I’ve been meaning to tell this story for a while, but I’ve been so buried under stuff that my mind has been unable thus far to tell the tale in a fairly truncated manner.
Because man, the whole thing was just stupid. And get ready with some coffee and scones, because this is one loooong story.
In my state, some 2nd graders are tested for the gifted program. In some schools, every single child is tested, in others, only ones that have been recommended by teachers. In my particular district, a test called the Naglieri is used. The Naglieri is often used in many school districts with a large population of students that speak a second language or are economically disadvantaged, or both. Essentially, it doesn’t have any words and uses pictures instead.
So the Munchkin was recommended to take the test, but upon doing some research and speaking with my sister, who is a GATE teacher, I found out that some students with verbal giftedness can do badly on the Naglieri. Because duh, no words. I asked that very question of the district GATE coordinator at a parent information meeting, and she did indeed admit that some verbally gifted students could be overlooked with that specific test.
Cut to my son receiving a HORRIBLE score on that test. I mean, according to the Naglieri, he wasn’t even performing up to grade level standards. Which of course was not true.
I wrote a nice and polite email to the GATE coordinator stating that I didn’t think my son’s performance was reflective of his abilities, as we all could tell from his grades that he was obviously performing at or above grade level.
She replies that fine, if I would like, she could have a broader-scale IQ test administered, called the WISC-IV. This is a two hour test conducted by a trained school psychologist that spans a larger set of skills than the Naglieri, which is mostly focused on logic.
So the Munchkin takes the test, and when he gets in the car afterwards, he tells me his brain is “on fire.”
Which I sort of took to be a good sign.
His test scores come back, and there are four subsets of results dealing with specific areas of skill. His verbal is fantastic, definitely in the highly gifted range. He has some good scores in two other subsets, but only in the moderately gifted range. Then comes a low-ish score in the last subset.
I’m told that oh, too bad. That low-ish score means my son isn’t good enough to qualify for the GATE program. OKTHXBAI.
Wait, what?
(more…)
