Reply to Change to HGC Testing to make it more accessible to a more "diversified" group?

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Reply to "Change to HGC Testing to make it more accessible to a more "diversified" group?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]This is what we did. And I don't feel the tiniest bit of guilt. There were questions in the book that were easy to answer but would be difficult for kids who had never seen that type of question before. [/quote]

Of course the questions are easier after the child has seen and practiced doing that type of question. The point of the test is to separate out the kids who can understand and answer questions of a type they've never seen before, the kids who can figure out how to do problems without an adult telling them how.

A kid who can figure out those questions without being told in advance how to do them might really need and benefit from a different kind of education. The kid who can't do it on his own but can remember how he is taught to answer a question will probably do fine in a regular classroom. 
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How do you know prepping a student helps that much?  Remember these are not achievement tests but cognitive assessment.  What that means is you can't really study for it.  Where it likely helps is that kids become familiarized with the format.  I don't, however, see the connection with the content.[/quote]

I didn't say I know that it helps that much, I'm just responding to the quote above in which the poster said that the questions were easy but difficult for a kid who had never seen them before. That is the point of those questions: to see which kids can understand and answer them even though they've never seen questions like that before.

One of the indications of high intelligence is the ability to understand and figure out new problems. Being familiar with the format can make a difference in that it takes away the ability of the testers to see how the child deals with a new type of problem. The content does not matter as much, it is the fact that the child has become familiar with the format that changes what is being tested.

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I think the new problem for the kid should be the content itself, not the format of the content.  [/quote]

You are right. The PP argument is thin at best. [/quote]

For the middle school magnet test, MCPS does publish a test booklet so that students can familiarize themselves with the format. They also do sample questions before they take the test.  The test is still hard but this way they are testing content and not format.  [/quote]

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