[Ohiogift] Students who perform above grade level

[Margaret DeLacy]

Friends:

Below is a link to and excerpt from an article from Johns Hopkins entitled "How Can So Many Students Be Invisible? Large Percentages of American Students Perform Above Grade Level¹  by Matthew C. Makel, Michael S. Matthews, Scott J. Peters, Karen Rambo-Hernandez, and Jonathan A. Plucker

http://education.jhu.edu/edpolicy/commentary/PerformAboveGradeLevel

This article has been widely reported as expressing surprise that so many students are above "grade level."  This wasn't helped by the title, the second half of which is repeated in a sidebar caption.  Even after criterion-referenced tests have largely replaced normed tests, because "grade level" is still set roughly at average performance for a given age/grade, we would expect about half of all students to be at or above grade level everywhere except Lake Wobegon. Furthermore, because there is roughly a one-year age span among students in a given grade, it isn't surprising that a large proportion are at about a year above "grade level."  

What may be surprising to some readers is the size of the gap at the upper levels of the ability spectrum.  The authors demonstrate this gap for very large populations using both the SBAC and MAP tests, which don't have the same ceiling problems as traditional pencil and paper tests.

The findings, however, only confirm the findings of many other researchers.  Susan Assouline made the same point at the OATAG conference two years ago. Using out-of-level results from the EXPLORE test she pointed out that gifted fifth grade students outscored average eight grade students in English, Reading and Science and were only slightly lower in Math.

I have found a similar gap when looking at results from the OAKS (and before that, the PALTs).

The evidence for a multi-year gap between gifted students and other students at this point is quite strong--yet it is impossible to get school staff to take it seriously.  They continue to assume that acceleration by just one year is a radical step, when in fact most students in the top 3% need a much greater acceleration in curriculum and instruction. 

The authors note that: 

"Using MAP data, we estimate that 8-10% of Grade 4 students perform at the Grade 8 level in reading/English/language arts, with 2-5% scoring at similar levels in math. Relying specifically on the MAP data, one out of every ten fifth graders is performing at the high school level in reading, and nearly one child in 40 at this age is performing at the high school level in mathematics."

They conclude that:

We are aware that one likely response to these findings is to point to instructional and curricular differentiation as an obvious intervention. ...  research suggests that instructional differentiation is difficult to accomplish and thus is rarely implemented well, likely due to the enormous distribution of student ability in elementary school classrooms (e.g., up to 11 grade levels of reading performance in Grade 4 and 5 classrooms). ...  

... States should require each district and school to report its percentages of above-grade-level performers and to disaggregate students’ average growth by starting scores.

Research suggests that currently these students’ learning needs are not being met through alternative placements or by within-grade differentiation. Rather, these students are under-challenged by the curriculum and instruction they are being provided. Millions of American K-12 students are performing above grade level and are not being appropriately challenged, putting their intellectual development and the country’s future prosperity at risk.

One initial step that every state, district, and school should take to address this problem is to report the absolute numbers and the percentages of students who are performing above grade level.... In addition to above-grade-level performance, states, districts, and schools should use assessments that measure growth and report typical growth for students at various initial performance levels (e.g., bottom 10%, top 10%).


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