Topics covered in this issue include:

1) ASAT: ADMIN - WELCOME
by Sally_L@comcast.net
2) ASAT:ADMIN - Ground Rules
by Sally_L@comcast.net
3) ASAT: Opening Statement by Kathi Kearney & Bobbie Gilman
by Sally_L@comcast.net
4) ASAT: - Opening Statement available to view on the website
by Sally_L@comcast.net

Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 23:38:23 +0000
From: Sally_L@comcast.net
Subject: ASAT: ADMIN - WELCOME
To: OURGIFTED-L@neiu.edu
Message-id: <031920042338.7787.662b@comcast.net>

Dear List Members,

I would like to welcome the list members and the guest experts - Barbara J.
Gilman and Kathi Kearney to Our Gifted Online Conferences. A place to join
together to meet, share, learn, and discuss issues pertaining to giftedness and
talentof all individuals regardless of race, age, gender, economic status,
and/or twice/thrice exceptionalities.

The title and short description of the conference is Assessment and Testing:
What about the SB5, WISC-IV, and Other Tests? This conference will explore some
of the issues surrounding assessment of gifted children. When is assessment
appropriate? Who should assess gifted children? What instruments are most
commonly used, and why? What is the impact of new assessment instruments and new
revisions on the identification of gifted children? What information can be
gained from a full evaluation, and how can this information most effectively be
used in both the classroom and at home?

Our guest experts' bios are as follows:

Barbara Gilman, M.S., specializes in the assessment of gifted children, the
creation of educational programs to motivate them, and helping parents and
teachers to support their academic, social, and emotional needs. The Director of
Staff Development at the Gifted Development Center in Denver, she has degrees in
Psychology and Child Development, trains testers in the unique issues of the
gifted, and supervises reports. Bobbie has extensive experience working with the
gifted, highly gifted, gifted individuals with learning disabilities, AD/HD, and
underachievement issues. A mother of profoundly gifted sons, she is a veteran of
gifted committees and helped create an accelerated charter middle school. Bobbie
is a popular presenter to parent groups and teachers, and consults with parents
worldwide.Her new book, Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational Advocacy that
works, addresses the many questions parents ask about gifted advocacy.

Kathi Kearney, M.A. Ed., currently teaches gifted students at the Noble VI
School in Berwick, ME and is also a Professional Associate with the Gifted
Development Center in Denver, CO. She is the founder of the Hollingworth Center
for Highly Gifted Children, a national resource and support network for
exceptionally gifted children and their families. She was an instructor in
talented and gifted education at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa for two
years. Kathi has worked with children as a teacher and administrator in a wide
variety of settings, urban and rural, in public, private, religious, and home
schools. She is the Past Chair of the Conceptual Foundations Division of the
National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), and has contributed scholarly
journal articles on such topics as assessment, the highly gifted child, rural
and distance learning, minority groups in gifted education, and Leta
Hollingworths work on children with IQ scores above 180. Her most recent res
earch project involved conducting validation studies of the new Stanford Binet
Fifth Edition for Riverside Publishing.

This conference will be moderated, therefore please be patient if the emails are
a bit slower to appear on the list:)

Please wait to read the guest experts' OPENING STATEMENTS, before posting to the
conference on Our Gifted Online Conferences -
Assessment and Testing: What about the SB5, WISC-IV, and Other Tests?

Welcome everyone!!!

Kindest regards,
Sally_L
Conference Coordinator
List Manager
www.neiu.edu/~ourgift

Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 23:43:34 +0000
From: Sally_L@comcast.net
Subject: ASAT:ADMIN - Ground Rules
To: OURGIFTED-L@neiu.edu
Message-id: <031920042343.14738.4e14@comcast.net>

Dear List Members:

MOST IMPORTANTLY remember the ground rules:))))

GROUND RULES

"ground rules" for this conference. . .and
that goes, even if the info about item content is located somewhere else on
the internet, it CANNOT be posted on the list.

Many times, parents add in "anecdotes" about
specific things that their child did on the tests (perhaps overhearing a
test question, or being in the room when a young child took the test).

We need to make it VERY clear *we* cannot give out any
information on specific items, NOR SHOULD THE POSTERS!

Under test ethics we CANNOT discuss the content of individual
items/subtests, nor should posters offer such info on the lists, in order to
protect test security.
Any list member(s) doing such, intentionally or unintentionally, will be
immediately deleted from the list membership!!!

Kathi and Bobbie the list is now ready and the list members will wait until they
hear from you both before posting.

Sally_L
Conference Coordinator
List Manager
www.neiu.edu/~ourgift

Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 03:48:12 +0000
From: Sally_L@comcast.net
Subject: ASAT: Opening Statement by Kathi Kearney & Bobbie Gilman
To: OURGIFTED-L@neiu.edu
Message-id: <032020040348.29907.e29@comcast.net>

Assessment and Testing: What about the SB5, WISC-IV, and Other
Tests?

Kathi Kearney M.A. Ed. And Barbara J. Gilman M.S
March 20th & 21st, 2004

This conference will explore some of the issues surrounding
assessment of gifted children. When is assessment appropriate?
Who should assess gifted children? What instruments are most
commonly used, and why? What is the impact of new assessment
instruments and new revisions on the identification of gifted
children? What information can be gained from a full evaluation,
and how can this information most effectively be used
in both the classroom and at home?

Opening Statement

"Few experiences are more fascinating to me than testing a gifted
child. From the first moments of meeting the child, a picture of

that child's pattern of abilities and, perhaps, relative weaknesses is
becoming apparent. Once we begin the IQ test, I am observing
verbal abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, general knowledge,
vision, audition, memory, motor skills, processing speed, attention
and a host of subtle cues that help to further explain the scores the
child earns. The sessions are usually very engaging for these
children; the inherent challenge of the tests often eclipses what
they experience at school. They are usually happy, frequently quite
humorous, and virtually always well-motivated to do their best. But
for me, amidst the enjoyment of getting to know them, the pieces
of a puzzle are being put into place and the final puzzle seems
always to be unique from all of the others that I have watched
coalesce." (B.J. Gilman, Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational
Advocacy That Works)

Welcome to our online conference about gifted assessment. In the

next two days, we hope to shed light on many aspects of testing:
to explain what can be learned through testing, to look at how
tests can be used positively to document abilities and suggest
accommodations in school, and to consider how newly revised and
renormed tests are performing with the gifted population. What do
these findings suggest about the ways these new instruments
should be used with the gifted?

The Microcosm: Testing the Gifted

We are unabashed supporters of testing, when it constitutes a part
of clinical observation and is supplemented by consideration of a
child's developmental history. No single test or score, when
considered in isolation from other observations, can ever be
completely relied upon to document a child's abilities. It may, but it
also may not; without additional observations we have no gauge of
whether our scores represent underestimates.

Those of us experienced in testing the gifted can usually make

close estimates of the scores children will earn based on our
knowledge of and initial conversations with them. Those qualities
that we have learned to recognize as gifted, or highly or profoundly
gifted, become recognizable. However, the tests offer us tools to
further explore a child's intellectual functioning and document it.
They shortcut the process of observing the child's responses to
varied situations, over the course of days or months, into a few
hours. Because they provide normative comparisons with age
peers, we are able to tell how advanced, typical, or delayed a
child's abilities are.

IQ tests (often in conjunction with achievement tests) allow us to
clarify the educational needs of children who are discrepant from
the average and to provide information needed to create an
appropriate educational program for them. Although the
performance of average children is important in norming these
tests, the tests are rarely used for average children experiencing no

problems in school. They are used most with developmentally
delayed children, those with learning disabilities or other deficits,
and the gifted because typical educational programs are not
working well for these children. Results from such tests help
parents make child-rearing decisions and they provide excellent
input about educational needs. They also provide documentation
that what the parent thinks about the child's abilities has been
confirmed by a professional. Parents of the gifted are so often
put in the difficult position of justifying why they believe their
children are gifted that testing becomes essential to provide a
factual basis for discussion with school personnel.

Because we work with gifted children, whose scores are high and
sometimes very high, we frequently face criticism for scores that
some find hard to believe. Equally low scores don't generate the
same degree of doubt because they are not viewed as desirable.

Charges of inaccurate scoring, inappropriate test administration,
and gullibility in the face of parents "shopping for scores," are our
constant companions. We would love to explain what safeguards
we use to ensure accurate test results (*please* ask us), and to
discuss some of the testing needs that are typical of the gifted.
What we want most is to secure the same concern for gifted
children with unique needs, based on their unusually high
scores, as is accorded disabled children with similarly discrepant
scores.

Tests vary in their content, their appropriateness with different
populations, their usefulness as a basis for educational requests. A
good tester will choose tests carefully to document the strengths
of the child, explore any relative weaknesses, and demonstrate
need for accommodations. Tests are less powerful when only one
test is allowed to document giftedness. The abilities emphasized
on the particular test may or may not correspond with the child's

strengths. The wise gifted program, school, or school district will
allow multiple assessments, and outside testing with qualified
professionals, to enhance its ability to identify gifted children.

The Macrocosm: Testing in Society

In 1919, at the dawn of the mental testing movement in this
country, the author of the original Stanford-Binet, Lewis Terman,
made a very important statement. In his book "The Intelligence of
School Children," he noted that "If the tests are not to be used, they
had better not be given."

Today we are faced with a testing culture gone awry.
Schoolchildren are required by both state and federal laws to be
tested frequently, and in many contemporary classrooms, mere
test prep has replaced true education. In the case of gifted
children, both group and individual tests often are used to qualify
them for gifted programs, but the information provided by the
tests is often never used to help provide appropriate interventions.

Testing of children for gifted programs is also often used to
exclude children from programs, rather than to include them.
Inappropriate tests are also commonly used for the gifted - tests
with ceilings that are too low, and tests that test areas other than
those designed to be served by a specific program, thus resulting
in a mismatch between a child's abilities and the program
presented by the school. Perhaps even more worrisome, and
certainly a trend that is ethically suspect, we are hearing more and
more stories from the media of gifted children prevented by their
schools from participating in regional classes for the gifted located
in another school in the district, because the sending school will
then "lose" the gifted child's high achievement test scores, thus
lowering the school's entire test average under No Child Left
Behind.

The Solution

The assessment of gifted children should always lead to a better

understanding of the child, and appropriate recommendations and
interventions, whether that assessment is an individual assessment
of ability or achievement, or performance on a group instrument.
Otherwise, as Terman noted, the tests "had better not be given."
Proper assessment should never be merely a gatekeeping activity
governing entrance into certain programs, nor should it be done
primarily to satisfy politicians, as is the case with so much testing
in our schools today. Proper assessment of gifted children should
yield information useful to the child, the family, and the school --
information that will assist in the optimal development of the
individual.

One difference in both the individual and group assessment of
gifted children is that, unlike other areas of special education (and,
increasingly today, general education) a major purpose of the
assessment of gifted children is to uncover patterns of strength,

rather than deficits. (This is not to say that deficits may not be
discovered during the assessment process, but it is usually not the
primary focus of the assessment). This contrasts widely with many
of the other major uses of assessment in contemporary society.

Conference Expectations

We expect some additional issues to arise during this conference,
in addition to basic questions about when and why to assess
gifted children, the uses of assessment information, and specific
issues related to the assessment process. We encourage you to
ask questions about assessing twice-exceptional gifted children
(gifted children with disabilities); gifted children from differing
backgrounds; the use (and misuse) of group achievement and
ability tests as well as individual tests; and the concept of out-of-
level testing and the upcoming changes in the SATs.

Finally, there are things that we can and can't do in this conference.

We CAN give you an overview of what to expect if you decide to go
ahead with an individual assessment of your child. We CAN'T
compromise test security in any way, which means we cannot
discuss specific test content or individual test items. We CAN
identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of various test
instruments and testing approaches with the gifted. We CAN'T give
individual advice or comment on test profiles of individual children.
We also hope to share some of our own ideas and hopes for the
future of assessment with the gifted.

Let the conference begin!

Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 04:16:19 +0000
From: Sally_L@comcast.net
Subject: ASAT: - Opening Statement available to view on the website
To: OURGIFTED-L@neiu.edu
Message-id: <032020040416.26861.3e31@comcast.net>

Hi List Members,

The Opening Statement is available to also read on the website

http://www.neiu.edu/~ourgift/pages/Conference.htm

It is the "pretty" version:)and error free

Thanks,

Sally_L
Conference Coordinator