, the vast majority tend to be then identified as gifted. Overall, the number of kids identified is not that high. It's not completely Lake Wobegon.

To me the real takeaway is two-fold.  First, that they know they are lagging in referring and identifying kids who are lower-socioeconomic status, ethnicities other than white and asian, and kids who are disabled.  Second, long-term that by middle school there are little or no gifted services targeted at kids who have been identified.[/quote]

This poster is correct on the statistics, both on the % referred and the % referred identified as gifted. It makes sense to see a high % of referred children identified, since the vast majority of referrals come either from standardized testing designed to identify giftedness or from teachers who have experience identifying and working with gifted students.

I'm not sure where you're coming from, though, with the claim that by middle school there are little to no gifted services targeted at identified students. I only skimmed the data for middle school, I will admit, but for math, it shows 91% of students identified as gifted in math being in an advanced math class. 83% of students identified as advanced English are in a class with a gifted cluster or an advanced class (which is intended to give the teacher the ability to introduce more advanced material). The stats are lower for science and social studies (22% and 21%, respectively), but then by high school those numbers jump substantially (78% and 87%, respectively). That they aren't in classes with a gifted cluster in those subjects does not mean, though, that those kids aren't being given supplementation or extra challenges in those subjects. It also may reflect certain realities of those groups, such as that substantially fewer children are identified as gifted in those areas as compared to English and math going into middle school, so it may be harder to create advanced and cluster classes for those subjects. By high school, which has a much larger student population, you're more likely to have the critical mass you need to create those advanced classes.[/quote]

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