New testing mechanism identifies twice as many as last year
Gilroy – A new testing mechanism used to identify students for the Gifted and Talented Education program nearly doubled the number of students identified in the past. For the first time all second grade students in the Gilroy Unified School District were tested on a more level playing field for admission into the GATE program, district officials said.
“It’s not so much that there’s more students identified than usual, as it is different students than usual,” said Marcia Brown, GUSD’s head of student services.
More than 750 students were tested throughout April and May, using the Raven Progressive Matrices Plus program, a testing instrument that does not require students to be fluent in English.
“There’s no reading at all. It’s all very visual,” Brown said. “You don’t have to know the language to figure out the answer … For some of the students who speak another language (other than English), it really kind of levels the playing field.”
A total of 123 students were GATE identified this year – the majority of whom were second graders. The rest were a combination of third through fifth grade students whose parents and teachers referred for GATE testing.
Only 76 second graders were identified last year when the district tested only the students referred and with a form of testing known as Sage.
“We tried to include everybody possible,” Brown said. “It’s as unbiased as an instrument can be.”
The Raven test measures cognitive processing skills rather than student achievement levels. The test is untimed, and was administered by proctors to students in English and Spanish if needed.
“It really tries to test your problem solving abilities,” Brown explained. “The test (locates) students with real fluid intelligence rather than crystallized intelligence … Many students are high achievers, but they are not all gifted. Gifted is a different type of intelligence – it’s innate ability.”
A second third–grade GATE contained classroom will be opened at Rucker School in the fall to accommodate some of the additional GATE students. There is also one GATE fourth–grade class, and one fifth–grade class on the campus.
Rucker is the only school with self–contained GATE classrooms, meaning all GATE students are grouped together throughout the day.
“I think a lot of parents want their kids at Rucker because it has the best program right now,” said Bill Hudson, president of the OpenGATE Educational Foundation – a nonprofit group parents formed in late 2004 to raise additional funds for the gifted program. “Although the program there is great, it can’t service all the GATE students in the district. We have to develop programs elsewhere.”
According to Brown, there are GATE students at every school in GUSD, and the site administrator elects how to divide or immerse the GATE students.
While some schools may not have enough GATE students to completely fill one class, GATE students may be clustered in classrooms or placed in leveled groupings with high achieving students.
“Specialized classes are only one way of students being serviced – and not always the best way,” Brown said.
Typically, students who test in the 98 percentile or above are GATE identified. However, students who test higher than the 94 percentile may also be identified using a review of the student’s scores on state examinations and teacher recommendations.But just scoring high on the Raven examination does not guarantee inclusion into the GATE program. With permission of the student’s parents, a case study is opened to help determine whether a child may be GATE identified.
A GATE committee consisting of teachers, site administrators, and district administrators – usually Brown, then uses information in the case study to make a final analysis.
While the Raven test identifies some students who may have been overlooked for the GATE program in the past, there is also a financial perk to the new system: The cost of administering Raven to all second grade students will save the program about one third of its testing expenses, Hudson estimated.
Gilroy’s GATE program receives about $72,000 annually from the state. Last year, $12,700 was spent on testing for entry into the program.
While the cost savings did not motivate the switch, the benefit is that instead of paying for assessment of GATE students, the leftover money can go directly towards GATE services such as GATE teacher certification.
“I think basically people were happy with the results and what we found,” Brown said.
