Reply to Fairfax County GT/AAP Decisions

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "Fairfax County GT/AAP Decisions"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote]The problem is... the GBRS is NOT 'objective'...it it ENTIRELY subjective and in my opinion, should be discontinued OR weighted in terms of the decision process. Right now it could carry 100% of the decision at the school level and a parent has no way to determine how much it biased the selection process. [/quote]

I have to disagree with you.

The GBRS is somewhat subjective in the sense that it's based on the teacher's impressions and interactions with the child, and a different teacher might make different observations and give a different assessment of that same child.  However, it's objective in the sense of (hopefully) being fairly unbiased, in that the teacher is not the parent, and presumably does not have a vested interest in the child getting in or not getting in to the Center.  The teacher is assessing multiple students for screening, and presumably s/he would want to maintain some level of credibility by consistently assessing students truthfully and as accurately as possible.  The GBRS form asks teachers to note how often a child exhibits certain BEHAVIORS - it does not ask them how bright they think the child is or whether they think the child should be in the Center; it lists a behavior and asks them if they observe the child exhibiting this behavior rarely, occasionally, frequently, or consistently.  That's an objective standard.

I just don't believe there are a lot of qualified kids who are getting sandbagged by teachers who are deliberately or maliciously giving low GBRS scores to kids who deserve to be rated higher.  I'm not saying there are no kids who belong in the Center but were not perceived as such by their teachers.  I'm not saying there are no bad teachers out there.  But by and large, I don't believe teachers are sabotaging kids with the GBRS and therefore the GBRS should be eliminated.

Anyway, there is a reason NOTHING is weighted in the selection process and why parents are allowed to submit materials in support of their children.  That's your chance to explain why the teacher does not see your child's potential or why your child's classroom performance is not an accurate reflection of his/her abilities.  The selection committee is free to and does consider EVERYHING in the file, and if the test scores and other submissions are strong, they can easily choose to discount or disregard a weak GBRS.

As someone whose kid did not have the test scores but got in based on the rest of his file, I could take the exact opposite view from yours and say I think the testing should be discontinued.  I don't really think it should, but one could certainly argue that standardized testing isn't truly objective either, as lots of extremely bright kids simply aren't skilled in test-taking yet and thus don't perform well on those types of tests, the questions are read aloud and thus it is biased against kids who are more visual than auditory, and that demonstrated achievement in and outside the classroom is a better indicator of which children need the advanced curriculum of the Center and will thrive there.

I'm not sure what you mean by "a parent has no way to determine how much the GBRS biased the selection process," IF you are using the term "biased" in a pejorative sense, because that would imply that there's something unfair about the committee considering the GBRS submission.  If by "biased" you just mean "influenced," well, parents have no way of knowing how much ANY one item in the child's screening file influenced the committee's decision.  My kid's test scores were only 96th percentile, so not low by any means, but not high enough for the automatic screening pool.  His scores very well may have biased the selection committee against him, but there's no inherent unfairness in that, even though I don't think his scores reflected his ability.  Apparently other things in his file swayed them in favor of finding him eligible.  I believe one of those things was the GBRS (though I don't know his GBRS score), because his teacher has made a point of letting me know on multiple occasions throughout the school year about some of the things my child said or did in school that really surprised & impressed the teacher.

The bottom line is that there are qualified kids who are quiet or non-participatory in the classroom or for some reason their potential is not being well-identified by their teachers, but they blow everyone away on these standardized tests or have other things in their background that show their qualification for the Center.  There are other kids who don't excel in standardized testing (and by "not excel," we're talking about scoring 90-97th percentile rather than 98th & 99th, which is where the automatic pool cuts off), but they shine in other ways that consistently impress their teachers in the classroom and other adults who work with them.  The purpose of the screening process is to identify both kinds of kids by obtaining as much information as possible to provide a complete picture of each child.   [/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