TestingMom Holds Emergency Session

TestingMom Holds Emergency Gifted and Talented Session for Parents in New York City

NYC Parents On Edge as Gifted and Talented Kindergarten Decisions Are Made

On Wednesday, April 18, TestingMom.com held an Emergency G&T Session for NYC Parents, as the deadline for their gifted and talented school selection was 11:59 pm on Friday, April 20. The sold-out event was held at the Poet’s House in downtown Manhattan as parents sat on the edges of their seats to hear the expert panel all things G&T. The panel reviewed the school selection process and the recent changes to the New York City gifted and talented test which now includes the Naglieri Non-verbal Abilities Test (NNAT®) instead of the much easier BSRA exam given to the talented tots in New York City over the past 5 years.

Speakers on the Panel Included:

• Karen Quinn, best-selling author of The Ivy Chronicles and Testing for Kindergarten, testing authority, and the TestingMom.
• Michael McCurdy, co-founder of TestingMom.com and an NYC gifted-and-talented parent expert, has a daughter attending the much-sought-after District 2 gifted-and-talented program at PS 33 Chelsea Prep.
• A parent from NEST+M, a gifted and talented city-wide school, who has 2 children enrolled in the New York City gifted and talented program at NEST.
• A NYC gifted and talented teacher

The nervous parents in attendance asked numerous questions about the school selection process, how the lottery works for citywide schools, G&T school touring, curriculum, and more. There was also over an hour of live Q&A from the audience.

Many of the questions early on were from parents focused on the recent changes announced by the NYC Department of Ed. regarding next year’s gifted-and-talented testing. The Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) currently used will be replaced by the much more difficult Naglieri Non-verbal Ability Test (NNAT®2). The NNAT-2 test is designed to provide a nonverbal measure of general ability and assesses students on a range of nonverbal skills, including pattern completion, reasoning by analogy, serial reasoning, and spatial visualization.

Parents attending were given handouts with practice questions for the NNAT-2 (Naglieri). After parents reviewed the practice questions, they immediately realized the test is much more difficult than the BSRA and requires more in-depth problem-solving ability rather than the basic knowledge of shapes, colors, and sizes.

It has yet to be decided by the New York City Department of Education how much weight will be given to the Naglieri (NNAT-2) relative to the OLSAT, which currently accounts for 75% of a child’s score in the New York City gifted and talented entrance criteria.

Karen Quinn, the TestingMom, recommended parents start practicing early for the OLSAT and NNAT-2. Karen said, “It’s never too early to start practicing these concepts from the OLSAT and Naglieri with your little ones. It will help them not only with testing but also with their schoolwork. For NNAT practice, your child can play with puzzles and pattern games to help build up their visual spatial skills.”

TestingMom provides parents with practice questions to help their child prepare for gifted and talented testing and private school admissions testing. TestingMom.com’s extensive inventory of original test preparation materials for concepts based upon commonly-used intelligence tests, including the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, the WPPSI-ERB test (Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence), ISEE, the Bracken School Readiness Assessment, the CogAT (Cognitive Abilities Test),  NNAT-2 test (Naglieri Non-Verbal Ability Test), ITBS, WISC-4, Raven’s Progressive Matrices, RIAS, and KBIT-2.

About TestingMom: TestingMom.com is an online membership service for parents seeking prep materials and expert guidance on Gifted and Talented programs and private school admissions. The company was founded in 2010 by Karen Quinn, author of the New York Times Bestselling The Ivy Chronicles and Testing for Kindergarten, and inventor of IQ Fun Pack: Test Prep Disguised as a Game, and Michael McCurdy, one of the most popular “daddy bloggers” in New York City with his New York City Gifted and Talented Blog.