Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks all, I wrote something. I know the identification is fairly meaningless, but if they end up clustering the gifted kids in classroom placement next year, I want my kid in the cluster.

So you have received communication from the RTG regarding the test scores? My kid scored high on the test, but we haven't heard from anyone at the school about it.

I'm one of the posters with kids past elementary school. We actually had to take the test scores with the comment on the form that says 'these results indicate the student is eligible for gifted services'...or whatever the print on the actual CoGat result form says. Nobody contacted us and if I didn't go in with that form he never would have gotten in. They also did a REAL number on him by putting him in the lower group when they divided the grade in half. This was a kid with zero behavior problems, conscientious, high test scores and the highest grades on papers. He came home the first week of 5th grade and said 'I'm not with my friends in the 'good' group'. The school made a big deal about there not being a 'high and low group' but that was COMPLETE BS and it was done by favoritism, parental donations and kids that self-identified their kids as gifted in preschool--Lol. His friend was in the same boat, but once I shed light on the matter they circled the wagons (after moving my kid to the appropriate classes) and didn't let anyone else in, even when they were more deserving then some of the 'donor' kids in there.

And this was a PUBLIC school mind you.... JFC.

My son received his letter the summer after kindergarten. In the referral letter, I provided brief input - such as his PAL scores. I knew the teacher was also going to refer him. It's funny - now that my son is in 5th grade in Fairfax's AAP program, I have no idea how they truly assess 5 year old kids.

I don’t know if it matters, but we filled it out anyway. I was frankly shocked by my kid’s CogAT scores because he seems pretty average compared to his peers we know - although he is the youngest in his class. We didn’t do the parent identified portfolio the prior year because we didn’t want to be “that parent”.

We filled it out honestly as best we could. Part of me considered that he might not get gifted services based on our answers because it shows that he has involved parents with resources for enrichment. Another kid with 99s whose parents don’t respond and likely has little support at home would be a better use of those school resources vs. a kid like mine. It also occurred to me that they might think our kid is not gifted - but is just precocious and coached by involved parents. We tried to just be factual and hope they can determine whether he is a good fit for the program or not.

Anonymous wrote:Thanks all, I wrote something. I know the identification is fairly meaningless, but if they end up clustering the gifted kids in classroom placement next year, I want my kid in the cluster.

So you have received communication from the RTG regarding the test scores? My kid scored high on the test, but we haven't heard from anyone at the school about it.

I disagree that it’s completely meaningless. DD had a much better experience after being put in gifted, and apparently the novels she read during school were during gifted time. Plus she was identified as gifted in art which gave her the option of taking some different art options in middle (which she didn’t actually do because she didn’t wind up going to the neighborhood middle school).

Anyways I don’t think the parent stuff matters much, unless maybe for some reason a parent doesn’t want their kid in gifted.

Thanks all, I wrote something. I know the identification is fairly meaningless, but if they end up clustering the gifted kids in classroom placement next year, I want my kid in the cluster.

^similar experience. My kid scored in the 99% on high school entrance exam and is in the top 3 (3 students not percentile) of high school class currently. He scored off the charts on sophomore PSAT. What we found hilarious was the letter we got at the end of 8th grade saying my kid was identified for GT in all subjects. 8th grade. Yet elementary school teachers told us he should have been it back then.

Anonymous wrote:It’s nonsense. They use the scores. You can’t lobby for your kid to be gifted. It’s very frustrating to the gifted administrators because that’s exactly what many parents do. Buy the scores are the scores.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Your kids obviously didn't attend ASFS.

But, seriously, it doesn't even matter down the road. The bogus parent-identified GT has zero correlation to success in high school/MS and on the SATs and ACTs. I had a Valedictorian at a private (that only has ONE valedictorian) and he wasn't put in GT, even though he had the scores because the pull out spots were filled by first grade from the families that started lobbying in Kindergarten. The kid used to do the entire group projects for the GT kids that never could do their homework and would fake sick on test or project day because they were unprepared.

Anonymous wrote:I spent about two seconds on the write ups for my kids. They still got in due to referral and Cogat scores (99%). If they were depending on what I wrote I doubt they would have gotten in. So I wouldn't worry about it.

+1

Anonymous wrote:It’s nonsense. They use the scores. You can’t lobby for your kid to be gifted. It’s very frustrating to the gifted administrators because that’s exactly what many parents do. Buy the scores are the scores.

Actually, you can lobby for it. Parents can initiate the process. But that isn’t what OP is asking. OP, I don’t know how much they look at the parental input, but probably not much? I would write something, though.

Anonymous wrote:I think OP is saying their child was identified gifted by the test, and now APS is asking for optional parent input and vignettes about the child to help them determine what gifted services would be appropriate. And so OP is asking, does this input actually matter?

That's my interpretation of the post, at least...

This is OP - and yes, that's pretty much it. Kid got an auto-referral for scoring 135 on the NNAT. Do I need to write some essay about his giftedness for the input form?

I spent about two seconds on the write ups for my kids. They still got in due to referral and Cogat scores (99%). If they were depending on what I wrote I doubt they would have gotten in. So I wouldn't worry about it.

I think OP is saying their child was identified gifted by the test, and now APS is asking for optional parent input and vignettes about the child to help them determine what gifted services would be appropriate. And so OP is asking, does this input actually matter?

That's my interpretation of the post, at least...

It’s nonsense. They use the scores. You can’t lobby for your kid to be gifted. It’s very frustrating to the gifted administrators because that’s exactly what many parents do. Buy the scores are the scores.

It says it's optional. Anyone know how much the parent input actually matters for gifted identification in APS early elementary?