GILROY
– Children who did not qualify for the school district’s program
for gifted students will be able to retake the tests this month,
after parents told the school board the screening process is
flawed.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Children who did not qualify for the school district’s program for gifted students will be able to retake the tests this month, after parents told the school board the screening process is flawed.
District officials say it will move quickly to re-screen those students whose parents and teachers believed were eligible for Gifted And Talented Education, were screened, and then did not qualify, possibly due to flaws or inconsistencies in a new screening method.
As roughly 20 parents sat in last Thursday’s school board meeting to ask for a retest, district officials said they may reach out to other parents whose children were identified as potentially GATE-qualified in time for next school year.
Students who are eligible for GATE have the option of attending GUSD’s only full-time GATE program at Rucker Elementary School. If they choose to stay at their area school, they still may participate in GATE extracurricular courses.
“There is some evidence that less kids have been identified through the process this year,” Superintendent Edwin Diaz said.
This past school year GUSD screened 253 elementary and middle school students believed by their parents and teachers to be gifted, much more than the 170 students tested in 2002-03 and 82 students the year before that. Of those tested last year, 42, or 18 percent, qualified for GATE.
Parents pointed to a new screening used by the district as the reason for the drop from a 35 percent eligibility rate (60 students) in 2003 and 94 percent (77 students) in 2002.
The assessment used last year – called Screening Assessment for Gifted Elementary and Middle School students, or SAGES – is the third such assessment used by the district in as many years. In 2002, GUSD stopped using the group-administered Structure of Intellect (SOI) test in favor of another test administered one-on-one. SAGES, also a group test, was used last year because the district thought it would be a more streamlined process.
Parent Jim Walling gave trustees a 15-minute presentation prepared by a group of parents whose gifted children did not qualify for GATE last year, outlining five reasons why they think the screening process needs to be revised.
– The SAGES test reveals little about students’ academic strengths and learning styles.
– Scoring of the SAGES appears to be subjective: Walling provided examples of several students who either received the same score when they shouldn’t have or got different scores when they shouldn’t have.
– The SAGES and other tests account for 76 percent of the weight in qualifying a student for GATE, while other state recommended measures cover the remaining 24 percent.
“The teachers are the closest to the child; they see them every day. They see how they perform in class, they see how motivated they are,” Walling said.
– Compared with the SOI test, used by the district as recently as 2002, SAGES offers fewer sub-tests and points of data.
– Parents were “demonstrably upset” at the delays in getting the screening results – some had one week to decide whether or not to transfer a child to Rucker.
Joe Guzicki, GUSD’s coordinator for student services who oversees GATE, said the SOI test was abandoned because it required more training of teachers to administer. Two GUSD employees are trained to give the test.
One of those, Janice Krahenbuhl, a teacher at Rucker, said she was trained during a three-day conference out of state.
Guzicki said the SAGES screening was chosen because the district believed it would be a faster process and allow parents more time to make that decision, a motivation Walling questioned.
“The expected improvement was that we would get these results back to parents quickly and, no, that was not met,” Guzicki told trustees. “Actually, it wasn’t even close to that.”
While an appeals process will be set up for parents who want their children re-considered, Diaz said he is not ready to abandon the SAGES test.
As part of the retesting that will be conducted this month, Diaz said the district will use both the SAGES test and previously used SOI test, comparing the results against the children’s previous SAGES results. The district also may approach students who were GATE eligible to voluntarily retest with the SOI test.
“The overall process we need to revisit, and I know there are some parts of the process we have been using for the last 20 years or so,” Diaz said. ”And I think this is probably the time that we can kind of take a comprehensive look at the process and make it the best process we can possibly conduct.”
Besides asking the board for retests before this fall’s classes are set, Walling and other parents asked for a redesign of the assessment program with immediate teacher and parent input, a timeline for the redesign and a plan for increased communication between the district and parents.
Walling said parents are feeling a general lack of support for GATE due to leadership changes and the implementation of the new assessment without parental input.
“Parents are wondering, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening with GATE?’ There’s been a lot of rumors about, ‘Is GATE going to be ended at Rucker?,’ ” Walling said.
