Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Presumably, that should mean that AAP students should be able to pass them easily.

Not really--they have content questions that are about topic areas they didn't study or worked on a year or more ago and they are not in the front of their minds. Also AAP kids can tend to 'overthink' multiple choice questions (and if you have looked at these they are not the most well-written questions--there's often multiple answers that could be correct if you tend to overthink). SOLs are not intended to be nor are they good measures of giftedness.

They are a good measure of 'advanced' though. For the reading and math SOLs, if a kid is advanced, they should be able to pass. If they can't pass a grade level SOL, then maybe they aren't advanced.

Not really. I just don't think SOLs are good assessments (and my kids do always score pass advanced on them). I would value the teacher's opinion more. I think I would be okay for a situation where if a kid did not pass the SOL and the teacher recommended it, they be re-evaluated for AAP. But I think the number of kids in that situation would be vanishingly small based --though that's just based on my own 2 kids' AAP class experiences.

The SOLs are objective. If the kid can't pass it then they likely don't need AAP (that's the standard the county sets for admission to AAP) and will be adequately served by gen ed.

Just because something is "objective" doesn't make it a good measure of whatever you want it to measure. SoLs were really designed to assess teachers--how well they are teaching the standards of learning, not the individual students potential or ability. The SOL are tied to taught content not underlying thinking capacity. Yes, AAP students usually do well on them as these things correlate, but I wouldn't bake that into policy. They are not great tests and they don't measure advanced abilities well. Using them in this way would also never fly with the state requirements around gifted learners anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Presumably, that should mean that AAP students should be able to pass them easily.

Not really--they have content questions that are about topic areas they didn't study or worked on a year or more ago and they are not in the front of their minds. Also AAP kids can tend to 'overthink' multiple choice questions (and if you have looked at these they are not the most well-written questions--there's often multiple answers that could be correct if you tend to overthink). SOLs are not intended to be nor are they good measures of giftedness.

They are a good measure of 'advanced' though. For the reading and math SOLs, if a kid is advanced, they should be able to pass. If they can't pass a grade level SOL, then maybe they aren't advanced.

Not really. I just don't think SOLs are good assessments (and my kids do always score pass advanced on them). I would value the teacher's opinion more. I think I would be okay for a situation where if a kid did not pass the SOL and the teacher recommended it, they be re-evaluated for AAP. But I think the number of kids in that situation would be vanishingly small based --though that's just based on my own 2 kids' AAP class experiences.

The SOLs are objective. If the kid can't pass it then they likely don't need AAP (that's the standard the county sets for admission to AAP) and will be adequately served by gen ed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Presumably, that should mean that AAP students should be able to pass them easily.

Not really--they have content questions that are about topic areas they didn't study or worked on a year or more ago and they are not in the front of their minds. Also AAP kids can tend to 'overthink' multiple choice questions (and if you have looked at these they are not the most well-written questions--there's often multiple answers that could be correct if you tend to overthink). SOLs are not intended to be nor are they good measures of giftedness.

They are a good measure of 'advanced' though. For the reading and math SOLs, if a kid is advanced, they should be able to pass. If they can't pass a grade level SOL, then maybe they aren't advanced.

Not really. I just don't think SOLs are good assessments (and my kids do always score pass advanced on them). I would value the teacher's opinion more. I think I would be okay for a situation where if a kid did not pass the SOL and the teacher recommended it, they be re-evaluated for AAP. But I think the number of kids in that situation would be vanishingly small based --though that's just based on my own 2 kids' AAP class experiences.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

This shouldn't be a problem. For the reading SOL, AAP kids should find that the reading passages are easy to understand, and there are no weird or no concepts that are not aligned with what is being taught in AAP. For math, most of the curriculum spirals and builds upon itself. At most, the kids would get a couple questions wrong if they couldn't remember some of the stuff that didn't spiral from the previous year, but that wouldn't matter. Kids can still pass if they get a lot of problems wrong. If a kid fails or even scores below 450, the kid has some massive gaps.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Presumably, that should mean that AAP students should be able to pass them easily.

Not really--they have content questions that are about topic areas they didn't study or worked on a year or more ago and they are not in the front of their minds. Also AAP kids can tend to 'overthink' multiple choice questions (and if you have looked at these they are not the most well-written questions--there's often multiple answers that could be correct if you tend to overthink). SOLs are not intended to be nor are they good measures of giftedness.

They are a good measure of 'advanced' though. For the reading and math SOLs, if a kid is advanced, they should be able to pass. If they can't pass a grade level SOL, then maybe they aren't advanced.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Presumably, that should mean that AAP students should be able to pass them easily.

Not really--they have content questions that are about topic areas they didn't study or worked on a year or more ago and they are not in the front of their minds. Also AAP kids can tend to 'overthink' multiple choice questions (and if you have looked at these they are not the most well-written questions--there's often multiple answers that could be correct if you tend to overthink). SOLs are not intended to be nor are they good measures of giftedness.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Presumably, that should mean that AAP students should be able to pass them easily.

Because for UMC parents, AAP placement is a status symbol, and they're not going to let you take that away from them.

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you really want schools to spend more time/money on annual reevaluation? A Cogat score is a fairly stable measure of intellectual potential.
Parents can--and do--pull their kids out of AAP if they are not thriving there. That has happened in both my kids' classes. I don't see the need for more bureaucratic hurdles.

Sometimes kids are 2e (high IQ with learning disabilities) and they aren't always easily going to quite thrive anywhere but AAP is the best spot for them. Sometimes parents coached kids into a high test score and aren't willing to back down to a more appropriate education when their kids aren't thriving. But most of the time it works fine.

Source? Because I thought only 30% of kids who scored gifted on a Cogat one year score gifted the next.

You're in a sense right, because all tests show a regression to the mean on retesting--especially for the highest groups. This is just a pattern of statistics. So when I said "fairly stable" I included that in my thinking. But annual retesting is terrible for any measure of giftedness. Multiple measures is better. Out of the affordable, short form group tests, Cogat---and especially cogat combined with GBRS are reasonably stable. It would be even better to combine it with a test like Iowa Basic Skills rather than NNAT.

But ultimately I think FCPS policy which is to guarantee admissions once admitted but also allow new kids in with testing is the right way to go. Parents can opt out if it's not a good --but retesting has a ton of measurement errors.

This article is pretty good on this:https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746292.pdf. They argue for the combination of Cogat and ITBS to offset all the measurement errors and argue against frequent repeated testing.

I know some parents who opted out because the Center was not a good fit for their child. I know parents who choose to defer because they knew that their kid wasn't strong enough in math. I suspect that they are in the minority though.

There are parents who are using AAP to flee their schools, those parents are not going to pull their child from AAP if the child is struggling because the whole point of AAP is to get away from a school they don't like. There are parents who value the label because it tells them that their kids are advanced, they are not going to pull their child because it would mean admitting that their kid wasn't advanced.

You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Anonymous wrote:
But ultimately I think FCPS policy which is to guarantee admissions once admitted but also allow new kids in with testing is the right way to go. Parents can opt out if it's not a good --but retesting has a ton of measurement errors.

DP. I agree that retesting is a waste of time, but I also disagree with guaranteed admissions through 8th. By the end of 4th grade, the schools should have 2 years of SOLs and 2 years of teacher evaluations of AAP kids. At that point, kids who are consistently receiving low scores on the SOL and have the teachers agree that the kid would be better placed in gen ed should be dropped from the program.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If all schools maintained rigor and let underperforming kids fail, this would be a self correcting problem. Some schools take this approach. Others pause the rest of the kids to remediate to the ones who are struggling, or they do tons of group work, pairing the struggling kids up with high achievers to mask how much the kid is struggling.

The last thing a failing kid needs is a being paired with the advanced kid. Way to make them feel more stupid. And is the advanced kid supposed to teach the failing kid math? OMG.

Signed mom of a failing kid.

This is all within AAP. Sometimes, the failing kid in AAP isn't trying very hard, and the teacher is hoping that one of the high achievers will be a good peer model. Sometimes, the teacher has a classroom of 28 kids and is hoping that the very advanced kid will somewhat help teach the failing kid. Generally, though, I think the teacher is trying to mask the deficiencies of the failing kid because it's less headache for the teacher. If Billy rightfully deserves a 1 or 2 grade, it's much easier for the teacher to inflate his grade by putting him in a group with a kid who is going to do all of the work and earn a 4, and then use that to justify giving Billy a 3 and passing him along to another teacher.

My kid had to deal with this in language arts. He was always paired with a kid who could barely write coherent sentences. Both kids got 4s for their project, where my kid did all of the research and writing, while the other kid found pictures on the internet for the slide show.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you really want schools to spend more time/money on annual reevaluation? A Cogat score is a fairly stable measure of intellectual potential.
Parents can--and do--pull their kids out of AAP if they are not thriving there. That has happened in both my kids' classes. I don't see the need for more bureaucratic hurdles.

Sometimes kids are 2e (high IQ with learning disabilities) and they aren't always easily going to quite thrive anywhere but AAP is the best spot for them. Sometimes parents coached kids into a high test score and aren't willing to back down to a more appropriate education when their kids aren't thriving. But most of the time it works fine.

Source? Because I thought only 30% of kids who scored gifted on a Cogat one year score gifted the next.

You're in a sense right, because all tests show a regression to the mean on retesting--especially for the highest groups. This is just a pattern of statistics. So when I said "fairly stable" I included that in my thinking. But annual retesting is terrible for any measure of giftedness. Multiple measures is better. Out of the affordable, short form group tests, Cogat---and especially cogat combined with GBRS are reasonably stable. It would be even better to combine it with a test like Iowa Basic Skills rather than NNAT.

But ultimately I think FCPS policy which is to guarantee admissions once admitted but also allow new kids in with testing is the right way to go. Parents can opt out if it's not a good --but retesting has a ton of measurement errors.

This article is pretty good on this:https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746292.pdf. They argue for the combination of Cogat and ITBS to offset all the measurement errors and argue against frequent repeated testing.

Anonymous wrote:Do you really want schools to spend more time/money on annual reevaluation? A Cogat score is a fairly stable measure of intellectual potential.
Parents can--and do--pull their kids out of AAP if they are not thriving there. That has happened in both my kids' classes. I don't see the need for more bureaucratic hurdles.

Sometimes kids are 2e (high IQ with learning disabilities) and they aren't always easily going to quite thrive anywhere but AAP is the best spot for them. Sometimes parents coached kids into a high test score and aren't willing to back down to a more appropriate education when their kids aren't thriving. But most of the time it works fine.

Source? Because I thought only 30% of kids who scored gifted on a Cogat one year score gifted the next.