Maintaining the Security of Gifted "Tests"

The following comments were sent to STS via Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented (TAGT) President Ann Studdard and Executive Director Dianne Hughes.  Their remarks are posted here to inform all of those interested in maintaining the security and reliability of gifted tests.

 

As a professional organization, TAGT has a responsibility to its membership to support the highest standards of best practices in all aspects of gifted education.  Certain assessments, including standardized tests, have been recognized as serving districts well in the identification process of potential giftedness in students.  It has come to our attention that in some communities, groups have opened “schools/academies” that take these actual tests and “prep” students prior to testing for the districts’ gifted programs.   While this is disconcerting from many aspects, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the security/validity of some testing instruments have been jeopardized by these schools [because] district coordinators have few options when choosing standardized test instruments to use in the identification process for giftedness.  Please be alerted to monitoring your community for schools that advertise themselves as “prep” schools for GT identification.  Our focus is to try to identify all students who demonstrate high potential and gifted capabilities and provide services to serve their needs.  It is totally inappropriate for districts to attempt to serve students in a program designed for gifted students when those students were unfairly advantaged through preliminary test preparation.   Districts need to be aware of this practice and monitor their identification processes to insure that truly gifted students are the ones being identified.

 

Please feel free to share your thoughts about this issue with us.

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