How Early Should Advanced Learners Be Assessed? ‘It Depends’
By Ed Finkel
There’s no one right answer to when K-12 schools or districts should try to assess formally whether students are advanced learners in one domain or another, according to Melissa Hinshaw, coordinator of assessment for CTD, but educators do need to recognize that students who demonstrate more advanced knowledge and skills in certain domains will need a different level and type of instruction.
“That could happen when they walk in the door,” she says. “It could happen at some other time along their experience and trajectory in school.”
Research shows that exposure to learning experiences before students come to school impact their readiness for advanced learning, which means schools need to provide opportunities for all children to show their talents before attempting to formally assess them for services, Hinshaw says. “We want enrichment opportunities for everybody,” she says. “In content and activities, there should be explorations of talent areas for students that let us highlight their interests and their abilities.”
“We want enrichment opportunities for everybody. In content and activities, there should be explorations of talent areas for students that let us highlight their interests and their abilities.” - Melissa Hinshaw
Making determination about academic ability—or gifted education services—for kindergarteners is particularly tricky given the developmental diversity found at that age, and because what shows up as discrepant can vary widely from district to district, Hinshaw says. “So the better question might be, ‘How do we serve students in kindergarten who are advanced in one or more domains compared to their peers?’ ”
For students in a kindergarten class who are already reading independently, the teacher would want to provide differentiated reading instruction rather than pulling them into class-wide instruction that would be redundant, Hinshaw says. How that’s handled depends on how many independent readers there are. “If we only have three, that’s a different problem to solve than if half of our students walk in the door independently reading,” she says.
Responding to Changing Learning Needs
Monica Simonds, product strategist, K-12 education assessments at Riverside Insights—creator of the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) test, which CTD uses—agrees with Hinshaw that there’s no one right answer to when students should be first assessed. As an educator for 33 years in the Dallas area, including time as director of advanced learning programs and services at Richardson Independent School District in the north suburbs, Simonds notes that the state of Texas mandated assessments in kindergarten.
“But students’ educational needs would change over time. Unfortunately, when you identify students [as gifted] too young and their needs change, they can have some challenges, with their identity being challenged: ‘But you said I was gifted!’ ” she says. So when it comes to the appropriate process, “A lot of my answers are going to be, ‘It depends.’ If you’ve met one child, you’ve met one child. If you’re identifying students for an acceleration program in kindergarten, I would be very cautious.”
But Simonds underscores that some students are such outliers that intervention is needed as soon as possible. “When you’re looking at 160 and 180 IQs, that’s a different learner, and that’s a child who, in kindergarten, is going to struggle,” she says. “Had we not had systems in place to identify them early on, they would not have gotten the services they needed.” Ultimately, the goal should be to gather information we need to meet students where they are, create environments that allow students to demonstrate their abilities, and not “lock them in” to a single pathway.
The assessments used in these scenarios are evidence-based measures of learning readiness and discrepancies from an assumed set of grade level standards, Hinshaw says.
Serving the Full Range of Learning Needs
The U.S. has very strong programs that measure very discretely how far from average or grade level expectations students are and what instructional supports they need, particularly for special education.
“We need to do that on the other side of the learning curve,” she says. “How far above average or beyond grade level expectations are they? Would they most benefit from a service like differentiation that could happen inside of the classroom, that a teacher in a tier-one [classroom] environment is capable of handling? Do they need to be in an accelerated learning environment with other peers who are advanced, who need similar instruction? Do we need to consider accelerating them into a different grade level?”
Schools should be well-equipped to measure advanced performance, through advanced ability profile tests such as CogAT, as well as in-classroom observation tools, Hinshaw says. “We definitely want to make sure that we are right-sizing and aligning our learning environments for all of our students,” she says. “What we want, at the end of students’ time with us, is that they’re growing academically at a rate commensurate with their ability.”
Simonds sees a tension between which should come first, the identification or the service model. “Do we build the service model and identify students, or the other way around?” she says. “Either can be acceptable. It depends on how they’re implemented.” Teachers don’t necessarily understand giftedness well, and families often only know that, “He’s so smart,” she adds. “But does he have an ongoing need for something outside the classroom? It’s important that we have quantitative data to support anything we do with a child, so we aren’t throwing strategies out there, and hoping for the best.”
In addition to providing CogAT, CTD partners with Riverside Insights by sharing a dashboard of information for educators and parents through Riverside’s Ability Profile, which outlines, “How do you lean into some of these strengths and areas that we see for your student?” Hinshaw says. CTD and Riverside also host collaborative webinars to help schools understand how to use CogAT beyond the numerical indicators about students’ abilities, “to be a qualitative indicator of, ‘How do we really help leverage strengths when we’re providing instruction?’ ” she says. “How do we help teachers understand how to better use this?”
Test like CogAT can help teachers scaffold for students with uneven verbal and nonverbal abilities, Simonds says. For example, a student with verbal strengths who seems to be struggling and disengaged in math class can be grouped with other, similar students to talk through their issues. “We’ve tapped into their strength in another area to help them be successful,” she says.
Assessments that simply measure whether students are mastering grade-level standards are less effective for advanced learners, Hinshaw says. “We’re really great at measuring math and reading, but not as great at measuring growth in science, in social sciences, in creativity, in leadership, in social-emotional maturity.”
Rather than teachers focusing only on those formal, standardized assessments, Hinshaw recommends classroom-based pre-assessment, post-assessment and formative assessments along the way so teachers can ensure they’re supporting students at the level they’re ready to learn. “Sometimes we have to differentiate the assessments that we’re using to measure growth for advanced learners, to make sure that we know the true story of their growth,” she says.
Join Melissa Hinshaw for an Assessment for Strengths Identification Webinar January 28
Developing talent both inside and outside of school settings is crucial for maximizing student growth and potential. Join Melissa Hinshaw, CTD Assessment, for a webinar that delves into spotting and identifying talent early, maximizing measurement in school settings, and selecting strengths-based programs and opportunities for talented students.
In addition to addressing best practices and answering your questions, we will review strengths-based, above-grade-level assessment programs available through CTD for families and schools.