Justification for MCPS GT ID rates

Reported Terra Nova Scores and GT Identification Rates 2006-2007

The arguments in favor of the huge GT ID rates in Montgomery County are best summarized by a writer to a GT listserv who has not given me permission to quote her name. It goes as follows:

“One of the single most reliable factors influencing a child's propensity to excel in school is the educational attainment of the mother. The educational attainment of the father has some (less
strong) influence as well (statistically speaking).
…

More than 50% of the adults in Montgomery County have college degrees. More than 25% of the adults in Montgomery County have graduate degrees. Montgomery County has the highest concentration of PhDs of any county in the country.

A GT ID rate of 30-40% (i.e., 30-40% of kids performing above grade level) seems about right to me for Montgomery County, given all this background.”

Over the three reported periods 2004-2005, 2005-2006, and 2006-2007, while testing methods changed the distribution of GT identification rates over the school system maintained a fairly fixed pattern. For example, Westbrook Elementary, with a whopping 83.3% of 2nd graders identified as GT, dropped to 80.4% the next year, and in the most recent period rose to 86.5%. Wood Acres posted 47%, 39.2%, and 47.8 over the same period. While Wood Acres followed the rise and fall in acceptance rates with Westbrook its acceptance rates were nearly half. However, the TerraNova scores (percentage of students scoring at or above the 50th Normal Curve Equivalent) posted the by Wood Acres in 2007 bested the scores of the Westbrook counterparts in every category. Indeed, school performances on TerraNova (see graphic), or for that matter MSAs, do not seem to correlate to GT identification rates.

Actual 2008 MSA statistics for the Westbrook class that posted a mind blowing 86.5% GT ID rate, available here, tell a different story. “11 out of 14 (78.6%) 'similar' schools out performed [Westbrook] in Reading,” and “9 out of 12 (75%) 'similar' schools out performed [Westbrook] in Mathematics.” (“similar” means the White student population is between 76.8% and 86.8%). Remember Wood Acres with only about half the gifted population? They bested Westbrook!!

Here is the interesting part of the analysis: both schools share a common Service Area boundary and, are located in close proximity with a similar population demographic. What does that prove? That the argument about the sky high GT ID rates being correlated to parental educational achievement is probably suspect.

Any lingering doubts about the validity of MCPS GT ID would be erased by the reality that just after this analysis was published; the Westbrook GT ID rate plummeted to 57.9%.

My approach has the potential to empower parents and inject a dose of reality into this controversy.