The DJUSD School Board tonight will see two presentations on the AIM Program, apparently at the request of board members who have provided two professors from UC Davis to present their findings regarding AIM assessment and identification data at the Board of Education meeting. This information was presented to the Superintendent’s AIM Advisory Committee in December 2014.
According to the staff report, “While the source of the data in the presentations is derived from DJUSD the analysis and conclusions were reached by Dr. Jelinek and Dr. White.”
At present time, limited information is available as there is no posted report, only two PowerPoint presentations.
Tobin White, an Associate Professor at the UC Davis School of Education, will discuss his assessment of current testing practices at DJUSD. Currently they use two exams, the OLSAT (Otis-Lennon School Ability Test) and the TONI (Test of Nonverbal Intelligence) to identify students eligible for the AIM program.
According to Professor White, the OLSAT identifies about 24% of the AIM students, the TONI 49% of AIM students and 27% are identified through some other test.
The TONI is by design more inclusive, as it is used to retest students who come within five points of qualifying for enrollment on the OLSAT test. Therefore it is not completely surprising that students administered the TONI were “6 times more likely to qualify than those taking only the OLSAT.” They were also nine times more likely, according to Professor White to score in the 99th percentile.
He writes, “These are radically different measures, yet they are being treated as equivalent in program placement decisions.”
He adds, citing research, “The TONI was not designed to replace broad-based intelligence tests but rather to provide an alternative method of assessment when a subject’s cognitive, language, or motor impairments rendered traditional tests of intelligence inappropriate and ineffectual.”
The TONI was designed specifically for populations of deaf and hearing impaired, those with aphasia, dyslexia and other disorders related to spoken and written language, and those not proficient with written and spoken English.
The TONI is also the more ethnically diverse testing protocol. Currently the District’s AIM program is 60% White, 19% Hispanic, 16% Asian, and 3% Black. The OLSAT generates 48% White qualifiers, 44% Asian, 6% Latino and 1% Black. The TONI is more ethnically diverse with 43% white, 31% Latino, 12% Asian, and 8% Black.
Professor White concludes that “the current rescreening process is fundamentally flawed.” The “TONI and OLSAT have dramatically different psychometric properties, one score should not simply replace the other.”
He noted, “The TONI is designed to address only a limited range of the search and serve criteria, yet is being applied for all of them.”
He concludes, “The TONI is clearly identifying a more diverse group of students than the OLSAT, but as a function of student selection rather than test bias.”
Professor David Jelinek, the Associate Director of Teacher Education at UC Davis, will present a more historical perspective on the GATE Evaluation in the DJUSD.
In addition to the historical perspective, he offers several questions for today. These include:
- How are students identified to take the TONI? Why a second administration?
- Why do so many students from this group score in the upper percentiles?
- How is the test administered?
- Is the TONI the appropriate test?
- Does the TONI help identify a more diverse group of students?
He also makes several recommendation including:
- Use of multiple criteria but converted to common/weighted scale
- Reasonable cutoffs to assure those identified will benefit
- Identify students with unidentified potential.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
there seems to be the need for more discussion here. i understand that this presentation was brought forth in advance of the subcommittee’s report and that it was done at the behest of three members who weren’t the president or vp of the board. this smells of politics.
on the other hand, the report itself is fairly damning – if accurate – and that bears further scrutiny.
DP: this smells of politics. Please elaborate.
if the information i was told is accurate – we have a group within the board that is placing an item on the agenda early, prior to the district’s committee reporting out on the same topic – why? why the rush? someone told me that the report from that committee would have been ready in april. so why the need to circumvent the president and vice president of the board to place the item on now? and where is the report? all we have are a few powerpoint slides – why no report? why no methodology for how the studies were conducted? why no presentation on the conclusions? it’s all suspicious to me as though they were trying to get it through the back door. hence my comment this smells of politics.
We pigs have good noses. The only thing I’d change about your comment is that this doesn’t “smell” of politics, it REEKS of politics.
Allow me to also make the observation, having studied at the hooves of the best, that this sort of preemptive release of partial information, with an intent to influence and deceive, is a classic tool of the experienced propagandist. Oink!
then there is this letter to the editor from october 23, 2014:
so you have tobin white who supported two of the board members, and those two board members putting his presentation on the agenda.
It doesn’t take a sniffer dog to smell a rat in this situation. Of course the conclusions are biased! Why would Lovenburg and her minions (Archer and Adams, in case it isn’t obvious to sheep and other non-canine/non-porcine readers) support the study if they weren’t sure of the outcome in advance? It’s simple to manipulate the conclusions drawn by an inattentive crowd by simply pre-wiring which questions are asked and which “facts” are allowed in formulating the answers.
I’ll never understand why so much effort goes into lowering educational standards in a barnyard like Davis, but the concerted attack on AIM/GATE is only part of the effort. That ludicrous, poorly-conceived, and unnecessary lottery endorsed by some third-rate Sacramento lawyer loyal to someone other than the children of Davis is still in place and doing immeasurable harm to those selected for the waiting list.
And some people think that high tech companies employing highly-paid creative and diverse people would want to relocate to Davis and subject their children to this set of priorities? Can I laugh at the same time I Oink!
NPIV: Do you think that the TONI test is being appropriately used to identify AIM students?
wdf1, please see the comment by noplacelikeDavis below. I couldn’t possibly have stated it better. Oink!
Until we have an alternative method of rescreening students, let’s not attack the TONI. It’s use in the last few years has helped make the DJUSD GATE program more reflective of our diverse population. Yes, there are better or possibly more thorough tests available, but as discussed at the advisory committee they are either too expensive or must be administered by a psychologist or other licensed practitioner. Tobin White is part of the UCD school of Ed, but not a specialist in Gifted education nor student data. It is unclear why he has been invited to present and being touted as an expert when in fact this is not his field.
The work of the district AIM/GATE advisory has been focused on access to the program. Please don’t bash TONI when there is not an affordable, viable option. Let’s work as a district to be creative and inclusive to meet the needs of all of our DJUSD students.
Is it true or not true that the TONI test was never intended to be administered as it is currently being used? If it is being used inappropriately, then why defend its use in this way?
Since all of the children tested using the TONI seem to pass it with flying colors, why not just skip that exercise and just merely select them to go into the AIM program, so the AIM program can maintain its appearance of diversity.
That’s just one part of it. It states that the TONI is also used to test students through Search and Serve, which tests children identified as having one of the following criteria: parent unemployment, free or reduced lunch, etc; lack of preschool, unsettled family life, etc.; learning disability, severe allergies, asthma, etc.; primary language other than English; child abuse, parent divorce/absence, remarriage, etc.
Now explain the results of the TONI test.