[Ohiogift] How does / should the GIS "test for growth"

[Colleen Boyle, PhD]

Sally hit the nail on the head.  There is a difference between a teacher monitoring all students, as the administer suggests, and actually using that data to alter instruction in a meaningful way to affect growth.  Teaching as usual and watching test scores or other means of progress monitoring is not going to lead to academic growth.  There has to be learner-centered interventions to affect change, and those look very different for gifted students than they do for general education students.  

In terms of what measurements will the GIS use to show the benefit of gifted programs - pullouts or otherwise, the first thing that comes to mind are SLOs.  For all of the grumbling everyone is doing with regards to OTES and SLOs, for the first time, we really now have a state endorsed way for all teachers to demonstrate their impact on kids.  The outcomes from a well-crafted SLO are either going to break gifted programs that are fluff and in name only or they will provide hard evidence supporting well-designed programs led by quality staff.  Now, I am not naive enough to think that data can't be manipulated a bit, and there are some issues that will arise with finding/designing assessments to demonstrate above level growth.  But, the SLO is one opportunity for gifted specialists to show why their work is so important.


Colleen Boyle, Ph.D.
Gifted Coordinator and Educational Consultant
Columbus, OH
boyleconsulting at me.com

Specialities:
Educational Psychology
Gifted Education and Psychology
Educational Administration





On May 26, 2013, at 2:00 PM, ms118rbts at aol.com wrote:

> I would reply that yes, we will be pulling students to meet their educational needs.
> Common Core (page 4 of LA & Math) states," The standards set grade specific standards but do not define the intervention methods or materials necessary to support students who are well below or well above grade level expectations."
>  
> While classroom teachers will "monitor all the students multiple times a year", monitoring is meaningless unless multiple pre-assessments are done to determine starting points of every student, with resulting appropriate curriculum and instructional adjustments. GISs will be pre-assessing, adjusting instruction and documenting growth on above grade level standards. Holding students to grade level standards limits growth and is based on the least important data point...the child's chronological age.
>  
> Sally
>  
>  
>  
>  
> In a message dated 5/25/2013 11:15:04 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, giftedtchr at aol.com writes:
> Someone I know (a GIS), asked his/her administrators to consider 
> clustering gifted students next year as one way to help affect academic 
> growth in these students, and to try to avoid conflict with "specials" 
> on the days he/she meets with gifted students. He/she received the 
> following note and question (which has been paraphrased) from one of 
> his/her administrators.  
> 
> If you received a similar note & question, how would you reply?  How 
> should he/she reply?
> 
> ------------------------
> 
> Teachers at AnyName Elementary School are very aware of growth, using 
> the new report card measures, and as we progress, we monitor all 
> students multiple times each year.  Which brings me to the gifted 
> program in our school. Are we still going to have gifted  intervention 
> specialists pulling students out of the regular classrooms on a regular 
> basis. If so, what measurements will you be able to show me with 
> progress monitoring?
> 
> 
> 
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