Posts about CPS Chicago Public Schools Gifted Program written by cpsobsessed. The Edison Regional Gifted Center groups students. Program Application. Students can apply online or via paper Selective Enrollment Elementary Schools.

For the first time, I took my daughter to the annual gifted testing for selective enrollment. This is the test you take your kid to if you want to get into one of the dozen or so selective enrollment schools.

I had been tempted to do this since she was in Kindergarten. Several parents of schoolmates had pulled me aside in the past and suggested I do it. It’s hard to resist. After all, what parent doesn’t think their kid is “gifted”? And every parent wants to be reassured by a numerical score that they’re doing it right. Well, we’re happy with her current school (a magnet school), and why open a Pandora’s Box if the result is that she’s a genius and gets an offer from another highly-regarded school?

She’d have to leave friends and teachers whom she loves, and when she heard about getting this “test”, we could tell she was anxious about what it would mean, and even about doing poorly on the test itself. So I convinced myself that we were going to get her tested just to see how she did, that we weren’t going to make any changes based on the score, and that this was an exercise in experiencing the “process” of getting tested. I am after all, curious about what exactly is on the test, since it seems to be some kind of state secret protected under lock and key by CPS. I even told myself it would be a good career development exercise, since lately getting your kid into the right CPS school has parents so anxious they. After snooping around various, I realized that almost no one knows what’s on this test. I was intrigued. So we applied for the testing and got a reasonably good time.

CPS assigns you a random time and day for testing. Last time I tried we got an 8AM on a Saturday (ugh!). This time was a 1:30 in the afternoon, so we went for it. Virgin Media Wifi Key Generator. I brought my daughter, who is now in 2nd grade, and her brother who is 3, along for the ride. I had read that the time for testing could vary considerably, from 15 minutes to over an hour. The testing takes place at IIT on the near southside, in a college lecture room. You arrive with your kid and check-in, where they give you a number printed on a colored square.

When enough kids have arrived, they call out the color and your kid lines up with all the other kids with that color. They then escort the kids out of the room to another room. There were about 4 groups of children of about 15-20 students each in our session. I asked and was told the test would take about 90 minutes.

The proctors made it clear that no children would be allowed to bring any kind of electronics or recording equipment with them into the test room, and that if for any reason a child could not complete the test, or was disruptive, they would not be allowed to re-take the test again until the following year. The parents were kept waiting in the auditorium until the test ended and the children returned to the auditorium.

The waiting time went fairly smoothly. I placated the 3 year old with snacks and an iPad. There was no public wi-fi in the auditorium. There were bathrooms nearby and mention was made of a snack machine elsewhere in the building. After about an hour the children were returned. I asked my daughter how well she did. She said she thought she got most of the questions right.

It turns out, at least for the 2nd grade level, that it was a multiple-choice test, probably about 30-40 questions. The students were asked a question and asked to fill in a bubble like on a Scantron type form.

My daughter could not remember all the questions, but the ones she did tell me were along the lines of: “what type of animal has a mane?”, then she has to choose which picture best matched that question. Another was, “which shape can you not draw without picking up your pencil from the paper?”. I asked her if there were any math questions and she said no.