Acting like test preparation invalidates inferences that can be drawn" about children's "learning potential and intellect and achievement
Assessing students has always been a fraught process, especially 4-year-olds, a mercurial and unpredictable lot by nature, who are vying for increasingly precious seats in kindergarten gifted programs.
In New York, it has now become an endless contest in which administrators seeking authentic measures of intelligence are barely able to keep ahead of companies whose aim is to bring out the genius in every young child.
Hunter, a public school for gifted children that is part of the City University of New York, requires applicants to take the Stanford-Binet V intelligence test, and until last year, families could pick from 1 of 16 psychologists to administer the test. Uncovering who was the "best tester," one who might give children more time to answer, or pose questions different ways, was a popular parlor game among parents.
The city's leading private schools are even considering doing away with the test they have used for decades, popularly known as the E.R.B., after the Educational Records Bureau, the organization that administers the exam, which is written by Pearson.
"It's something the schools know has been corrupted," said Dr. Samuel J. Meisels, an early-childhood education expert who gave a presentation in the fall to private school officials, encouraging them to abandon the test. Excessive test preparation, he said, "invalidates inferences that can be drawn" about children's "learning potential and intellect and achievement."
Last year, the Education Department said it would change one of the tests used for admission to public school gifted kindergarten and first-grade classes in order to focus more on cognitive ability and less on school readiness, which favors children who have more access to preschool and tutoring.
For the 2012-13 school year, nearly 5,000 children qualified for gifted and talented kindergarten seats in New York City public schools. That was more than double the number five years ago. "We were concerned enough about our definition of giftedness being affected by test prep -- as we were prior school experience, primary spoken language, socioeconomic background and culture -- that we changed the assessment," Adina Lopatin, a deputy chief academic officer in the Education Department, said.
¶ And yet test prep companies leapt to action, printing new books tailored to the new test and organizing classes.
¶ Natalie Viderman, 4, spent an hour and a half each week for six months at Bright Kids NYC, a tutoring company, working on skills like spatial visualization and serial reasoning, which are part of the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, or NNAT 2, the new gifted and talented test. She and her mother, Victoria Preys, also worked every night on general learning, test prep and workbooks, some provided by Bright Kids.
¶ "It is my philosophy that if you can get more help, why not?" Ms. Preys said. She prepared her son the same way and he benefited, she said, scoring in the 98th percentile, qualifying him for a seat. She interpreted the Education Department's decision to change the test and "raise the standards," she said, as a message that it expected parents to do more. "We are increasing the standards, so you have to work with your kids more, to prep more," she said.
¶ "Every time these tests change, there's a lot of demand," Bige Doruk, founder of Bright Kids, said. She said she did not accept the argument that admissions tests had been invalidated by test prep. "It is not a validity issue, it's a competitive issue," she said. "Parents will always do what they can for their children." And not all children who take preparation courses do well, she said. The test requires that 4-year-olds sit with a stranger for nearly an hour -- skills that extend beyond the scope of I.Q. or school readiness.
Dr. Meisels, who is president of the Erikson Institute, a graduate school and research organization in Chicago focusing on early childhood development, told the private schools admissions officers in November that the test was effective at identifying cognitive delays, diagnosing learning disabilities and measuring I.Q., the reasons the test was developed. But he argued that it was not a good admissions tool -- which is what the schools are using it for. "It is an off-label use," he said. He told the schools that they could collect enough information from families to make an informed decision without the test -- most schools require an interview with parents, a play date with the child, a report from the preschool and the records bureau.