Teaching Teachers - Part 1

This past Tuesday, I gave an hour long presentation on giftedness to a staff meeting of public middle school teachers. It did not help that it was a mandatory meeting nor that it was after school, and least of all that it was on a day when grades were due!

That all said, I think it went reasonably well. I started them with a pre-test to try to both give a feel for such things as I was talking about them and to gather information at the same time! I asked for definitions of gifted and for when folks thought US schools started having G&T programs. 2/3 of the teachers (who said anything) believe that G&T programs started in the US since 1980! (More than half the teachers who filled out forms said 1980 or later - about 25% took no position on when.)

*shakes head*

The Kings of Feeble Excuses - SAT version

On October 8th, high school students all over the country took the new and improved SAT. 4000 of them got back inaccurate test scores, as much as 130 points lower than they should have been. Now, the official reason has been released:

The company that scans the answer sheets for the SAT college entrance exam said Thursday that wet weather may have damaged 4,000 tests that were given the wrong scores.

Abnormally high moisture content in some answer sheets caused them to expand so they could not be read properly at a scanning center in Austin, Texas, said Pearson Educational Measurement.