David Watson's US Academic Decathlon Nationals Blog : http://www.chron.com/commons/persona.html?plckPersonaPage=PersonaBlog&plckUserId=drwatsonipresume&newspaperUserId=drwatsonipresume Academic team primed for nationals: http://thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=d98d23d907a40d9a By Nathaniel Lukefahr The Facts   Published March 7, 2008 PEARLAND — For the Pearland High School academic decathlon team, winning isn’t easy. The team’s eight members meet daily, quiz each other on math, history, science, economics, art and music topics, practice speeches and write essays. They also take practice exams administered by fifth-year decathlon coach Robert Layne. All those tasks are completed just during the team’s one-hour class, which doesn’t count outside study time. “I stay up past midnight studying almost all the time,” said team member Samuel Mayfield, a 17-year-old junior. “Going to bed at midnight would be early. I’d say I go to bed between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.” Another team member, senior Andrew Hartman, 17, said he does not have the dedication of Mayfield, but he still hits the books four or five hours a night. It’s dedication like that of Mayfield and Hartman that allowed the team to take home the academic decathlon state championship last weekend at Plano West Senior High, Layne said. The team scored 50,595 out of a possible 60,000 points. The team from Nimitz High School in Irving came in second with 47,700 points. Pearland High was one of 40 teams competing in the large-school category. Twenty-five high schools competed in the medium-school category, and another 15 in the small-school category. “They did very well,” said Layne, who teaches sophomore-level world history when not coaching the academic decathlon team. “Usually teams finish within hundreds of points from each other. So we did pretty well.” With the win at state, Layne’s team will represent Texas at the academic decathlon national championship April 30 to May 3 in Garden Grove, Calif. Team captain Sophy Lee, a 17-year-old senior, was happy with the win, but she also cherishes the camaraderie with her teammates. “Winning was incredible,” Lee said. “But my favorite part is the teaching. You try and teach your teammates what they don’t know so you can all do well. It takes over your life.” With all the time they spend with one another, they become friends. “I’d call them my very close friends,” said senior Danielle Rodriguez, 18. “We are together a lot.” Rodriguez said her favorite event is speech. For the state competition, she gave a four-minute speech about the myths of bottled water to three judges. “You have to know your speech so well,” she said. “But sometimes bad things will happen. There’s always a small chance some random word will come out and mess you up.” Before joining the academic decathlon team, Hartman played high school football for two years and soccer for one. He left both teams when he found the decathlon team as a junior. “I like how close we are,” he said. “You learn a lot.” But when the team goes to California for nationals, Mayfield said they don’t just hope to win. “We expect to win,” he said. “There is nothing else. I don’t even want to talk about losing.” Layne was able to recruit team members through his world history class, he said. He tries to gauge how students will handle the pressure and the workload. “Because I teach sophomores, I can start recruiting them early,” he said. Academic decathlon teams are comprised of students with “A” averages, who participate in the honors category; students with “B” averages, who participate in the scholastic category; and students with “C” averages, who participate in the varsity category.

 

December 13, 2007

From:  Ann Studdard, TAGT President and  Dianne Hughes, TAGT Executive Director 

To: All TAGT Members 

An important update follows. Please share this information as appropriate. Thank you.

As a professional organization, TAGT has a responsibility to its membership to support the highest standards of best practices in all aspects of gifted education.  Certain assessments, including standardized tests, have been recognized as serving districts well in the identification process of potential giftedness in students. 

It has come to our attention that in some communities, cultural groups have opened “schools/academies” that take these actual tests and “prep” students prior to testing for the districts’ gifted programs.  While this is disconcerting from many aspects, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the security/validity of some testing instruments has been jeopardized by these schools.   

District coordinators have few options when choosing standardized test instruments to use in the identification process for giftedness.  Please be alerted to monitoring your community for schools that advertise themselves as “prep” schools for GT identification.  Our focus is to try to identify all students who demonstrate high potential and gifted capabilities and provide services to serve their needs.   

It is totally inappropriate for districts to attempt to serve students in a program designed for gifted students when those students were unfairly advantaged through preliminary test preparation.  Districts need to be aware of this practice and monitor their identification processes to insure that truly gifted students are the ones being identified.