Submitted by Richard Olenchak, Nov 9, 2006 08:40

Although I live in Houston, a graduate student of mine forwarded me this article from the New York Sun, and I could not resist commentary. Whether you place children centrally or at their home schools with appropriate services is not the primary concern of this article despite the manner in which the issue of placement location has been elevated. While that issue certainly appears to be one bordering on "folly" in the author's words, the real issue is how children are identified. Are any of you aware that IQ tests of the present as well as the past yield a remarkably high correlation with achievement tests? In other words, they measure nearly the same constructs. So much is this issue misunderstood among both the public and professional communities that in several recent handbooks associated with educational psychology, caution is provided to test administrators and to the public alike to view IQ instruments as if they are achievement tests. Frankly, I am amazed that in a city that is located only a few hours from the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, housed at the University of Connecticut, that apparently nobody has enlisted the experts there to facilitate a defensible decision about developing high quality programs for your gifted youth.

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