GILROY
– The school district finished re-testing close to 100
high-achieving students for its gifted program Wednesday
afternoon.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – The school district finished re-testing close to 100 high-achieving students for its gifted program Wednesday afternoon.
Nearly all parents of students who had tested for Gifted And Talented Education (GATE), but did not fully qualify, responded to Gilroy Unified School District’s offer to re-test.
Dr. Joe Guzicki, GUSD’s student services coordinator, said Wednesday he expected to re-test 90 students.
“That’s all the kids who were ‘conditional eligibility’ and ‘not eligible'” based on the previous testing, he said.
Students were tested, starting Monday, in groups of 15 to 20, depending on age, Guzicki said. Most will be in third or fourth grade next year. Third- through fifth-graders can be tested for GATE.
The district was to begin scoring the assessments as of Wednesday afternoon, Guzicki said, so parents should hear the results within a couple of weeks.
“We have to get this done as quickly as possible because there might be a ripple effect if we have a lot of kids transferring to Rucker, depending on how many kids get identified,” he said.
Rucker Elementary School is GUSD’s only school with full-time GATE classes, one each in third, fourth and fifth grades. Earlier this summer, the district was thinking of combining the third and fourth grade classes because enrollment was low.
If a large number of students are GATE identified after this re-test, Guzicki said the district may use a lottery system to fill up those classes.
“We’ve done that in the past,” he said.
District officials are re-testing students using a different assessment than was used during last school year. Parents early this month requested that GUSD once again try a test that it used three years ago, after their students appeared GATE qualified but did not pass the district’s current GATE identification assessment.
Students are identified for GATE based on parent and teacher recommendations, student performance and test scores.
Testing, including the district’s GATE-identification test, accounts for 76 percent of the weight in qualifying a student.
Last school year, 235 students were referred for GATE testing. Of those, 43 tested “eligible,” or 18 percent, and 33 received “conditional eligibility,” or 14 percent.
Parents questioned those numbers, compared to previous years, when upwards of 35 percent of students qualified.
Lori Stuenkel covers education for The Dispatch. She can be reached at 847-7158 or [email protected].
