Assessing Student Performance: Issues for Gifted Youngsters

Student assessment is a vexatious issue for gifted children who may not be producing results acceptable to mainstream assessment requirements. We often talk of gifted underachievers when in fact some gifted students could more appropriately be considered nonproducers.

Lack of achievement in gifted children who are independent, rebellious and quite happy about their situation means they are really non-producers, according to James Delisle in Guiding the Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Youth (1992). They vary their performances according to whether they like the teacher and see themselves as academically able but choosing not to achieve highly. They are not particularly worried by the anguish their non-performance causes their parents.

According to Delisle true underachievers are psychologically at risk, not mentally healthy. They don't understand what's happening and need counselling to understand causes and find solutions. Underachievers tend to withdraw and fear authority. They are often perfectionists with poor academic self-concept (1992: 121).

With the approach of Year 12 however students may focus on tertiary entrance and look for high test scores to enable them to follow their chosen paths through university. They may then find their past behaviour too great an obstacle to success. Parents and teachers need to know whether they are dealing with underachievement or nonproduction so that appropriate action can be taken much earlier in schooling to avoid later failure that affects life choices. Both groups need help to change both attitudes and behaviours.

It is important that assessment strategies are designed with different learning styles in mind. Too often gifted youngsters report that their teachers say there are no options and that they must follow QSA (Board) requirements. Examination of Senior Syllabuses however reveals great flexibility in assessment possibilities and enquiries of the authority also indicate that teachers have wide powers in determining how to assess student learning outcomes. Students themselves need to be aware of how best they show their abilities and be willing to negotiate assessments that suit their operating style. In that way authentic assessments can take place.

Authenticity of curriculum and assessment is becoming a big issue. A recent New York Times article noted that now more than half of all USA State Education Departments have 'outsourced' assessment to expanded computer data-entry type companies with their tick-the-box, high-stakes examinations, which appear well suited for future Internet delivery. The issue of who sets the curriculum being tested is of central importance, and hopefully that is not the test-producing companies.

One wonders if these 28 USA Education Departments were to be offered fully-packaged curriculum and assessment services would they be tempted to take the easy route and provide some rational statements about equity and objectivity to defend such actions? Governments now spend more funding on consultancy including outsourcing in education than ever before.

The article has raised some interest, with teachers asking "How do you then differentiate for differing abilities?" and for which the answer is perhaps one doesn't, with high-stakes pass or fail exams, which accounts for the mass-expulsion of students just before these examinations in some schools as mentioned in the NY Times article.

This situation is deplorable and vigilance is required. It seems that all those interested in the educational welfare of gifted children need to hear the alarm bells ringing.

Judith Hewton