Just reinforces my point Frank that rating students on test scores alone cause teachers to care only about the test and not the individual students. My youngest is in a gifted program as well. He actually did not score well enough on the test to get in but we asked they put him in anyway. He's basically the class leader now and the instructor raves about him. Seems tests bore him and he tends to rush through them and not spend a great deal of time on the details. Usually makes enough silly mistakes to not ace them.

Interesting tale in my navy nuclear power training. We had a guy in our classes that was an extremely strange and nerdy man that really blazed on the classroom work. He had the social skills and common sense though of a 3 year old. Well, at the end of the school, the instructors told us that our notes were classified and to make sure we destroyed them. The classes were held in some very old wooden structures but that didn't phase this doofus. When nobody was around, he put his notes in a wastebasket and lit them on fire. Luckily, an instructor came in to find the flames licking the ceiling and got to a fire extinguisher in time.

In contrast, I had a really good friend that struggled terribly with the classroom work and the tests. He managed to just squeak by that part. However, he ended up on the sub I was on and was one of the most valued workers on there.

I guess what I'm saying is that, if our school systems are designed to prepare our youth for real life, I'll be more impressed when our system of accountability finds the nearly impossible way of rating the students on all of their talents and traits, not simply their ability to take a test. Facts and figures and abilities in math, reading and writing are valuable skills that must be learned but so are the less testable traits such as sociability, inventiveness, artistic reasoning, physical fitness and political sensibility. All of those latter factors can make for a wonderful employee in spite of deficiencies in the three R's.