Gifted Rating Scales

Key takeaways

Gifted Rating Scales belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Gifted Rating Scales to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Gifted Rating Scales from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Gifted Rating Scale (GRS) is a scholastic assessment for school children. It is used mostly for Gifted & Talented admissions. It is administered by a teacher who knows the child well. The teacher rates specific gifted behaviors that they have observed over time.

History Rating scales have developed since the early 1970s to assess general child psychometrics and psychopathology. The Gifted Rating Scales, first published in 2003, are authored by Steven Ira Pfeiffer (1950-), and Tania Jarosewich. The GRS is completed through teacher evaluations and measures giftedness on multiple scales. The GRS-P, designed for children in preschool and kindergarten, evaluates children on five scales:

Intellectual ability Academic ability Creativity Artistic talent Motivation The GRS-S, designed for children in grades 1–8, evaluates giftedness in children on six scales:

Intellectual ability Academic ability Creativity Artistic talent Leadership ability Motivation Notwithstanding skepticism — that laypeople lack expertise, objectivity, and consistency to administer the GRS — Harbrace contends that the GRS, by design, allows for minimal observational bias and a high degree of measurement accuracy, especially at higher levels. One of the best advantages of using the GRS, as compared to interviews, is that it is easy to administer and less expensive than traditional large-scale testing. Time for administration is usually modest. Rater bias and subjectivity of responding can be reduced by using a standardized presentation of questions, though this has yet to be researched. The GRS can be routinely administered in schools. While the GRS itself is fairly new, rating scales tend to have good data on reliability and validity. GRS validation studies have been accepted for publication in journals including Gifted Child Quarterly, which has accepted three GRS validity studies, the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment and the Roeper Review. Research on the topic of the GRS has been published by the authors of the GRS, or one of their current or former students. Interested persons should consult the Buros Mental Measurement Yearbook review of the GRS for additional information on this and other rating scales. Harcourt Assessment, Inc. is a unit of Harcourt Education, which is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc.

Criticisms The GRS as a rating scale has yet to be evaluated up to the level commonly accepted by major research associations (NCTM, AERA, APA). As such its use in gifted and talented identification at this point is questionable. Although the GRS is among the top-tier of such rating scales meant to be used for gifted and talented identification, it is also by far the most expensive. The GRS assessment is controversial because, among other things, intellectually gifted children at the highest levels are often not "teacher pleasers" and can be misunderstood or evaluated with prejudice, especially by laypeople with no expertise in giftedness. Moreover, raters can't access, guess, or factor for certain likable or unlikable characteristics such as hyperactivity or inattention or aggressive/stubbornness. Rating scales, in general, can be subject to rater bias based upon the characteristics of the rater. This is of particular concern for children being evaluated for kindergarten because the credentials of the raters from preschools greatly vary. Slight changes in the wording of instructions, or the wording of the items themselves, may have a significant effect on the child's response. Data obtained from ratings rely totally on the rater's familiarity with the child. In practice, the rater of a preschooler, for example, may not be the same person that spends time with the child. Rating scales, in general, are limited to the informant's perspective. Information that may be relevant to the subject, but that is not covered by the items of the scale will be missed. With rating scales, it is not possible to explore the informant's responses and subjective experiences, nor is it possible to observe behavior directly. Because the GRS is administered by laypeople, critics aver that in a large school system, such as New York City, problems with measurement consistency can be tolerably contained within Regions; but it can be injurious to students wrongly admitted to more rigorous citywide schools for intellectually gifted. In the case of the New York City public schools, the implementation of the GRS and the OLSAT, together, essentially represent a shift away from using IQ as the prime criteria for identifying special needs. It also removes the assessment duties from the erstwhile used tightly controlled NYC DOE process that uses pre-approved, independent child psychologists (who had, until 2007, administered the Stanford Binet), and gives most of the duties, instead, to a publishing company and laypeople. IQ in the top 5% is difficult to accurately measure. The GRS is too new to have been adequately normed for acceptable accuracy at those levels. Criteria, such as Leadership and Motivation, are often counter-correlated with high IQ, so the GRS might actually screen out children who most need special attention.

Use of GRS in public education 2007-08 New York City Department of Education adopted the use of GRS as a one-third component for gaining admission to pre-K through 3 Gifted & Talented programs. The other two-thirds component was the OLSAT. This was the only year that the GRS was used. Beginning 2008–09, the DOE replaced the GRS with Bracken School Readiness Assessment and changed the BSRA/OLSAT weighting to 25/75. 2011-12 Atlanta Public School System adopted the use of GRS as a pre-qualitifiying process for automatic testing of students for the Gifted & Talented programs.

Editions 3rd ed. — Gifted Rating Scales (GRS) (2003)

External links Dr. Pfeiffer's website at Florida State University Post doctoral brief of Dr. Jarosewich's research at Duke University Press Release about NYC adopting the GRS at FSU News Archive

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Gifted Rating Scales

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Gifted Rating Scales claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Gifted Rating Scales before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Gifted Rating Scales ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Gifted Rating Scales

In research: Gifted Rating Scales appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Gifted Rating Scales in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Gifted Rating Scales is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Giftedness, Student assessment and evaluation, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Gifted Rating Scales outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Gifted Rating Scales in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Gifted Rating Scales means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Gifted Rating Scales out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Gifted Rating Scales in simple terms?

The Gifted Rating Scale (GRS) is a scholastic assessment for school children. It is used mostly for Gifted & Talented admissions.

Why does Gifted Rating Scales matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Gifted Rating Scales?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Gifted Rating Scales.