Scott Peters says:

Let’s face it. Most gifted and talented coordinators or teachers of advanced learners don’t get a lot of personal fulfillment out of student identification. It’s often controversial, involves a lot of data and numbers, and can cause many of sleepless nights over concerns of some student going mis-identified. Luckily for all of us, the Illinois Association for Gifted Children’s 2019 conference will include two outstanding sessions on gifted and talented student identification. I know because they’re mine and I can guarantee that they will be the best sessions by someone named Scott on the topic of identification in the Friday 9:30 am and 1:15 pm slots!

At 9:30am I’ll offer a session on how to create the ideal gifted screening phase. In most schools, universally evaluating all students for gifted service eligibility is time and cost prohibitive. Because of this, schools need to decide who we should actually put through the full process and on what criteria such decisions should be made. This two-phase system of screening followed by formal consideration can save a lot of time and money, but if done poorly, can cause the majority of gifted students to be missed. My session on Friday morning will show you how to select the right criteria for a screening phase in order to 1) miss as few students as possible while also 2) spending as little money as possible. We’ll also consider how two-phase systems influence disproportionality and student underrepresentation and how they can be utilized to help address this important issue.

My second session, on Friday afternoon, addresses the criteria for a “good” gifted identification process. The goal of this session is to get everyone thinking about what they should be measuring in their identification systems based on what services will be provided to those identified. Methods for evaluating this identification system – service alignment will be shared with considerations for resources, disproportionality, and overall system accuracy. We’ll also consider where racial, ethnic, home language, gender, and socioeconomic diversity and proportionality fit in the considerations for system quality and how to balance these priorities with correctly locating students who have unmet, advanced learning needs. It should be a good time. 

Come hear from a presenter whose class was once described as “not nearly as terrible as I was expecting it to be”.