Michael F. Shaughnessy Senior Columnist EdNews.org
Tammy Lynne Moore
Eastern New Mexico University

Steven Pfeiffer is Professor and Director of Clinical Training in the Ph.D. program in combined counseling and school psychology, offered by the department of Educational Psychology and learning systems at Florida State University. He is a licensed psychologist, Fellow of the APA and a diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology. More information about the program and others offered through the College of Education can be found online at www.coe.fsu.edu . In this interview he responds to questions about the fact that the New York City Public School System will be using his test to screen for gifted children.

1) I understand that the New York City Public School system will be using your rating scale to identify gifted kids. How did this come about?

Almost a year ago, the New York City Board of Education announced a competition for proposals to design an innovative system to identify gifted students throughout the city. The announcement went out to all of the major test publishers. New York City was not satisfied with the identification process that they were using, and was looking for a new and creative way to fairly and accurately identify gifted students. My test, the Gifted Rating Scales, is published by Harcourt Assessment. I worked with Harcourt Assessment in developing a proposal for New York City. We designed the proposal with an eye toward the gifted identification process being cost-effective, scientifically defensible, and user friendly. New York City formed a panel of educators, administrators, authorities, and community representatives, who reviewed the proposals and interview the finalists. The Harcourt team was fortunate in being awarded a 5-year contract to oversee all gifted identification in the city.

2) What does your scale measure?

The Gifted Rating Scales is a teacher rating scale designed to help identify gifted students. The scale is based on a multidimensional model of giftedness that incorporates the Munich Model of Giftedness and Talent and the typology that appears in the U.S. Department of Education Report, National Excellence: A Case for Developing America's Talent. The scale also reflects the significant work of Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg. By design, the GRS minimizes observational bias and increases measurement accuracy. There are two forms: the GRS-P (for preschool/kindergarten level, ages 4:0-6:11) and the GRS-S (designed specifically for students in grades 1-8, ages 6:0-13:11). The two forms are rather different, with less than 30% overlap of items.

The GRS measures students' abilities in six areas:
* Intellectual Ability: measures the child's verbal and nonverbal mental skills and intellectual competence. Items on this scale rate the child's memory, reasoning ability, problem solving and mental speed.
* Academic Ability: measures the child's skill in dealing with factual and/or school-related material. Items rate readiness and advanced development/proficiency in reading, math and other aspects of the early childhood curriculum.
* Creativity: measures the child's ability to think, act and/or produce unique, novel or innovative thoughts or products. Items rate the child's imaginative play, original thinking and inventive approach to situations or problems.
* Artistic Talent: measures the child's potential for, or evidence of ability in, drama, music, dance, drawing, painting, sculpture, singing, playing a musical instrument and/or acting.
* Leadership: measures the child's ability to motivate people toward a common goal. This scale only appears on the GRS-S form and is not part of the GRS-P.
* Motivation: refers to the child's drive, tendency to enjoy challenging tasks, and ability to work well without encouragement or reinforcement. The motivation scale is not viewed as a type of giftedness, but rather as the energy that impels a young child to achieve.

3) Are you consulting with the New York City system about it's use? Doing any training?

I am working closely with New York City to assist the schools in their transition to the city-wide use of the GRS. For example, I designed a GRS scoring guide for use in teacher training sessions. In the coming month, over twenty-two thousand kindergarten, first and second graders are scheduled to participate in the first wave of gifted identifications. The gifted identification battery consists of each student administered select subtests of the OLSAT and one-or-two teachers completing a GRS on each student. The initial number of students is staggering, and Harcourt Assessment is committed to ensuring that the process proceeds smoothly in a fair and equitable manner.

4) What are the big advantages of your rating scale? How long has it been in use?

The GRS was published in 2003. It took almost four years to develop! It has been in use for approximately three years. Presently, approximately 400 school districts nationwide are using the GRS. Test development began with an extensive review and critique of existing gifted rating scales. We conducted a survey of experts in the gifted field and reviewed the literatures on talent development and giftedness. These preliminary steps helped generate literally tens of hundreds of initial items!

We next invited experts in child development, education, gifted education, school psychology, and talent development to provide reactions and feedback to the initial pool of items. New items were suggested; some initial items were modified and eliminated (this process I call, 'item pruning'). Focus groups of teachers then provided a new wave of input and feedback, followed by a series of pilot and field testing. We went through multiple iterations and revisions on the road to a final set of items that constituted the standardization sample! At times, it felt like the scale was part of a very, very long (and difficult) labor and delivery!

Standardization of the GRS was intentionally co-linked with standardization of the new WISC-IV and WPPSI-III. We saw this as a huge advantage. The GRS would be afforded additional validity evidence by being co-linked to two established ('gold standard') tests of intelligence.

Five principles guided the development of the GRS. We view these principles as obvious strengths of the scale. One, the GRS is user friendly.

The GRS requires minimal training to administer, score, and interpret. Teacher feedback confirms that the scale has high face validity and is an easy-to-use assessment tool in the screening and identification of gifted students. Two, the GRS is scientifically sound. The scale is very reliable and accurate. A number of studies reported in the test manual and recently published in top, peer review journals demonstrate the reliability, validity and diagnostic accuracy of both the GRS-P and GRS-S.

Three, the GRS is simple to interpret. The GRS conceptualizes giftedness in a straightforward, direct, and meaningful way. It provides the user with an interpretive framework that simplifies the identification of gifted students. We developed gifted classification ranges that provide the user with the likelihood or probability that a student is gifted in one or more areas. The classification ranges include: low probability, moderate probability, high probability and very high probability. Four, the GRS is flexible. It can be used as a stand alone screening test. And it can be used in conjunction with other tests as part of a comprehensive battery (e.g., IQ test, portfolio assessment, nonverbal measure, audition). Fifth, the GRS provides information on giftedness in multiple domains. Many gifted students demonstrate precocious development, extraordinary potential, high ability, or even expertise I only one culturally valued domain. A smaller but not insignificant number of gifted students reveal similarly advanced potential or ability in two or more domains. The GRS offers scores on multiple domains to capture the rich diversity within the gifted population. The GRS also provides a valuable measure of the student's level of motivation. We don't view motivation as a type of giftedness, but rather as an important construct that helps explain the student's commitment, drive and desire to succeed.

5) How long does it take to administer your test?

The GRS-P consists of 5 scales and 60 items. It takes most teachers no more than 7-to-10 minutes to complete. The GRS-S has a 6^th scale and includes 72 items. We have found that most teachers can complete all of the items on the GRS-S in 10-to-15 minutes.

6) How valid/reliable is the test?

We are proud of the fact that the GRS-P and GRS-S are both highly reliable tests. We are also very pleased that there is a growing body of research—appearing with increasing frequency in peer review journals—supporting the validity of both scales. For example, the upcoming, winter issue of Gifted Child Quarterly includes an article that investigated the age, gender, race, and diagnostic efficiency of the GRS. The study analyzed the standardization sample of the GRS-S and extended very favorable findings reported in the test manual. For example, there were no significant race/ethnicity differences on any of the GRS-S scales. This is an important and favorable finding, especially given the gifted field's concern with the under-representation of African American, Hispanic/Latino and Native American students in gifted education programs.

A second significant finding reported in this same study was that the GRS-S demonstrated very high diagnostic accuracy. In other words, the GRS-S did an exceptionally accurate job classifying students as high IQ (as a proxy for intellectual gifted) or not high IQ (as a proxy for not intellectually gifted).

The test manual reports considerable data in support of the reliability and validity of the scale. For example, internal consistency, as measured by coefficient alpha, ranges from .97 to .99. For the GRS-P, inter-rater reliability ranges from .62 to .80. Independent, peer reviews in the Mental Measurements Yearbook and in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment further confirm the psychometric strengths of the Gifted Rating Scales. My research lab has undertaken a number of validation studies, both in the U.S. and internationally. For example, translated versions of the GRS confirm the factor structure in China, South Korea and Turkey.

7) There are always racial/ethnic and other concerns. Does your test address these concerns?

No test or measure is cultural free. However, we designed the rating scale to be objective and to have a low 'cultural weighting.' In other words, items for the scale were selected (and eliminated during the pruning process) based, in part, on bias based on race/ethnicity and parent education level. The study mentioned above that appears in the upcoming winter issue of Gifted Child Quarterly indicates that scores on the six scales of the GRS-S do not differ significantly by race/ethnicity. This is a huge finding in support of the GRS helping to identify typically under-represented gifted minority group students. Although not statistically significant, the trend was consistently in favor of Asian American and White students obtaining slightly higher GRS ratings than African American and Hispanic children. However, the differences by race/ethnicity were, at most, modest. For example, the mean scale score for Asian American students was 3.3 points higher than the mean scale score for African American and Hispanic students on the Intellectual Ability scale. This is only 1/3 standard deviation higher.

8) On a more personal level, how important is it in your mind to identify gifted kids?

Professionally and personally, I am very committed to addressing the educational and socio-emotional needs of the gifted. I view the gifted as an underserved and, too often, un-served special needs group. Gifted children are an extraordinarily valuable—and too often untapped—natural (and national) resource. Our civilization faces daunting and frightening challenges. Poverty, famine, AIDS, the seemingly irreversible damage wrecked on the environment by industrialization, our intolerance for differences and inability to peacefully coexist on the planet—these crises require the attention of our brightest and most creative thinkers and leaders to solve. Early identification of our brightest youth helps direct much needed resources to appropriately challenge our next generation of leaders and thinkers. This is critical to our long term survival as a species! It is exciting to think that the GRS may serve, in a small way, to help identify and prepare for a brighter future.

Steven Pfeiffer is professor and director of clinical training in the PhD program in combined counseling and school psychology, offered by the department of educational psychology and learning systems at FSU. He is a licensed psychologist, Fellow of the APA and a diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology. More information about the program and others offered through the College of Education can be found online at www.coe.fsu.edu .