Posts filed under ‘Regional Gifted Program’
Our Gifted Testing Experience – Part 2 (for 1st grade)
On a friend’s advice I called to see if I could reschedule my son’s 8am test time for the Gifted Test. I decided to cancel the Classical test since I didn’t want to go down for the test 2 days in a row. On they phone, they offered me a test time for the next day – slightly freaky, but why not? I wasn’t planning to prepare my son in any way, so I just took the next-day option. If I haven’t said it before, I wish the people who run the testing and the GEAP office people were running CPS. In my experiences, they’ve all been incredibly nice, fairly accomadating, intelligent, and professional. When you get into that time period where they’re doling out the gifted spots they are super-efficient (a word that rarely comes to mind when I think of CPS.)
So, test day – another snowy snowy day in our fine city. I leave the house (in my usual late fashion) with the following:
Comic books
Book (Stink and the Super Stinky Sneakers)
Nintendo DS (in case we wait a long time – don’t know why I thought that since I was running late)
Headphones for Nintendo DS
Bottle of water
Tic Tacs
Lifesavers
Reading material for me
Extra pants and shirt in case the ones he’s wearing get wet in snow
Dollar bills for the parking lot, as instructed
What I leave the house without:
Our admissions notification with the testing ID# and exact address.
Exciting snack I promised my son in the car on the way to the test
I return home to get important document but am still lacking the snack.
Pick him up, usual dawdlings, starting to panic that we’ll be late, 4 blocks later he has to pee, pull into Lane Tech parking lot so he can pee in plastic bottle (thankful now that I don’t have a girl,) go to Wendy’s drive-thru adrenaline building so I miss highway exit, turn around, get on highway, freak out about traffic, continuously suck on Frosty straw getting continuously more angry that it is too thick to drink with straw, panic more. Then something re-aligns in the universe, traffic opens up, Frosty comes up the straw, we hit 31st St. and breeze into test site early. Whew.
This testing experience was different from that for Kindergarten placement in that a group of kids are all tested together. We started in big lecture hall and the nice testing people explained what would happen, then 2 groups of 15 kids each were taken out. The whole thing is easier because 5-year-olds are generally more sane than 4-year-olds. I don’t think any child was having a major problem. Off they marched, unaware of how their fate depended on this next hour.
The test guy said the test would involve no reading, but each question would have pictures and the child would be asked to choose the picture that was the right answer. Of course once again, the kids were all brainwashed and my son couldn’t seem to recall ANYTHING that was on the test a mere 10 minutes prior. And he said it was fun and “awesome!”
The kids were in there for exactly an hour, then all marched out, seemingly a bit weary. All in all, fairly painless.
UPDATE: Through conversational trickery, we got him to divulge a couple things about the test (pre 1st grade gifted test:) The picture answers were all in black and white. They had to fill in a circle below the correct answer. One question was to choose the piece the completed a puzzle above. The other was to choose which shape matched the 3 others above it. He says there were no letter/numbers. So take that for what it’s worth.
Got a Test Date. Ugh.
So it looks like the guy at the post office got my application postmarked for the Gifted/Classical test. (Thank you, whoever you are, for not chastising me for cutting it so close that day. — Wouldn’t that have been funny if he was some fellow CPS-knowedgeable parent and he’d looked at the address on the letter and said “Lady, don’t you think it would have been smarter NOT to wait until the last 2 hours to mail this!?!”)
We got a test date for the Gifted/Classical testing for 1st grade. Or should I say test dates. I didn’t realize that the tests are given at separate times and dates. Going into Kindergarten, each child is tested individually so they can take both tests at once. For 1st grade and up, the kids are tested in groups so they split up the test times.
So… we got a classical test time for an afternoon and the gifted test for the next morning at 8am. At IIT. Which means we need to leave the house at (what for me is) an ungodly hour. Like before 7am. Have I mentioned that I can rarely get my child to school 8 minutes from my home (not that I’m counting) by 9am each day? Having been a happy WAHS (work at home slob) for the past couple years, I’m just not good at getting up before the sun. Nor is my son who seems genetically programmed to open his eyes at exactly 7am each morning. So this 8am thing is our fly in the ointment. I need to decide if it’s worth trekking down to IIT at that early hour mainly to satisfy my curiousity about the test process and the year-to-year score variations (sample size: one.) Got to mull this one over…….
How can I tell if my child is gifted?
I heard this question asked a couple times when I was helping at the NPN Fair. Mainly from parents who mentioned that people commented that their child should be tested for giftedness (and I think they meant people other than the grandparents.)
I just happened upon this interesting article that talks about the 5 levels of Giftedness. Level 1 (which probably describes many of the kids in the CPS gifted programs) are the “bright” kids. Level 5 is astounding. You’ve heard stories about them and I assume there are some at schools like Edison. Or maybe they’re in extra-special gifted programs that people like me don’t know about or are taking college classes or something. But this article lists specific behaviors that you can use to eyeball your own child.
Level 1 kids know most letters, colors and can count by age 3.
Level 3 kids know many sight words by age 3 – 3.5
Level 5 kids read chapter books by age 3.5 – 4.5. And sadly, question the reality of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy by age 2-3. (I STILL cannot fathom how my son buys into this – clearly he’s not Level 5.)
http://www.educationaloptions.com/resources/resources_levels_giftedness.php
The problem is that many Level 1′s won’t make it into a CPS Gifted Program, just because there aren’t enough spaces. That’s where the luck of a good mood/good test day comes into play. The good news is that there are a lot of Level 1′s in the neighborhood schools, who’s parents should be making sure the school is challenging them adequately.
So should you try to prep a kid for the gifted test?
OK, so even if you can prep a kid for the gifted test, the next question is whether you should or not?
Question #1: Does prepping help? Just in my own opinion, I think that any type of test prep can help you (or your child) feel more comfortable on the test day and give you the best advantage possible. I definitely benefitted from test prep for the SATs and GMATs back in the day when I could actually concentrate on stuff like that. However since the version of the CPS test is still unknown, you may throw your kid off by having them practice on stuff that won’t actually be on the test. However practing doing little test-type exercises will probably help them feel more comfortable. Which brings up another question — what do you tell your kid about the test? Or do you even say that its a test? A friend of mine told her child it was an “interview” where they would help decide which school was best for her. I told my son that it was a test to see what he’d been learning in school.
Question #2: Can you actually improve the score by prepping your child? From what I’ve seen in my own kid, there are points at which knowledge “gels” in their brains. And before that happens, you just ain’t gonna force it in. When he took the test he could (with coaxing) read some 3 letter words. I am pretty sure that no level of practice could have gotten him beyond that point. I recently was reading some of the basic points of Piaget, who did some of the most famous research on child development. He had a couple tests that can be done to see if kids have reached certain mental milestones. One of them is to show 2 sets of objects with the same number of items, but one is spead out wider than the other. The child is asked which set has more items. Kids about 6 and under will say that the wider set has more items since the group appears visually bigger. I conducted this test on my son with 2 pack of Smarties. I counted out 15 in each pack, right before his eyes. Yet when I asked him which has more he would insist the wide-spread group had more. Honestly it was shocking to see. Like HOW could he not be getting it?!? Finally I counted out the Smarties again for him in both groups. His comment, “WHOAAA! Weird!” Like it was even freaking him out! Ah, the young mind. I guess that’s why they believe that Santa can deliver all the presents on Xmas eve using flying reindeer. So, case in point… I just don’t know if you can teach them more than the are developmentally ready to handle. And if there are certain types of logic questions on the test, ideally they could become more familiar with the questions, but I doubt that they can learn a level of logic that they don’t already possess.
Question #3: Is it good to “prep” your kid into gifted placement? Well, the biggest fear is that if prepping actually helps a kid beyond that their real abilities are, they could end up being in a class where they can’t keep up, which could just make things difficult in the end. I suspect that in the K and 1st grade level classes most kids are given leeway enough that just about any child can learn at their own level. But in the older elementary grades, I think things are really bumped up a notch. Some of that higher-level math could even put an adult to shame. On my tour of Bell, the principal mentioned a girl who moved into the regular 7th grade class so as not to be penalized grade-wise during that year (when grades help determine which high school you get into.) He said it turned out for the best because she got the grades needed for one of the top selective high schools and was now doing very well there. So…. one point in favor of attending a school with both gifted and neighborhood classes.
In the end, I think a lot of parents joke around about prepping for the gifted and classical testing, but I haven’t met any that have truly pursued any type of real prepping. I think most pre-school programs do a decent job of teaching kids the basics (some probably better than others.) If you have had faith in your preschool or what you’ve been teaching at home, you should be feeling like your child is as well prepared as they can be. And finally – not all types of intelligence are tested on these things. Some kids are smart in other ways… in fact one my son’s friends who really stood out to me as being a real smarty did not score high on the CPS gifted test for reasons I cannot fathom, while my son who thinks the word ”buttocks” is the funniest thing on the planet did. Maybe “buttocks” was somehow incorporated into the test?
UPDATED: Here is an interesting post on another blog with input from a person who does gifted testing in NYC: http://edgeforlife.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/interview-with-an-olsat-tester-in-nyc/
Yeahhhh, so the homework thing…
One of my concerns about my son entering a CPS Gifted Program was the homework. Edison and Bell are known to give copious amounts. The principal at our new school assured us that the CPS guideline is 15 minutes a night and she supported that. Well, that sounds like just a blip of time every evening.
So now, in fact, he does have homework virtually every night. Mercifully, it is given out in a weekly packet so parents can decide if they want to start good nightly habits or raise yet another generation of procrastinators who are trying to crank through the whole packet on Sunday nights.
Each assignment includes a few cute and appealing little worksheets that look as though they would take minutes to fill in. The challenge, of course, is keeping a Kindergartener focused enough to complete it. The challenge, of course, that makes me wonder how a teacher ever gets 27 5-year-olds to sit and do anything for more than 3 minutes. Clearly magic or witchcraft is involved.
Much of the homework involves writing, and perhaps the girls are more efficient, but getting a 5yo boy to write a whole page of letters is just slightly easier than convincing my dog to bring me breakfast in bed. The pauses, the wrong letters that spontaneously pop out of his pencil, the random drawing of a butt that needs to be made (“would my teacher think I was a jerk if I left that there?”) BTW, the universal butt symbol is a circle with a line going vertically down the center. It can easily be turned into an apple to disguise it. The gist is that these 2-4 little pages can end up taking freakin’ FOREVER to complete what with the goading, coercing, cajoling, slow writing, refocusing, doodling, etc.
Due to this, I actually had a homework nightmare this past week. I suspect it will replace the long-standing college stress dreams that I’ve had for 20 years. In the dream I had to turn in a kiddie homework assignment (yes, me) but somehow I couldn’t figure out the directions or what the teacher wanted. If this is starting in week 3 of Kindergarten, I’m looking at a lot of restless nights ahead.
Our CPS Gifted/Classical Testing Experience (Pre-Kindergarten)
Before the Gifted/Classical testing, I’d scoured the message boards and interrogated other parents about what might be on the test. Apparently that is the best kept secret in the city. Something is done to keep these kids from talking. Something nice and subtle, yet supremely effective. All I could gather was that the gifted test measures logical thinking and the classical test measures reading and writing readiness. Word on the street is that the longer your kid is in the room, the better they performed. The testing center told me the maximum time could reach 55 minutes for both tests. In the meantime I’ve heard a rumor that the testers mess with the minds of nutty parents like me and keep the kids in there a long time just coloring and stuff after the test is over. (What kind of weird educational mental torture is that?! Give me the water treatment, but don’t mess with the gifted testing you sadists.)
The day of his test, my son had preschool in the morning. I picked up after lunch with a buffet of snacks and what I’m sure was a fake overly-pleasant attitude. My number one fear was that with him being an introverted child who is tentative in new situations, he would not walk into the testing room without me. Ultimately, I didn’t care all that much. I wasn’t that into getting a spot in a Gifted/Classical school, I just wanted some validation that my kid was halfway intelligent and that I hadn’t done something in his 4.5 short years to mess up his brain. But since we were weighing the option of staying in private school I couldn’t help but see 9 years of decent free education dangling out there like a carrot on a stick.
We arrived early (for once in my life) and were lucky enough to be taken right away. (woo hoo, that means other kids finished the test early… gives us a better chance!) All I can say is that whoever selects the testers has done an amazing job. A woman took my son away from me and he went so willingly it made me question whether his Stranger Safety video had made any kind of impact at all. Off he went, happy as could be with nary a look back at me. (Buddy, look out! If she tries to get you to leave the building, make a run for it!) I immediately consulted my watch so I could start my neurotic timing of the test.
Twenty minutes passed and they brought him out to the lobby.
“Ohhhhhhhh,” I said in my fake happy voice, “Done already?!” I’m sure the testing lady could see the palpable disappointment on my face and she pegged me as “one of those” parents.
“He needed to take a bathroom break” said the tester.
“YESSSSSS!” No, I didn’t actually say that – just thought it.
Clearly he had been coached not to speak to me. He passed by and waved as a man took him over to the bathroom.
Back to the test he went for another 15 minutes. So 25 in total. Eh. Oh well.
As we walked back out to the car I waited a good 5 minutes before starting my lighthearted questioning. What was on the test? Silence. Did they ask you to read? No. To write? No. To tell a story about a picture? No. Which things were bigger or smaller than others? No. What order pictures would go in to form a story? No. Well, what did you do in there all that time? I can’t remember. God, they’d gotten to him. He wasn’t talking.
On the drive on the way home he told me the following tidbit:
Him: “I had a dud pencil so I couldn’t write down any of the answers.”
Me: (Hyperventaliting internally, yet maintaining outward calm. Trying not to sound utterly horrified.) “You mean the pencil wouldn’t write? (Wait, 4 year olds can barely even write!? They had to write down their answers?!)
Him: No, it wouldn’t write at all.
Me: Did you tell the lady?
Him: Nah.
Me: Hmmmm. And she didn’t notice it wasn’t working?
Him. No.
Could this be real? Should I turn the car around and go back for another chance? Demand a good pencil? Could he have made this all up? I don’t think he even knows what a dud pencil is! There is no WAY that most of the test involved pencils! Is there?
That night I relayed the conversation to his Dad.
Me: ….so he said the lady didn’t notice the “dud” pencil at all.
Dad: That was the test.
Me: Wuh?
Dad: That was the test. (Dramatic pause…) To see what a kid would do if they’re given a dud pencil during a test.
Me:. Noooooooo. They wouldn’t!
Me: Would they?
Me: My God. That would be so weird and manipulative. No. No no no. I cannot believe that. They seemed so nice.
And so – we were left with no idea about what was on those tests or how it went. Or if a pencil was involved. Or if it was a dud.
Eventually I found out one single thing that had allegedly been part of the test. It involved writing a 2-letter word. The other 24 minutes remain a mystery.
What’s with all North Side gifted programs?
OK, I admit it – I am excited to have my kid in a gifted program. It is probably the closest I’ll come to being able to “brag” about my kid in any way. I’ll never utter the words “My son goes to Harvard” unless his Dad and I plan to sell our house and live in a box under Lower Wacker Drive to pay the tuition. I’m quite sure I’ll never be saying “My son, the doctor” since he currently freaks out like a wild banshee if he has to look at a scrape on his own knee. So his greatest educational achievement may have come about from a test he took at age 4. Go figure.
So although I am thrilled to have scammed into this opportunity, I can’t help but wonder what is up with this plethora of Gifted Programs on the north side. Edison, which used to be located way-too-far-to-consider (unless your child is really really smart and needs to be with like-minded smarties,) is moving to Albany Park this Fall. Coonley is located curiously close to Bell. Beaubien is up north, and of course Decatur skims off some of the pool. So in an fairly narrow locale there are 4 accelerated classes that a kid can test into. It begs the question, “Isn’t it a wee bit inefficient?” Does it make sense to have Bell and Coonley existing with similar programs like little RGC “twins?”
It’s a good idea on several counts:
1. In theory, the principals of Bell and Coonley can pop over to visit one another to share best practices (let’s face it, in this day and age I’m guessing they’ll just be emailing each other, if anything.)
2. It makes it easy for the French teacher who will work in both programs. (Maybe this was all HER idea! Merci Beaucoup! – I hear she is fantastic, BTW.)
3. Perhaps Coonley is being positioned to take the overflow of Bell, which is close to bursting at the seams.
4. CPS has something up its sleeve. (Conspiracy Woman emerging here.) My personal suspicion is that Coonley is being set up as the buffer for Bell. If the Bell neighborhood continues to grow, they’ll have to either redraw the school boundaries or move someone out of the school (choices are the Deaf program or the Gifted program… who would you feel worse about booting?) And the RGC could easily be phased out grade by grade, starting at the bottom. Or heck, they could just move it all out of Bell in one fell swoop like they did with Edison.
5. The Coonley neighborhood is ripe to transition into a Bell-esque neighborhood – with a strong school that attracts families and drives up property values.
The downside of having several gifted programs clustered together is:
1. Well, it just doesn’t seem fair. Most people choose schools that are generally close to home. So I have to figure that kids in certain neighborhoods, whose parents may lack reliable transportation are stuck without a gifted option, even if they test well.
2. Terrorists could pinpoint Chicago’s epicenter of youthful intelligence and wipe out a chunk of smart kids with one well-directed missile. (Just kidding, that is only in the Hollywood version of the CPS story, which will clearly never be made into a motion picture.)
Only time will tell whether it was a good “business” decision or if my paranoid conspiracy radar is working accurately.
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