History and Development of Above-Level Testing of the Gifted

Assessment in Gifted Education: A Review of the Literature From 2005 to 2016

“…As such, instruments that are compatible with the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of gifted students, rather than their chronological age, are used (Olszewski-Kubilius, 1998). Many scholars have suggested that the high ceilings that exist in above-level tests may mean that they are more discriminatory in the assessment of gifted students in comparison to many other instruments (Rambo-Hernandez & Warne, 2015;Warne, 2012Warne, , 2014Warne et al, 2016). Above-level testing is a particularly popular practice in Talent Search programs, such as the Belin-Blank Exceptional Students Talent Search conducted at the University of Iowa (Assouline & Lupkowski-Shoplik, 2012;Jung, Barnett, Gross, & McCormick, 2011;Rambo-Hernandez & Warne, 2015;Swiatek, 2007;Tourón & Tourón, 2011 Some instruments that are commonly used as above-level tests include the SAT (originally designed for college bound students), the ACT (originally designed for college bound students), and EXPLORE (originally designed for Grade-8 students).…”

Differentiating Among High-Achieving Learners: A Comparison of Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory on Above-Level Testing

“…In a normal distribution of standardized grade-level achievement test scores of typically developing students, high-achieving students typically cluster at the right tail of the bell curve (greater than or equal to the 95th percentile). When those high-achieving students take an above-level test, the above-level test scores show greater variability among the students (Warne, 2012) and offer insights into their aptitude in the specific academic domains represented by the tested items. By using the new distribution of scores from above-level testing, educators can better differentiate among students who are more likely to benefit from enrichment and extension of the coursework and those students who are highly capable and would benefit from accelerative approaches.…”

“…For decades (Lee et al., 2008; Olszewski-Kubilius & Lee, 2005; Stanley, 2005; Warne, 2012), the talent search model relied on results grounded in classical test theory (CTT; McDonald, 2011) to understand the performance of very bright students on above-level tests. Measures of central tendency, including scale scores and percentile rankings, offer educators a basic way of understanding student performance.…”

“…Achievement, as measured by students’ performance on a standardized grade-level achievement test, indicates what a student has already learned; the assumption is that students at the 95th percentile or higher have mastered the grade-level content as measured by the standardized achievement test. The model has proven effective as an approach for identifying high-achieving students, who have potential for higher achievement in advanced academic opportunities in specific content areas such as math (Brody & Mills, 2005; Lee et al., 2008; Lupkowski-Shoplik & Assouline, 1993; Olszewski-Kubilius, 2015; Olszewski-Kubilius & Lee, 2005; Stanley, 2000; Warne, 2012).…”

“…The identification process for gifted education in school-based programs often is considered controversial because (a) the decisions for inclusion in school-based programs are dichotomous (i.e., yes/no), despite the fact that the data on which a programming decision is made is continuous (McBee et al, 2016); (b) the school-based programs are exclusive because they commonly serve 3% to 5% of the student population and selection is typically based on a combination of composite scores from various measures (McBee et al, 2014); and (c) there is little alignment between the definition of giftedness and schools' gifted program identification systems and the gifted program curriculum (Callahan et al, 2017). Outside of school-based gifted education identification and programming, as implemented in the typical school setting, there is a broadly used system of academic talent identification, referred to as the talent search model (Assouline & Lupkowski-Shoplik, 2012;Calvert, 2018;Stanley, 2005;Warne, 2012) that offers a different approach to identifying giftedness and creating programs based on the identification system. The talent search model, developed in the early 1970s (Stanley, 2005), operationalized the definition of domain-specific talent through the process of largescale above-level testing with high-achieving students.…”