The Joy of Information (plus Davidson Fellows announcement)

Plenty of folks are going back to school this week and next and the week after Labor Day. In my home, both my boys are starting new preschools this fall. My almost 2-year-old will be going two days a week. This will be quite an adventure for all of us.

It's also, if you think about it, an amazing privilege. We have so much access to education and information here in the United States. Right here on my computer I can read all kinds of books in the public domain. For a few bucks, I can download most others to my Kindle and start reading them in a minute. I can watch Khan Academy videos or listen to amazing classical works on Pandora. Kids can go to free public schools, and even if they're not wonderful, they exist, up to the high school level, for every kid in the country. That's more than many nations can say.

Can you imagine not having any of this? Can you imagine that, if you wanted to know Abraham Lincoln's birthday (to take one absolutely random example), you wouldn't just be able to figure it out? You'd have to ask around, and people might or might not know. Imagine having to walk a whole day to the next town to make a phone call to someone who might know the answer to a town engineering problem. It's funny that we make such a big deal about back to school sales, and what the kids will be wearing, and seldom stop to think about how amazing it is that we can tap in, so quickly, to much of human knowledge. It's something to be grateful for, even as we try to change our schools to best serve our kids.

On another note: The Davidson Institute has just announced this year's Davidson Fellows! These $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 awards go to young people who've done groundbreaking work in math, science, literature, the arts, and other categories. For profiles of this year's winners, read the announcement here.

A Historical Perspective on Skipping Grades

Close to 9 years ago, I wrote a column for USA Today called "Some Can Sail Over High School." The piece dealt with the phenomenon of early college enrollment, and suggested that it was a good idea for gifted kids. That was actually the column that led to my working with Jan and Bob Davidson on Genius Denied!

So I was fascinated to learn recently that my grandfather didn't go to high school, but did go to college. The story is a little less tidy than in these modern days of early college programs. He'd left school after 8th grade to work -- a far more common phenomenon in years past than now (and something I remember when someone extols the virtues of small scale farming. Sure it's fun to grow your own tomatoes, but small scale farming consumed a massive amount of human capital and potential before our economy became more specialized). But his minister saw that he was extremely bright, and tutored him. As a result, he was able to go to college and later to seminary to become a minister.

I wonder how many other stories there are like that? I was recently reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book is full of tales of people who are incredibly successful in business, despite not having more than (say) a 6th grade education. Plenty of smart people used to be forced to leave school for economic reasons, and had to learn on their own.

Now, one wonders, has the pendulum swung the other way? We force children to stay in school in lockstep for a certain number of years -- whether they're getting anything out of it or not. Skipping grades is a good way to zoom along to a point in school where one is actually challenged. It's fascinating to see that that is what happened with my grandfather -- even if the circumstances aren't so rosy.

Services, Not Labels

Many districts, faced with budget shortfalls, are trimming their gifted programs. So I was encouraged to see an article from Wisconsin's State Journal highlighting a new program in the Madison School District. A group of parents had filed a complaint with the state that the district was not upholding various education laws requiring identification and services for gifted students. As the article puts it, "The district also has historically blanched at grouping students by ability."

It's too soon to see what the effect will be. The idea is that there will be a lot more grouping by ability, with gifted education treated somewhat more like special education. Children with the most profound needs that can't be met in a traditional classroom will get services outside the classroom, and grade acceleration will be an option. All sounds good.

But what I liked most was this line: "Sue Schaar, the district’s new talented-and-gifted program coordinator, said the new program differs from past practice by focusing on services, rather than labeling students."

This is what gifted education, ideally, comes down to. Over the years I've started to think that much of the resistance to the idea of gifted education in general stems from this word "gifted" or the phrase "gifted and talented" -- which implies that some kids are somehow better than others, even if this is not the intention. We're prone to many euphemisms in education (like "special education") and the word "gifted" is yet another in a long list. But the word just doesn't matter. You can call it something neutral, or even negative if necessary. The point is that children will have their educational needs met, and will be challenged to the extent of their abilities, ideally in an environment with their intellectual peers. Services, not labels. The only reason for the label is to get the services. If there would be some way to downplay the label, that would be great.

Khan Academy, and Learning by Mastery

I'm in the early stages of trying to write something about the Khan Academy. This online library of video tutorials on different subjects exists to break down much math, science, economics and other knowledge into discrete units. You go through at your own pace, and when you master a particular topic, move on.

So who is the target audience? This is where this all gets fascinating. It could be someone who discovers she needs algebra skills on the job... or someone in rural Morocco sitting at a library computer... or students in a US classroom whose teacher likes the Khan approach. Wired recently ran a story on school classrooms where advanced kids could move ahead at their own level, with the teacher checking where they were getting stuck, and answering questions.

There is much to like about individually-paced instruction, particularly the idea of moving on to new material as soon as you've mastered other concepts. So I'm curious if any Gifted Exchange readers have experience with Khan Academy tutorials, or if your children attend schools that use them.

Another State, Another Governor's School In Trouble

A few years ago, I wrote here about efforts to keep New Jersey's Governor's School afloat. Many states created such programs over the years, which sent high-achieving high school students to camps for the summer to study different topics (science, math, art, music). While there is no shortage of private summer programs that do the same, the point of these programs was to give all students who qualified access to intensive work. Kids also tended to enjoy being around their academic peers, and these programs figure prominently in many alums' memories.

But, like much in state budgets these days, they are on the cutting block. In North Carolina, another state with a long-running Governor's School, the state budget chopped the entire $850,000 appropriation. The program was to run this summer but probably not next. Alums raised $130,000 to keep it going, a downpayment on the $1.3 million needed to send 800 kids for free, but whether that money will come through is anyone's guess.

I hope it will, though I'm also not sure about the direction these programs are heading, relying on wealthy alums or state business groups to keep them afloat. Those of you who know my politics (which I try not to talk about too much on this blog) know that I'm generally a free market kind of girl, not too enamored with government spending in general. But, as we are debating the federal budget these days, the giant elephant in the room is that governments of various levels are going to spend money on something. So the question is what we spend money on, and what that says about our priorities.

Because the $850,000 the state was going to appropriate for Governor's School (with 800 students paying about $500 apiece to go to make up the shortfall) compares to the $11.5 billion North Carolina spends annually on Medicaid -- a figure which rises about 8% per year. If North Carolina somehow managed to save one one-hundredth of one percent (0.01%) on this program, that would be a savings of... $1.15 million. Enough to fund Governor's School close to completely.

So what's a better use of public resources? A rounding error in health care spending or sending 800 kids to an academic enrichment camp for the summer that could possibly change their lives? I have my opinions -- unfortunately, they don't seem to be shared by the folks who make funding decisions.

Tests and Cheating

We all like great stories. The seeming turnaround of the Atlanta public schools was one of them. Kids appeared to be doing better on standardized tests. Now it's come to light that principals and teachers were changing answers, with analyses of incorrect-to-correct erasures indicating astronomical odds against anything other than cheating going on. Even some Teach for America teachers have been questioned in all this.

Critics of NCLB and testing in general are claiming that this is the inevitable result of high-stakes situations. Hedge fund managers rewarded or fired based on performance may resort to insider trading. Athletes use performance enhancing drugs. I think these explanations go a little too easy on the culpable individuals involved, but I'm not particularly naive about human nature either. In situations where it is easy to cheat and cheating is rewarded, people cheat. By some estimates, about half of sole proprietor income (e.g. the guy who paints your deck) goes unreported in the US (and hence untaxed). Teachers judged on student test performance are subject to the same temptations.

I think there's plenty to criticize about NCLB -- not least of which is taking a focus away from high achievers who will always pass grade level tests, and concentrating teachers' time and attention mostly on children who are right around the edge of passing. Those children deserve attention, sure, but so do kids who are too far below grade level to catch up in the time any one teacher has them, and so do kids who will score in the 99th percentile.

On the other hand, in the absence of any accountability measures, you can wind up with kids graduating from high school who do not know how to read. Children are not necessarily served well by no testing either.

So how does one keep accountability while reforming some of the worst aspects of its unintended consequences? Long-time readers of this blog know I like a "value-added" assessment approach. Create tests that don't ceiling out at grade level (so you can get an accurate picture of gifted kids' needs as well). Then assess again throughout the year and judge teachers and schools on kids' improvement. In a digital era, this shouldn't be too difficult, and could in fact make testing fun. Frequent feedback can help teachers make spot changes (and is also more fair, given how much some students move around). Such assessments would reveal that a teacher who brought a fifth grader up from a 2nd grade level to a 4th grade level was in fact doing an awesome job -- and hopefully wouldn't put pressure on her to change a few more answers to get that kid up to 5th grade level. Such assessments would also show if a school's gifted students were merely treading water. Yes, they keep "passing" grade level tests. But that doesn't mean anything good is going on.

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

I spent the last few days reading through economist Bryan Caplan's new book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. The title is a bit of a stretch but the argument is a fascinating one when viewed through the lens of the whole parenting advice industrial-complex.

Caplan's main argument is that within the norms for First World, middle-class homes, nurture doesn't make a whole lot of difference to children's long-term outcomes. Parents can have an effect in the short run, but mounting evidence from identical vs. fraternal twin studies, and adoption studies, shows that over time, these effects become less and less pronounced. Parents have their biggest effect in the moment of conception. After that, there are very few effects that last. The only ones that really seem to are religious identification and political affiliation, but even there it's a shallow affinity. Devout Presbyterians who go to church twice a week might raise a child who identifies as Presbyterian, but he's not much more likely to attend services regularly than other people. The biggest effect may just be whether the child remembers the home as being happy or not.

As for what this means for one's fertility, Caplan suggests that people overestimate how much effort modern parenting requires. If you are a normal, productive adult, odds are your children will be too, and if you raise them within American middle-class norms, any odd outliers are probably not to your credit or blame. The flash cards don't matter. The activities don't matter. The focus on strict TV limits doesn't matter. Discipline matters more for making your life more pleasant in the moment than for anything it will do down the road. So he suggests that people relax and try to enjoy their time with their children, possibly more children than they were otherwise planning to have. After all, bigger families are good for nurturing social ties -- one of the key components of human happiness -- and if items are cheaper than you thought, economists will tell you to stock up.

I'm not sure on the "stocking up" advice, but I do think it's fascinating to ask the question of whether nature or nurture matters more. There's an old joke that parenting advice books are all written for first time parents because once you have the second one, you realize how little of it you actually control. You feed kids the same things and interact with them the same way at dinner, and yet one will lustily eat lox, capers, tomatoes and anything else you put in front of him, and the other screams when a strawberry touches his vanilla yogurt, thereby tainting it. Some children love to sleep and others decide that sleep is for the weak and flabby. Most disconcertingly, I recall reading not long ago an essay in O magazine from the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters. There is really no evidence that she raised her son in anything but a normal fashion, the same as plenty of his peers. And yet look what he did.

As Caplan notes, no one likes to believe that nurture matters as little as it does -- though you could view it as a relief as much as anything else. But I'm curious what Gifted Exchange readers think. There are always anecdotes that point one way or another, but in a world of 7 billion people, it is possible to find anecdotes of anything...

2012 Davidson Fellows Announcement

I know that many readers of Gifted Exchange have been involved with the Davidson Institute's programs over the years. Every year, they award scholarships to young people who've done significant independent work as part of the Davidson Fellows program. They're now accepting applications for next year; read below for the announcement:

2012 Davidson Fellows $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 Scholarships

If you are a student who will be 18 or younger as of Oct. 10, 2012 and are working on a graduate-level project in any field of study, please consider applying for the 2012 Davidson Fellows scholarship. The Davidson Institute for Talent Development offers high-achieving young people across the country the opportunity to be named a 2012 Davidson Fellow, an honor accompanied by a $50,000, $25,000 or $10,000 scholarship in recognition of a significant piece of work in Science, Technology, Mathematics, Music, Literature, Philosophy or Outside the Box.

Applicants must submit an original piece of work recognized by experts in the field as significant that has the potential to make a positive contribution to society. The scholarship may be used at any accredited institute of learning. The deadline to apply is Feb. 1, 2012. To find out more, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org/Fellows.

The Fear of Gaps

Apparently, not long ago, someone wrote a column or letter to the editor for The Citizen (in Georgia) suggesting that gifted children be allowed to skip grades as a way to save money and give the kids some challenge. A parent of two gifted kids responded with a letter to the editor suggesting that this was a horrible idea. (Click on that link to read the letter). Why? While it might be OK for math or reading, the letter writer notes, kids would suffer from horrible "giant holes" in their education. They might not know about World War II!

This is the familiar old argument about those dreaded "gaps" in education that kids supposedly suffer when they are accelerated. I find this argument very odd on many levels. For starters, no school system claims to teach everything under the sun from K-12. We all have gaps in our education. I, for instance, learned basically nothing about the history of Islam in school -- not a small or irrelevant matter, if you think about it. I didn't learn that much about World War II either, because my world history class and US history classes kind of ran out of steam by the end of the year. And I never skipped a grade!

I have filled some parts of these giant holes by doing what many curious people do -- reading books on the subject. Other options include watching movies, taking courses in college, listening to audio lectures, visiting famous WWII sites in Europe, Japan and Australia, etc.

The point is that gifted kids, in general, like to learn. And part of liking to learn is identifying holes in one's education and filling them in. I taught myself to write cursive because I went to two different schools for third grade, and each of those schools taught cursive during the time of the year I wasn't there. I can guarantee that I spend a lot more time writing in cursive (in my journals, in long-hand rough drafts I've written, etc.) than anyone in my classes who didn't experience those gaps.

Acceleration remains one of the best ways to challenge gifted students to the extent of their abilities, particularly in districts that are not going to create self-contained gifted programs. Any district can do it, and it requires no extra funding. Indeed, as the original letter writer must have pointed out, it saves money.

Though, apparently, the parent writing the "giant holes" letter didn't like that line of reasoning either. "Why in the world would you want a child to rush through the fun and joys of childhood just to save a little money?" she writes. "What do you think happens to a kid who is a couple of years younger than everyone else at college? Do you think they would have a normal college experience and any friends or relationships?" Having known a few people like this, I would say that the answer is largely yes. And if you're bored to tears in school, you're probably quite willing to rush through the "fun and joys of childhood" too.

Acceleration isn't for all gifted kids. But it can work for far more of them than are ever given the chance to try. Rather than worry about "giant holes" in their education, we should be worrying about the giant holes in their spirits created by a lack of challenge in grade-level classes.

Making the Numbers Come Out Right

Whenever a school district decides to set up a gifted program, it faces a dilemma: what should the inclusion criteria be? In some districts it's very straightforward (NYC is based on test scores). If people simply viewed gifted education as an educational intervention for children who need it, that would be fine. The problem is that the idea persists, in many districts, that gifted education is a reward. It's a "most likely to succeed" designation, or a pat on the back for something kids have done (rather than just having a different, quicker learning style). As such, some people don't like using test scores, because a straightforward measurement may not result in a program that reflects the gender and ethnic make-up of the district. And rewards, we believe, should be bestowed equally.

That seems to be the thinking behind the new inclusion criteria for a program I read about in the Oakland Tribune. In the New Haven district, school officials were concerned that too many white and Asian students were being identified as gifted (alternately, one could say that they were concerned that too few black and Latino children were identified as gifted, but these are really flip sides of the same coin). So they put the program on hold and revamped the process. Now, the percent of white students in the program has fallen from 15 percent to 10 percent, reflecting their total fourth-grade population of 9 percent. As the article notes, "Chinese students, who make up 7 percent of the population, used to be 23 percent of the GATE program. Now that number is 9 percent. The number of Vietnamese GATE students has dropped from 9 percent to 4 percent -- equal to their percentage of the total population."

"The results are remarkable," Chief Academic Officer Wendy Gudalewicz told the Oakland Tribune. "The students that we identified as gifted and talented in this district represent the ethnic makeup of our student body."

How did this magic happen? "The new process uses two ways to identify GATE students -- through academic achievement and using a checklist system to find students who are gifted and talented in other ways, such as creativity and leadership," according to the article. "The academic pathway gives students a numerical score based on their performance in reading and math and, for fourth-graders, language. Officials then identify the top 5 percent districtwide within each racial and ethnic subgroup in each of the academic areas, reviewing the results for proportional gender representation. The other pathway to the program is through a nomination process to identify students with unique learning styles, creative ability, leadership skills or artistic ability. These students must be nominated by two adults, at least one of whom must be employed at the student's school."

In other words, the school district is setting out to make sure the proportions look right, and (shockingly) has achieved that.

The whole thing is a bit farcical. I have no doubt that someone can be a gifted leader -- but this is the problem with making gifted programs a reward, or a pull-out with special classes, or field trips, or what have you. All kids can benefit from enriched classes. What academically gifted children need is accelerated academic work that challenges them to the extent of their abilities. It's not about being fun, or being recognized for being a good, creative kid. It's about giving someone the opportunity to do work that is hard enough that they really, truly could fail. I keep hoping that, over time, the world of gifted education will start moving that way. But then I read articles like this and realize how far we still have to go.

Little Kids and a Big Move

Today is my last full day in New York City. I've lived here for close to nine years now, a period that has seen many life changes for me (you can read my love letter to NYC at my other blog, My168hours.com). One of the biggest life changes has been becoming the mother of two small children. I have my own complicated feelings about this move (out to the suburbs of Philadelphia) but one big question for me right now is how to deal with my kids' feelings about it.

We've been talking about it a lot. The kids have seen the "new house" several times, and had fun playing in the back yard and running through the empty hallways. Indeed, as we've left to come back to NYC, Jasper has sometimes asked to stay at the house. He's also really excited that we will have a car (not a part of an NYC kid's existence!) So we think they'll be happy with it. But it's not easy to convey the permanent nature of a move to small kids. It's not easy to convey that there will be new schools with new friends in the fall, new babysitters, new routines, and so forth. We've looked at the new house's location on the map. I've been on the watch out for any questions or particular feelings about it. But little kids are little kids. The other night when he was in bed, Jasper told me "Mommy, I'm sad." I asked him why, thinking it would be about leaving his school or friends. But he informed me that he was sad because "I want you to bring me milk." Ah.

I'm curious how others of you have dealt with big life transitions with kids. How do you explain a new school, a new home, or other new arrangements?

What To Do With The Kids This Summer

I've never liked "having" to report somewhere every day -- a key reason I like my work-from-home, self-employment situation now. Growing up, I was always happy to take a break from school for the summer. Of course, as a parent now, I can also see that summer can pose massive logistical challenges. Not only is school de facto childcare for many families -- a problem, since it suddenly ends for 2 months -- it also gives kids something to do with their days. No structure can be good or bad, depending on the kid.

Lots of parents enroll their kids in summer camps, and I always enjoyed mine, but summer can also be a time for larger self-directed projects. School seldom gives kids the chance to pursue such projects, but for many of us, learning to tackle them is a useful skill. Some ideas for kids:

1. Research. The holy grail is, of course, working in a professor's lab over the summer. But even if this isn't possible, a child can come up with a topic that fascinates her, figure out what the unanswered questions are, and spend time in libraries, online and interviewing experts to come up with a hypothesis. The child can write up her thoughts and send the paper around.

2. Start a business. Also a challenging way to spend a summer! Encourage the child to figure out what needs are unmet in the neighborhood and what she could do to solve them. What would people pay for that? How can she find customers? How many customers does she need to cover start up costs and make a profit? How can she advertise and how can she meet demand? For help, visit the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship website.

3. Read with a purpose. Shakespeare's tragedies that don't get covered in freshman English, for instance. Then seek out where such plays are performed and figure out a way to go see them. Or perhaps biographies of leaders of the Civil Rights movement, in anticipation of a family trip to a destination like Birmingham.

4. Write a novel, or a book of poetry. All first novels need work, but the sooner a young writer gets her head around the idea of cranking out 50,000+ words, the easier it will be to do the next time!

What are you doing with your kids this summer?

Gifted Programs = Lower Grades?

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Shea asks "Do gifted programs work?" citing the study of students who either just made the cut for a gifted program, or didn't.

Oddly enough, one of the study results being highlighted under this headline is that students who just got into the gifted program got lower grades than students who remained in their home schools. Why? Well, most likely, the gifted program is more challenging. Of course students who barely squeaked in would have a harder time acing the work than they would in coursework aimed to a less challenging level.

I definitely have seen this in my own life. My first academic "B's" ever came when I was able to take algebra in 6th grade. If I'd taken pre-algebra or normal 6th grade math, I would have aced it. Likewise, when I transferred from Clay High School of South Bend, IN to the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and Humanities, I got several consonant grades that first semester. The work was harder. So I had to learn how to work.

The story has a happy ending in that, in both cases, I figured out how to get A's in harder classes: more studying, more practice on problem sets, etc. But I hardly think anything would be gained by staying in easier classes just to keep up the good grades. The great thing about gifted education, done right, is that it teaches children who have often never had to work hard for anything the joy of throwing themselves into something difficult. We need more of that, not less.

Thiel's Twenty Under Twenty

Talent development does not happen in a vacuum. One of the reasons US teams do so well in, say, basketball, is that the talent development system is quite mature and sophisticated. Coaches and programs scout for high potential middle schoolers, who are then funneled into certain high school programs known for training top talent. College coaches know about the best high schoolers by 9th grade, and see that they go to certain camps, work with certain trainers and so forth. Why is this system so well developed? For starters, we care about it. We all want to see our favorite college team hit the Final Four, thus making celebrities out of players, and the money that is there in college basketball (albeit not to the players) and in the NBA (finally to the players) is so good that people are willing to do a lot to nurture the talent that might someday claim it.

It is in that context that I've been thinking about the Thiel Foundation's Twenty Under Twenty program. The Thiel Foundation is funded by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal. The foundation seeks to promote new ideas and technological and scientific progress that will improve people's lives.

One way to do that? Contribute to the market for talent development. So the Thiel Foundation is giving 20 $100,000 fellowships to young people under age 20 to pursue their ideas under the mentorship of leading scientific, technological and financial thinkers. You can read about this year's fellows here.

It is obviously hard to know what will come out of this. Given that Thiel is a brilliant businessman, I'm sure there's some hope to be able to invest in breakthrough start-up concepts. Who knows if the fellows will produce such things? But putting money and mentorship toward talent development usually creates something, and I'm excited to see how this program grows over the years.

How To Handle The Playground?

Small talk with other parents is one of the great minefields of raising gifted children. Over time, gifted children may learn various social norms of blending in (we can argue whether that's a good thing or not, though they often do). But when they are little, there's no such self-consciousness. Which can make the parent feel self-conscious in her place.

I have no idea about Jasper's IQ. We are leaving NYC so we won't be finding out as part of the pre-K testing for admission to the city's gifted programs. But either way, he's a bright and curious little boy who just turned four, and has the usual interest in dinosaurs, animals and, in his particular case, writing and spelling various words.

This creates some interesting situations. The other night on the playground, Jasper worked up the courage to ask another little boy and his mom to borrow their sidewalk chalk. This was the part of the whole sequence of events I was most proud of; we've been stressing that he doesn't need my help to join another group of kids playing, or ask to share a toy or join a game. Anyway, he was drawing various things, and the mom casually asked him what he'd drawn. "A mouse!" he said. Another mother glanced over. "How nice! Oh! HE WROTE MOUSE."

And he had. I guess it could have been worse. He could have drawn and labeled a parasaurolophus. I wasn't paying much attention since I was trying to keep my 20-month-old from killing himself on the playground climbing equipment. But I was summoned over to answer how old my son was, was he in preschool, how we were getting him to sit still and write and to make matters even worse, one of the mothers started comparing Jasper to her own 4-year-old. I tried to just tried to bat it all off, primarily because Jasper can not only write, he can hear. And I don't want him to think there's anything weird about writing words with sidewalk chalk, and I don't want him comparing himself with other children.

I am curious how readers of this blog handle such situations. How do you be polite and friendly on the playground, and let your child be himself?

What Would You Tell Graduates?

It's graduation season again. I'm heading back to Princeton tomorrow for my 10 year reunion. On some level, I think "oh, I can't believe it's been that long" and then I think back through various things that have happened during that time and realize, yep, it has been a while. Since this season always inspires nostalgia, those of us who make a living dishing out career advice tend to seize the occasion to write columns and such on what grads should know. I'm curious what readers of this blog would like to tell bright young people headed out into the world. I have a few thoughts:

1. You're going to switch jobs. I work with the Princeton Alumni Council's careers committee, and every year we ask classes approaching major reunions to take a survey about their career paths. Basically, almost everyone switches jobs within the first few years out of college, with many going to graduate school 2-5 years out. That's when people become a bit more settled on career choice. So your first job should be something interesting that you'll learn a lot from, with the understanding that it's probably more of a project than anything long-term.

2. "Find your passion" is a cliche... for a reason. We ask alumni to give us their words of wisdom, and probably at least half give some version of "find your passion" or "do what you love." It's a nice sentiment, but the reason people harp on it is that we spend a lot of time working. Not the whole of our 168 hours, of course, but a lot. The difference in quality of life between people who whistle while they work and people who are counting the days until retirement is huge. As someone who's trying to build her career and her family simultaneously, I would add that loving what you do is key to getting over various obstacles that combining the two can present. When you love what you do, you keep at it, which is important because...

3. You get better with practice. I find this absolutely wonderful. I had to give an impromptu speech for something in college and it was horrible. I now actually like public speaking. I like being in front of an audience and drawing energy from them as we find common ground together. Did I change personality? No. I just practiced public speaking a lot.

4. Life is a risk. I have taken a few calculated ones over the years. Submitting that first column to USA Today as an intern who'd been on the job 6 weeks. Having it published has led to just about everything else, including, indirectly, this blog (I co-wrote Genius Denied with Jan and Bob Davidson after they read a column I wrote about gifted education in USA Today a year later... co-writing that book gave me the opportunity to write others...) Moving to NYC without a job rather than getting a regular journalism job. Spending 18 long months trying to get a contract for what later became 168 Hours. Some risks turn out well and others don't, but few calculated ones end in disaster. You have to play career fairy godmother to yourself.

5 Be like Oprah. So it's been the last few episodes of her show this week. BNET had a great column about career tips anyone who wanted to build an empire could learn from her. A few? Bet big on yourself, nurture other people's talent (hello Rachel Ray, Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil...) and never coast. Wherever you are, you can always set your sights on something bigger and better, and work to bring yourself there.

What would you tell grads that you've learned over the years?

New York City, Gifted Classes and Seats

We've made the hard decision recently to leave New York City. We're actually moving out to the Philadelphia suburbs this summer, since my husband has been working in that general region and I can (in theory) work anywhere. The idea is to have more space for our growing family and hopefully let my husband have a bit of a calmer life. So I've been watching with a bit of detachment as many parents I know have had their 4- and 5-year olds take New York City's tests for its gifted programs and over the past few weeks have gotten the results back. (If we'd stayed, Jasper would have been tested next year).

This is a huge city, and thanks to decent outreach, many thousands of children sit for the test. I think it's great that NYC tries to test so many children, and I also think it's great that New York City starts gifted education in kindergarten. In many districts, the idea is that they'll all "even out by third grade" when, allegedly, any benefit gained via hothouse parenting or any gaps created by a less-enriching home environment will have been erased. So that's when you start. But this is patently ridiculous. Any reader of this blog who lives with a highly gifted child knows that their quirks, gifts and struggles don't all come out in the wash as they get older.

The issue is that New York City has not actually created enough seats to accommodate students who meet its definition of gifted. To qualify for the city-wide gifted programs, a child needs to score in the 97th percentile nationally on the qualifying tests. This year, 1,788 children did so. There are only 250 seats in the city-wide programs (there are others in neighborhood schools...but maybe not your neighborhood school). So it is still going to be a scramble.

One can argue about where, exactly, on national standardized tests the cut-off should be set. But it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to create a program that can't accommodate all the children who qualify. When you create fewer slots, gifted education starts to be a reward as opposed to an educational intervention for children who need it. In theory, gifted education shouldn't cost more than any other class, as long as you figure a way to keep class size constant (which you could do by combining grades or in NYC where schools may be close together, combining programs at one of the schools). So it's unclear why the situation is what it is. But hopefully, as this massive school system starts to change in other ways, the powers that be will think about this issue as well.

A Global Science Fair

Intel just announced the winners of the annual International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). I attended this fair when it was held in Atlanta in 2008, and it's certainly a step up from the usual vinegar volcanoes and plants grown in different conditions. You can read about this year's winners here.

Two interesting highlights? One, this is truly an international fair. Three Thai students won a $50,000 award for designing a new type of plastic out of fish scales. Southeast Asia is not short on fish, so this is a fun development (although apparently the bowls can't yet survive the microwave, so the team is tweaking the design). $50,000 will go a long way in Thailand, so it's cool to see science being rewarded there, and for students from various countries to be exposed to their peers in others.

Finally, Taylor Wilson of Reno, NV won Intel's Young Scientist Award for his project which figures out a low-cost way to detect nuclear material. Wilson's work is receiving funding from the Department of Homeland Security which (shockingly!) sees an application for this idea -- possibly in the Port of Newark close to my home. Anyway, Wilson is a student at the Davidson Academy, housed at the University of Nevada at Reno. One of the selling points of this school for gifted young students is that you can devote serious time to long-term, independent projects. We're certainly seeing the payoff from that now.

Gifted Education: Not A Smart Idea?

Over at the Globe and Mail, economist Frances Woolley wrote about some recent research into the performance of gifted students on No Child Left Behind tests. The conclusion of the research was that there were no outsized gains for these students who were just barely identified as gifted on NCLB tests... and therefore, according to the headline, gifted education may not be a smart idea.

I think Woolley and the researchers are completely missing the point.

I understand the befuddlement. An unfortunately high percentage of gifted programs don’t really offer accelerated work for gifted students. They send them on field trips or into resource rooms where you learn about mythology or some such enrichment topic. What gifted students need is academic work that challenges them to the extent of their abilities. An unfortunate number of gifted programs, operating under the idea that the gifted label is a "reward," also set the bar in a place where many kids whose needs could be served in a regular classroom qualify as gifted. We should not be particularly surprised that there are not huge gains there, or that some of these students might struggle in gifted programs that actually are challenging.

(Regular readers of this blog will also get a good laugh out of the idea that gifted kids get "more educational resources coming their way").

But most of my readers here are dealing with situations where a child would score in the 99th percentile on a grade level test. Put her in a gifted program and, guess what, she’ll still score at the 99th percentile. Because that’s as high as grade level tests go! But a good gifted program may actually allow her to interact with peers on a similar level, and do challenging work, as opposed to grade level work that she mastered years before that leaves her bored to tears. What's so dumb about that?

[Deleting the part about Carleton College -- as it's Carleton in Canada, not in US.]

Is "Most Likely To Succeed" A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? Or Burden?

Sue Shellenbarger's Work & Family column at the Wall Street Journal today covered a fascinating topic: is the "Most Likely To Succeed" label a burden? For decades, graduating senior classes have voted on which classmate would be running the world at some unspecified future point. The people who win this award tend to be popular, smart and ambitious, which generally does bode well for one's performance in the labor market, according to Christy Lleras, a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana, who's studied this topic. Shellenbarger cites Lleras's study, published in Social Science Research in 2008, finding that people who'd won this award earned 12% more than their peers 10 years later. A different survey by MemoryLane.com found that about 4 in 10 most-likely-to-succeed winners viewed the label as an inspiration.

On the other hand, about a third viewed it as a curse. Clearly not everyone who wins the most-likely-to-succeed label will have a stunning career. People may have mixed feelings about their careers in the first place, but when you add in the pressure that your classmates once expected you to achieve high school definitions of success, it can feel even worse.

I've been thinking of this in light of gifted students and their later career development. Many gifted students clearly feel a lot of pressure to succeed, much of it self-inflicted. When you're young, everything is possible -- you'll win the Nobel Prize in physics and the presidency, and publish best-sellers and perform piano on the stage of Carnegie Hall! Later on, not only do most of us have to specialize, many soon learn that success of the people-have-heard-of-you variety requires other skills beyond sheer genius. Persistence. Risk-taking. Long-term goal setting, etc. These are important skills too, but not necessarily ones we think of cultivating during the school years.

Anyway, I'm curious how people talk with their gifted kids about goals and career aspirations. Do you encourage total dreaming, or ever talk about the practical side as well?