iq
Retention: Fighting the Good Fight Against Holding Kids Back (or how I learned to stop worrying and love RtI)
Parents have to choose their battles wisely. That repetitive math homework that seemed a little pointless? Ignore it. The writing assignment that seemed at least B+ worthy, but got a C? Let it go. But if in-grade retention is being discussed for your child, it is time to roll up your sleeves and fight the good fight!
A great writer would never begin a piece with a cliché, so I beg your forgiveness in saying that in-grade retention is the epitome of Einstein’s overused definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Yet every year, students like Jesse, a second grader who struggles with reading, will do, “the same thing over,” and repeat the same grade while watching his classmates move to third grade. This traumatic event leaves Jesse feeling like a failure and his parents broken-hearted while people such as your humble narrator wonder, “Why do we keep doing this to our children?”
Even more maddening than the obvious “insanity” component is the fact that in-grade retention is an extremely well researched practice, and the research overwhelmingly concludes that holding kids back is not an effective intervention for students who are struggling at school. I would challenge anyone reading these words, especially parents or educators who are considering retaining a child, to google “in-grade retention research,” and see for yourself. (To jumpstart your search, here is a helpful article describing much of the research from the 70s to the mid-2000s.)
Digging into the treasure-trove of research, here is what you will find: Kids who are retained (who, by the way, are disproportionally black children and boys), may appear to show gains in their first couple of years after the retention, but after 2-3 years, their gains level off and they achieve at similar levels to students who also struggled but were promoted. The true differences between the retained child vs. the promoted child, however, are found within the negative byproducts that research shows retained children receive such as significantly increased risks of dropping-out of school, future drug and alcohol use, poor attitudes towards school, as well as difficulties with self-esteem and emotional issues.
To be clear, this article is not a call for “social promotion,” which is also an ineffective practice. Students should not be blindly moved grade-to-grade while their deficiencies are ignored. This is a call to eliminate the ineffective practice of in-grade retention and replace it with promotion that meets children where they are developmentally and academically. This may sound idealistic, but there is actually a vehicle in place already designed to facilitate such a practice: Response to Intervention (RtI) / Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS).
If your school is utilizing RtI / MTSS correctly, a child who is performing below grade level should be promoted to the next grade where he will receive either Tier 2 (increased remedial instruction) or Tier 3 (intensive, individualized instruction) in the area(s) of need. If retention is an option being discussed and RtI / MTSS interventions are not a frequent topic of conversation in your conferences, that school has a serious problem on their hands that might need to be corrected at a higher level.
If your child is at-risk of becoming a victim of the damaging practice of retention, arm yourself with research and alternatives. Fight the good fight! See below for a couple more resources to help inform as well as provide you with strategies for fighting retention:
10 Strategies to Fight Mandatory Retention
Retention and Social Promotion Discussion
Matthew Wiggins, Ed.S
Licensed School Psychologist
WigginsEvals.com
Why Does the Gifted Testing Process Take So Long?
“I just wasn’t willing to wait all year for the school to do the testing.” This is the sentiment so many parents express when reaching out to me to test their children for giftedness. Sometimes they make that call due to a disputed score or concerns with a previous test, but 9 times out of 10, it comes down to one issue: Time.
Most psychologists at our public schools are very good at what they do and provide excellent gifted evaluations (though if I may sell myself for a moment, I look A LOT like Superman and exude great charm matched only by my modesty, but I digress). Several factors, most out of the hands of the school’s psychologist, contribute to excessive wait times during “the process” of having a child tested for gifted eligibility.
Schedule Your Gifted Evaluation Today!
So why, specifically, does it takes so long to have that gifted test done at school? Below is a typical (read: no hyperbole needed) timeline of events that illustrate why a gifted evaluation takes so long to be completed.
The Screening Process Begins
November 4 – Ms. Waters requests that her son, Roger, be tested for the gifted program. Before he can be formally tested, she is told, Roger must be screened by the school counselor. Paperwork is signed, Roger is added to “the list,” and the wait begins.
December 15 – The school counselor is able to screen Roger using the KBIT-2, a brief IQ test. Ms. Waters is informed that her son’s KBIT-2 score of 125 has made the cutoff, and he will be given the full gifted evaluation by the school psychologist. Knowing how important the evaluation is for Ms. Waters, the counselor expedites getting paperwork ready to submit to the district so the next stage can begin before the Christmas break.
December 17 – Ms. Waters comes in to sign a consent form to allow Roger to be given the full IQ test. She is informed that the evaluation will take place within 90 school days of this date.
Ticking away. The moments that make up the dull day.
The Evaluation Clock Starts (Officially) Ticking
January 4 – When Roger returns to school after the holidays, he is officially on day three of the 90 school days that the evaluation must be completed within. He waits…
February 2 – Groundhog Day. Also, the 23rd school day since consent was signed. Ms. Waters, though eager, patiently waits…
February 22 – After the Rodeo Day Holiday (not a joke in Osceola County! But don’t worry, they make up for it by attending school on President’s Day), Ms. Waters’ calls the school psychologist to inquire when Roger may be evaluated. It is now day 36 towards the 90 day deadline. The psychologist offers genuine sympathy and understanding with Ms. Waters’ growing impatience and assures her that she will work with Roger as soon as she possibly can.
What the school psychologist does not share with Ms. Waters is that since that consent form was signed, she has been juggling two schools, so she is on campus only a day or two each week. Half of her time is spent in mandatory meetings (MTSS / RtI meetings, staffings, district trainings, etc.), and she is fortunate if she gets a full day at one of her schools to devote to testing. She currently has 28 referrals to evaluate other students, most of whom are struggling learners or students with significant behavior problems. For each evaluation she conducts, she writes a psychoeducational report, each of which take several hours to complete. Meetings are then scheduled to discuss the results of each evaluation. Because she is on the district crisis team, she missed two of her regularly scheduled school days last week to provide counseling at a school across the county that had a teacher unexpectedly pass away. Oh, and that scuttlebutt parents had heard about the kindergartener who bit the teacher and had run away from the class several times? That was true, and the school psychologist has been instructed to bump that youngster to the top of her evaluation list for safety reasons.
March 11 – Day 50. Still waiting…
March 14-18 – Spring Break.
April 15 – Day 70. Still waiting…
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking.
Evaluation Day!
April 28 – After a week of FSA testing, and on the 78th day after having signed consent, Ms. Waters brilliant son is finally tested! The next day, an excited Ms. Waters calls the school psychologist to ask how Roger did. She is informed that the results cannot be shared at that time, but once the report is written, they will schedule a meeting to discuss the results and all program options.
May 6 – Day 84. The school psychologist completes Roger’s report and submits it for processing at the district office, six days ahead of the 90th day deadline.
May 11 – Roger’s school receives the processed report with his gifted evaluation results from the district office. Ms. Waters is contacted to set up a meeting to discuss the results. The meeting will need to be scheduled for the last week of May due to the large number of ESE meetings that are required to take place before summer vacation.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older.
Evaluation Results
May 26 – Finally, the meeting to discuss Roger’s testing results takes place, and with his RIAS IQ of 134, he officially qualifies for the gifted program. His services will begin next year.
June 9 – School lets out for summer break.
The time is gone. The song is over. Thought I’d something more to say.
Coda
So why does it takes so long for a school to test a child like Roger for the gifted program? Well, here you have it. Run this article by your school’s psychologist or counselor and ask how realistic it all sounds and I bet you get at least a wink if not an affirmative grin. Site-based school psychologists or even psychologists who specialize in only gifted testing within districts would drastically speed up the process, so advocating for such things with your local school board and / or legislators may be a worthwhile endeavor to prevent wasted school years like the one Roger experienced. In the meantime, I hear that there are private evaluators out there who can bypass the screening process, administer the full IQ test, and provide results faster than a speeding bullet. Up, up and away!
(*Note – Since publishing this article, the timeline has been trimmed by the state to 60 days.)
Matthew Wiggins, Ed.S
Licensed School Psychologist
WigginsEvals.com
The Ballad of Jodi: A Student So Naughty He Might Just Be Gifted
If looks could kill, I would not have made it out of that conference room. Facing eight frustrated and emotionally exhausted middle school teachers as a first year school psychologist summoned to assist with Jodi, a seventh grade student they were describing as having a penchant for disrespect, condescension, and a lack of regard for the feelings of his peers and teachers, I uttered four dangerous words: “Could he be gifted?”
Leading into the meeting, I had consulted on several occasions with the eight respected colleagues of mine who had no idea of the disdain they would later feel for your humble narrator. Their descriptions of Jodi were perfectly in line with what I observed of the student in the classroom. Jodi would sit in the back of the classroom, feet up on the desk in front of him, gigantic unpacked book bag on the floor to his right, his desktop empty except for when he would occasionally rest his elbows to support the science fiction book his head was perpetually buried in. Classmates would try to engage him and get snide pithy sarcastic responses or silence in return. Teachers received much of the same treatment, with the occasional, “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” comment from Jodi.
Work production was zero. Literally not a name on a paper most days. The previous few years had shown a steady stream of mediocre grades, with scores of mostly C and D, but by grade seven, Jodi was a straight F student. He had about a dozen discipline referrals for the school year with six days of out of school suspension for defiance. He was essentially working his way towards an expulsion for insubordination and his teachers, while at their collective wits’ ends, needed to know: “What is wrong with this kid?” There was a genuine feeling that this child may have an emotional disability and maybe the school psychologist could get Jodi the help he needs rather than have him expelled and jettisoned to the “alternative school.”
Fast forward to the seventh grade teachers’ meeting with the school psychologist. The reaction to my assertion that Jodi might be gifted ranged from disbelieving laughter with head shaking to silent eye rolling that said, “We’re on our own here,” to the red faced rage of a teacher I’ll call Ms. Fierce who taught me a few words that in my youth I could never have imagined teachers actually saying out loud. Their skepticism was understandable. Much of their experience with gifted children in their classrooms was students with straight A grades, creative and motivated children showing off their brilliance on a daily basis. Somehow Jodi’s Fs and lack of production both verbally and on paper didn’t quite fit that common idea of a child who is gifted, nor did his unacceptable behaviors. “Let me test him to rule it out,” I pleaded. “I’ll get it done ASAP, and if nothing else, I’ll see what I can figure out from working with him and we’ll go from there.” The team gave me less than their blessing, but agreed to let me explore my theory. I imagine the conversations that followed as they walked back to their classrooms might have alluded to the “new psych” being crazy or clueless or both.
Consent was obtained from Jodi’s parents, who were sweet and involved folks who were as concerned and frustrated as the child’s teachers. Evaluating Jodi was a fascinating experience. It was obvious from our first few minutes together that he was brilliant. He spoke with an expansive vocabulary forming beautifully eloquent sentences. As rapport was built, Jodi relished in the opportunity to discuss his passion for astrophysics and the latest Stephen Hawking book about black holes, gravitational wave detectors, and various other topics not included in my grad school curriculum. Working through the activities on our WISC-IV IQ test, Jodi continued to impress with an amazing memory, super quick mental processing, an uncanny ability to decode just about any visual pattern you set before him, and of course, those remarkable verbal skills.
When all was said and done, Jodi’s full IQ was an astronomical 156! To put that in perspective (pardon the forthcoming statistical-babble), most of the population has an IQ somewhere between 90 and 109, which is average; 100 is the perfectly average IQ score. The proverbial “gifted” student is two standard deviations (stay with me…) above that 100, which is an IQ of 130. Only 2% of the population is at that level of intelligence. So with Jodi’s IQ of 156, he is nearly two standard deviations above what is considered gifted. In summation, Jodi was much smarter than the smartest of the smart! Imagine the difficulty in relating to peers when you are that far beyond 99.9% of them intellectually. Entering my 15th year in education, my 9th as a school psychologist, Jodi’s IQ remains the highest score I have administered.
Obviously, Jodi’s testing results qualified him for the gifted program. It was determined that he would go to a school that had a full-time gifted curriculum. If this were fiction, I might tell you that Jodi went on to be a straight A student. Truth is, he went on to be a B and C student whose brilliance will always make him a little quirky. I have encountered his parents several times over the years, and while they say Jodi’s improved grades are wonderful, gaining friends who actually “get” him and maintaining relationships with other gifted kids in his program has been the greatest result of his identification. And so, one of my favorite stories to share from my career thus far has a moral: that naughty kid might just be gifted.
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