Homeschooling, with a Full-Time Job

Today's Wall Street Journal has a fascinating piece from Sue Shellenbarger on parents who homeschool their children while holding down full-time jobs. While homeschooling and gifted education aren't related per se, my experience is that a number of parents of highly gifted children wind up giving it a go at some point. Perhaps the child is asynchronous, so whole grade acceleration isn't a great option, or the school doesn't allow subject matter acceleration, or the high school is great but the middle school isn't, so the family tries homeschooling for two years....

One of the barriers to parents making such a decision is that it's usually perceived as difficult to homeschool a child and make a living at the same time. Homeschooling has religious roots, and many of the families who choose it for those reasons believe in having one parent at home. But those who choose it for secular reasons may not -- or they may not have the resources to live on one income -- or both parents may love their work. So what do you do?

According to Sue Shellenbarger, you make it work. An entire academic day can be compressed into 2-4 hours (given all the down time kids have in school). So parents stagger shifts -- one homeschools from 8am to noon, for instance, then reports to work while the kids stay with a sitter. The other parent gets home at 5 or 6 and finishes up the lessons. Or homeschooling can be done in the evening (there is the question of what to do with the kids during the day -- some families hire a sitter/nanny who drives the kids to college classes or supervises online learning). A number of people who work full-time work at home to make it work. Shellenbarger profiles a woman named Shari Smith, who works 60 hours per week as a moderator for the website iVillage.com. She homeschools her daughter as she works at home, putting young Rebekah on assignments, working for 30 minutes, checking in with Rebekah, going back to work, etc. (Rebekah notes that homeschooling "is pretty cool, because I can be in my pajamas at school.")

Online curricula make this all easier, as the parent doesn't have to be "on" quite as much while homeschooling. Shellenbarger even found one single mom, Amy Garber of Mechanicsville, VA, who makes it work. She goes to her employer's office in the morning while a sitter cares for her two kids. In the afternoon, she homeschools. After the kids go to bed, she works at her home office from 7:30pm until midnight.

Obviously, Garber's schedule doesn't leave her a lot of room for hobbies and such. It also requires an employer who's willing to commit to a flexible schedule as long as the work gets done. But her story shows that even being a single parent doesn't have to be a barrier, if the parent decides homeschooling is the best educational option.

Combining High School and College?

Many gifted high school kids already take some college classes as a way to accelerate their education (indeed, AP classes are supposed to be at the college level, and some 60% of high schools now offer them). Now a school district in California is proposing combining a high school with a junior college to allow kids to earn a high school diploma and a 2-year degree at the same time. While many gifted kids have their eyes on 4-year-degrees, I think this close relationship between a high school and a college would be a great model for other districts.

You can read about Chico, California's efforts here. You can also read some complaints about the project here.

This particular letter-writer doesn't like the idea because kids will be giving up "friends and school activities." But one of the big complaints about the last few years of high school for many bright kids is that they're a holding pattern. You're pretty much grown up, but not entirely, from a legal perspective. You're probably ready for college work, but that requires a real push from parents or the kid to make that happen (will you take a bus to a college? Walk? will the college say yes? who pays?) Combining a high school with a junior college not only allows bright kids to move ahead, it allows kids at the junior college to brush up on subjects they might be spotty on. It's an unfortunate truth that approximately 40% of community college students must enroll in some sort of remedial course. If such classes are already being offered at an attached high school, both the students and taxpayers could save some money.

Of course, many concepts sound better in theory than in practice, but I think this one's worth a try.

Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?

It is according to Newsweek, whose cover story last week made the oft-repeated point that kids are under too much pressure, too soon.

As I've pointed out before on this blog, I'm skeptical. Certainly, there are schools that make kids do too much pointless homework. And certainly some kids aren't ready for academic work at age five. But plenty are. They're jumping at the bit to start reading and doing fun things with numbers. That kindergarten is starting to nurture this curiosity -- rather than just involving nap and playground time -- is not a bad thing.

Indeed, I'm not sure about the point of kindergarten if it's not going to have an academic bent. In this day and age, most children have some experience dealing with other kids in social settings by age five -- through day care, private preschool, or public preschool programs like Head Start. Kids do arrive at kindergarten with a wide range of skills, which makes excellent teachers who can accommodate individual children's needs a necessity. But we shouldn't lament that now schools are saying it's OK -- and maybe even worth a little pushing -- for kids to start reading in kindergarten. If all grades were challenging kids more, we wouldn't have so many of the educational problems we do.

Terence Tao and nurturing gifted kids

Someone had posted a question about Terence Tao, recent winner of the Fields medal in mathematics, on another thread. While the "early ripe, early rot" cliche gets bandied about a lot, Tao's story is more of the "early bud, early bloom" variety. A child math prodigy, he grew up into an adult math sensation.

Much has been written about his schooling. One example from Miraca Gross (like Tao, an Australian) can be found at GT-Cybersource here. I've been doing some research on this topic as I'm supposed to write a column for USA Today on prodigies (once they get done with the Sept. 11 commemoration pieces).

Basically, Grace and Billy Tao realized very early that they had an exceptional son (all their children are, really!) He taught himself his letters and numbers by watching Sesame Street at age 2. He was doing high school math by age 7, and amused himself by working problems and reading books in his spare time. Keeping him in grade level classes was a non-starter. So the Taos directed his schooling, at one point having him study math only at home, not at school, so he wouldn't learn to hate it by being unchallenged. He took various other classes out of sequence as well, at one point doing humanities classes with kids in Year 8 (as the Ozzies call it), geography with kids in years 10 and 11, physics with year 12, etc.

The Taos also gave him plenty of time to become absorbed in his favorite subject but, as his father, Dr. Billy Tao, said in an email to me, never "pushed." They wanted Terence to learn to think for himself. So rather than telling him what he was doing wrong when he got frustrated by a tough problem, they asked him questions that would help him think about the problem in a different way. This was slower in the short run (and frustrating to an impatient little boy!) but in the long run helped him gain a deeper understanding of problem solving. And, as Dr. Tao pointed out, eventually there would come a time when he and his wife couldn't help anyway. So it was good to have Terence learn self-reliance from the beginning.

The results show. Only mathematicians who make major contributions to the field win the Fields prize. Talent has to be nurtured. As M.A. (Ken) Clement wrote in a biographical article of Terence Tao in Educational Studies in Mathematics in 1984, "I had to admire the efforts which his parents, Billy and Grace, had made on his behalf, despite the danger that they would be labeled 'pushy' by persons who did not understand.... In a society where hostility towards parents who regard their children as sufficiently bright to warrant extra-special educational consideration is endemic, it is refreshing to discover parents as courageous and realistic as Grace and Billy Tao."

In other words, when it comes to highly gifted kids, what many people mistake for pushy parenting is, in fact, good parenting of pushy kids.

A Boot Camp for Budding Virtuosos

Business Week has an article in the Aug 21/28 "Competition" issue on the Meadowmount School of Music in Westport, NY. This summer camp creates some of the top string players in the world by putting young people through a rigorous course of practicing (at least 5 hours a day) and performing -- maybe. As the article points out, only the top 60 or so students are allowed to perform, though 220 attend. Everyone else pays their tuition and yet is never deemed worthy to give a concert.

In this way, the school is more or less following the real world of professional classical music. One study found that there are 6 qualified musicians for any open position today in classical music. The last time the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington had an opening for a violinist (in October 2004, Business Week says), more than 320 folks applied and 124 auditioned. I see this myself in the choral field. I'm the president of an organization called the Young New Yorkers' Chorus. We had dozens of people apply for the music director position this year -- and had to choose among people who were all qualified for the job. YNYC runs a "Competition for Young Composers" each year, and also sees how many young musicians are competing for the scarce commissioning dollars out there.

All the students at Meadowmount want National Symphony Orchestra type jobs, and indeed many of them do eventually land such positions. The Business Week article tries to make the point that succeeding in the musical world (and by extension, the business world -- this is Business Week) is almost entirely about how much you practice. Raw talent is not the issue. If you want to be better, do more.

That may be partly true. But music students with more innate talent, in my experience, tend to love their craft more. It is hard to practice 5, 6, 7 hours a day or more if you don't love something. Being naturally good at something and loving it tend to go hand in hand -- which leads to more hours spent practicing, and practicing better.

So unlike Business Week, I wouldn't say that success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I'd say it's more like 40-60.

But at 60%, the "perspiration" part is still the most major component. That's why in all fields, not just music, it's a crime to let gifted kids skate through without working hard. When a gifted kid is told to just wait for everyone to catch up in math class, she's denied the joy of learning to work hard, which makes her better at math, and more likely to succeed in the future.

More Options for Gifted Kids

Somebody must be listening about the lack of schooling options for many gifted kids... Now Stanford University has announced that it will create a full-time online high school as an extension of its EPGY program. You can read about the article here, in the San Jose Mercury News.

Online high schools have gotten a bit of a bad rep in recent years, as a number have sprung up to cater to athletes who need certain grades to play in college. Having the Stanford brand name attached to one will certainly do a lot to make this variety of school seem more legitimate.

There will be some in-person interaction; Stanford recommends that students visit campus in summer to take their lab courses and meet with professors.

Online learning is certainly not for everyone. Kids need to be very motivated (it's easier to get away with zoning out than in a traditional classroom!). Some people find it easier to drop out of courses when they don't have a personal connection to the teacher or the other classmates. I've taken a few online writing classes, and inevitably we lose about half of the students by the end.

On the other hand, many parents of highly gifted kids wind up homeschooling at some point. These parents often complain about the lack of advanced curricula (or secular curricula in general) available for highly gifted homeschooled kids. For these families, Stanford's high school can't start soon enough.

Margaret Spellings on Gifted Education

On Tuesday, I attended the opening ceremonies for the Davidson Academy of Nevada. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was the keynote speaker, and there was some general audience trepidation that the speech might amount to a commercial for No Child Left Behind, which has been a mixed bag (probably good for raising the floor; not so good for raising the ceiling -- and in some cases squashing it).

The commercial did air; we got the spiel that big chunks of our schools' mediocrity could be laid at the feet of a lack of information. Now that we have information on test scores, things will improve. Perhaps -- transparent information is part of the equation. But real accountability, merit pay for teachers and principles, ability grouping and high expectations are also part of it. The Belleville, NJ school system I wrote about a few posts ago that is choosing to stunt the growth of its brightest students doesn't lack information. It just has a backwards philosophy.

But I digress. I'm happy to report that Spellings said many of the right things to an audience that was passionate about gifted education. Many of the Davidson Academy student speakers spoke about how bored they were in previous schools due to the lack of challenge. Spellings apologized on behalf of public educators everywhere. Then she said that NCLB was a start -- a minimum ("grade level learning is the minimum for success") -- and that we need to pay more attention to kids who are doing more than the minimum. Customization, she said, was the "next big revolution in education."

"Every student deserves individual attention," she said. "Education is not a one-size-fits-all enterprise."

She reported on traveling to India, and seeing a hunger for advanced learning that is often lacking in American schools. Indeed, she said that three out of four high school students say they are not challenged (a big admission from a woman who, officially, is somewhat responsible for all those schools' lack of challenge!) By denying children access to rigorous classes, she said, we deny their potential.

So we shall see. Politicians often say good things, so we shall see if President Bush's education agenda over the next two years actually does try to raise the ceiling in addition to the floor. I hope so. We need it. Does anyone have suggestions of what could be done on the federal level to make sure that not only are no children left behind, but that children are encouraged to surge ahead?

Live from the Davidson Academy

For those wondering why I haven't been posting... I took a vacation out west doing some hiking, camping, and wedding attending. Now I'm back on line. Yesterday, I drove across Nevada from Salt Lake City. I landed in Reno, where I'm now blogging live from the Davidson Academy, the nation's first public school for profoundly gifted students.

The kids and parents all showed up this afternoon for a ribbon cutting ceremony (quick, given the 95 degree heat!) Tomorrow we'll be hearing from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and other VIPs.

The school will be starting next week with just shy of 40 students from around the country. Any Nevada resident student who qualifies can attend free of charge -- and several of the families of these profoundly gifted kids became Nevada residents to attend.

School hasn't started yet, so it's hard to render a verdict, but I can say this. You rarely see kids so excited about school. I spoke with a young lady in the parking lot who told me "I can't wait for school to start!" This is a sentiment you rarely hear cross the lips of very gifted kids in regular schools. So I'm thrilled for them. The higher-levels literature teacher reports that the curriculum will be quite connected -- kids may read Darwin's Origin of Species as they're studying evolution in science. I'm typing at a computer that's perched next to a stack of math textbooks of various levels, all thrown together so kids can work through them without the artificial structure of grades dictating what they're ready to know. And people who've spent a lot of time around gifted kids can appreciate this last observation: Some "misbehavior" (noisiness during the Davidsons' board meeting from a few kids who were still here) involved what appeared to be a very raucous and advanced game of Scrabble.

You've got to love it.

Belleville, NJ to Gifted Fourth-Graders: Drop Dead

This seems to be becoming an all-New Jersey blog, but the threats to gifted education in that state mirror the larger challenges the gifted education community in this country faces.

Starting this school year, Belleville, NJ, will no longer send its academically advanced 4th graders to a separate, ability-grouped school for math, science and other academic courses. You can read the news in this article, called Changes Approved for Program in the Belleville Post.

Now, these students will remain in their home schools, and two teachers with expertise in gifted education will circulate around the schools to provide instruction in larger, more heterogeneous classes. Why? The first explanation, offered by Belleville Superintendent of Schools Edward Kliszus, is that this way, twice as many kids can be identified as gifted.

But then we learn this was more of a philosophical decision, rather than a sudden discovery that twice as many kids in Belleville were gifted as was previously thought. Board President Arlene Schor noted that “You have students identified as falling into Gifted and Talented who are all sent to one school... They don’t interact with other kids. They don’t take gym or art. We just felt that it was almost a form of segregation with the academically talented.” Since special education kids are being mainstreamed in Belleville, the board believes that gifted kids should be, too.

The article notes that "Schor said the AT [academically talented] program looks great on paper, with a number of the AT minority going on to four-year colleges, but added the desire is to have the majority of Belleville’s students succeed, not just a small percentage. 'That’s where we’re coming from,' she said. The new program will celebrate and enhance diversity among the student population and not the principle of isolation."

“It can’t be done if they’re self-contained,” said Kliszus.

And, of course, what article on the destruction of a gifted program would be complete without a quote on how mainstreaming gifted kids will benefit everyone else? In regular, heterogeneous classes, says board trustee John McManus, "They can act as leaders and help to bring the other students up.”

For now, fifth and sixth graders will continue to go to the self-contained program, but with explanations like these, how long does anyone think that will last?

It's not that these people don't get it. They get it. They just don't care. They do not believe gifted kids deserve to have their needs met. They believe gifted kids should suffer in regular classes that are taught to the median, and by their suffering, become "leaders" for everyone else. And yes, these people run the schools. And we, as a country, become stuck with the consequences of genius denied.

NJ Governor's School Update

In previous posts, we've discussed how New Jersey cut funding for its annual summer Governor's School programs this year. Thanks to fundraising efforts by former NJ first lady Ruthi Byrne and others, the programs ran as planned.

Well, almost as planned. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry reading this article in the Daily Record, called "Despite Mishaps, Governor's School Proves Memorable for 100 Teens."

This particular Governor's school program highlighted in the article focused on international studies. Students took classes and participated in activites at Ramapo College in Mahweh, NJ. Because of the funding problems, the program was pared down from past years. Instead of visiting Quebec to study our nearest foreign culture, for instance, students were supposed to go to Washington, D.C. Due to a lack of funds, that trip got canceled too.

Then the fun really began. First, a 15-hour blackout meant students couldn't sleep in their 8-story dorm (it was deemed a fire hazard). They were allowed back in for a few minutes at 2am the night of the blackout to get their things, and then were scattered to the few available spots on campus.

Then, two-and-a-half weeks into the four week program, came the death blow: One of the campers was diagnosed with whooping cough. You're supposed to be vaccinated against this as a baby, but judging by the recent measles outbreak among kids in Indiana who weren't immunized, that's never a given anymore. Whooping cough is quite contagious, so the Bergen County health department forced the Governor's School program to evacuate the dorms. Parents had to come pick up their students by midnight.

Of course, if any of the Governor's School students do wind up working in international affairs in, say, refugee camps, they'll wind up dealing with a lack of electricity and contagious diseases quite frequently. In that sense, this program may have inadvertantly prepared them for the job...

But anyway, what struck me about reading this article is how much the kids loved being with other bright kids like them, despite the chaos. They talked about how close they became with each other, how much they loved learning. Despite the black outs, disease outbreaks and shortened programs, the kids were so grateful for the experience.

It's a shame that for most gifted kids, summer programs like Governor's school are the only opportunity to experience that joy. If NJ truly wants to help its gifted kids, it will establish Governor's school type programs that last for the whole school year (of course, they might want to check people's immunization records a bit more closely before they do).

The High Achieving (Homeschooled) Child

The Davidson Institute for Talent Development just released the names of its 2006 Davidson Fellows. They're a fascinating group of individuals, and you can read about them here.

I hope to profile a few more of them in the upcoming weeks, but one thing stood out for me immediately. Two of the three top winners (the Davidson Fellows Laureates) were homeschooled. For Heather Engebretson of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, homeschooling was a way to devote more time to studying her vocal technique. For Michael Viscardi of San Diego, California, homeschooling didnt necessarily mean "home" all the time -- being free of a normal school schedule gave him time to take all the college math classes he wanted.

I've been working on a piece on prodigies for USA Today that will point out that kids who are very gifted in one area are happiest when they get to spend a lot of time working in that area, playing in that area, immersing themselves in it. (if anyone has recommendations on prodigy "experts" -- people who've studied it, or studies, I'd welcome them!) While homeschooling is not for everyone, it certainly does cut down on the wasted time factor. Only a small percentage of school time is spent on actual instruction. If you compress, or "telescope" these broader lessons into a morning, that leaves the afternoon free to study math or sing. The results certainly show with these two scholarship winners.

Nature and Nurture in IQ Scores

Since many gifted programs use IQ scores to judge admission, people attach great importance to the number. They also spend a lot of time debating nature vs. nurture. Children from well-to-do families broadly have higher tested IQs than those from less well-to-do families. But are people well-to-do because they have higher IQs, and so pass these intelligence genes on to their children, or do well-to-do families give their kids lots of opportunities, which raises IQs?

Identical twin studies over the past century have reached a conclusion that about 75% of IQ is a result of nature (genes) not nurture. But an interesting recent article in the New York Times called After the Bell Curve suggests that viewing nature and nurture as separate forces is misleading.

Scientists have been discovering over the past few years that we can actually turn on and off gene expression through our behavior. My husband told me about a recent study on shyness genes that found approximately the following (I'm trying to remember the numbers right and can't guarantee accuracy, but they're not far off): Of people who are shy, 90% have a certain gene. But of people who have that gene in the broader population, only 50% are shy. Apparently, if you have the gene to be shy, but your parents don't let you hide around their legs in social situations, and make a point of making you play with other kids, you won't necessarily grow up shy. Even though your genes would seem to indicate you would.

IQ scores follow a similar pattern. A child who would naturally have a high IQ who is born into a family of professionals who read to him, talk to him, ask him questions and otherwise encourage his little brain to grow, will express those genes for intelligence. A child who would naturally have a high IQ who is put in, say, an orphanage where children do not receive enough attention, will not express those genes for intelligence. A child who would naturally have a lower IQ who is adopted into a high-IQ family will still have a lower IQ than the rest of the family (as the twin studies have shown). However, if his parents provide an enriched environment, his IQ will be somewhat higher than if he'd been in a family that didn't provide such an environment.

The problem with finding that nature and nurture both matter is that people can use that reality to justify whatever they want. One could certainly make an argument in favor of early interventions for babies and toddlers in at-risk families. Providing them with an enriched environment could allow these children to express any genes for intelligence they have.

On the other hand, plenty of parents of gifted kids have been told by teachers that differences in abilities exhibited by children in kindergarten don't matter, and shouldn't be addressed, because "they all even out" over time. If nurture matters, and the teacher plans to provide a very enriching environment, she may believe that overcoming all IQ differences is possible (even though that's not what any of these studies show).

But parents of gifted kids could also use the nurture argument to their advantage. Children with naturally high IQs who are put in more enriching classes are more likely to express these genes. That seems to be a good argument for better gifted education. These kids can't be left to "fend for themselves." If they are, their actual intelligence will be less than it could be.

Teacher Training

I recently came across an article in the Examiner about one district's efforts to give its gifted program teachers special certification. You can read the piece here. By next school year, all the gifted teachers in Carroll County, a district in Maryland, will have taken a six course sequence through Johns Hopkins (a university with a deep interest in gifted education, thanks to the pioneering efforts of the late Dr. Julian Stanley).

Teacher training is actually one of the biggest problem areas in gifted education. It's also one that's not talked about much. As the Davidsons and I wrote in Genius Denied, there are two main issues.

First, since most gifted children remain in regular classrooms, all teachers need training on how to best teach gifted children, just as they learn about teaching other populations. Yet very few teachers colleges require any courses on gifted learners. Few even offer them.

Second, since we hope that eventually gifted children will be in accelerated academic classes created specifically for them, this country needs a critical mass of teachers specifically certified in gifted ed. Yet many teachers colleges don't offer concentrations in gifted education, and only half the states offer certification in this area.

So it's good that Carroll County is going above the requirements to make sure its teachers know how to best run classrooms of accelerated learners. A Gifted Child Quarterly study a few years ago found that teachers with three to five graduate courses in gifted education were significantly more effective in instruction, and in creating a positive classroom environment, then teachers with no specialized coursework.

In general I'm wary of teachers colleges (they can be ideologically strange places). I'm also wary of requirements that people spend years learning to be teachers (given the shortage of math and science teachers, summer boot camps and night classes for mid-career professionals are probably fine). But I don't like that gifted education gets shut out of programs that almost all teachers have to go through. It's good to see that in Carroll County, they're not.

Those Crazy Statistics

The irascible Charles Murray is back today, writing on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal about black-white gaps in test scores achieved under No Child Left Behind.

Schools and districts are required to narrow the gap in test scores between various racial groups in order to receive certain levels of funding, or not be penalized. Of course, given the mean scores of different groups, and the number of people in each group, changes in mean scores can have very different effects on the gap, depending on where those means lie. Differences in pass rates, another key factor in NCLB tests, are also subject to the whims of statistics put in the hands of people who have a vested interest in seeing them go one way or the other.

For instance, Murray quotes Pres. Bush's statements about Texas. There, 73% of white students passed the math test in 1994, while only 38% of African-American students passed it. In 2003, Bush was happy to note, the gap was only 10%. That seems great, indicating that African-American students have made a great deal of progress -- more than their white counterparts. But it's somewhat misleading. Say in one state, the pass score is relatively low -- where many students will be able to achieve it. If one group of students has a higher mean score than another, raising each group's mean score by, say, 10 points, will naturally narrow the pass-rate gap by more than that (if the scores follow standard bell curve distributions). On the other hand, if a pass rate is set particularly low in another state (say, only 40% of all students will pass), a gain in everyone's test scores could in fact make the gap appear worse, Murray notes.

Both districts under that scenario will have improved test scores. But because the second district will appear not to have closed the gap between groups, it could suffer penalties, while the first one will be rewarded.

Studies that have come out earlier this year about state NCLB tests have found that indeed, most states are making them ridiculously easy to pass in order to make sure that pass rates are high and racial gaps appear to narrow. Given how states are citing NCLB as a reason to move away from gifted education to focus on improving everyone's scores, it would be nice to get slightly more meaningful data. As Murray notes of NCLB, in practice, "It holds good students hostage to the performance of the least talented, at a time when the economic future of the country depends more than ever on the performance of the most talented."

Nerds and Geeks

So the other day I took my computer to Best Buy’s famed “Geek Squad” for repair. Leave aside the fact that they didn’t manage to repair it (apparently there was a motherboard problem; I’ve got a shiny new laptop being shipped to me now). They were a collection of nice, normal-looking young men and women. Their advertisement posters, however, were another story. In them, characters in horrible glasses, hiked up black polyester pants and white socks promised to fix your computer, rain or shine, “Sci-fi convention in town or not.”

Now, I suppose that Best Buy’s ad designers are using “geek” in an affectionate way, These are their colleagues, after all. Referring to these very normal-looking individuals as geeks is likely just a way to make the public think they’re competent when it comes to fixing computers.

Indeed, broadly, there seems to be a move by young people to reclaim words like “nerd” and “geek” and use them positively. I’ve been reading a number of articles recently on “nerd camp.” For three of my early teenage summers, I attended the Center for Talent Development’s summer camps at Northwestern University, studying geometry, computers and literature with gifted kids from all over the Midwest.
We never called it nerd camp. But now kids do so freely, telling reporters that’s what they call similar camps at Duke, Johns Hopkins and other universities.

When people reclaim words, they take some of the sting out of them. That’s a good thing. But I can’t help thinking that when gifted young people themselves use such words frequently, other people feel they’ve got a license to do so, too. As things tend to go, these names will then be aimed at younger gifted kids, particularly ones who haven’t made their peace with the whole thing yet. So while I grant that the Geek Squad is a great brand name, I wish they and the nerd-camp attendees would have come up with another way to talk about themselves.

Gifted Students Shy from Fast-Tracking

Fans of Prof. Miraca Gross (of the University of New South Wales in Australia) will be happy to learn she and her colleagues are undertaking a study of how Australian schools deal with gifted children. Gross has spent years advocating radical acceleration for profoundly gifted kids. Of course, in Australia, as in the U.S., sometimes it feels like shouting into the wind, according a recent
article in The Australian.

“I'd rather be doing well in an easier grade than be behind in a harder one,” one girl named Ceili told the newspaper.

Her attitude, the paper notes, reflects that of many educators, who worry that acceleration puts too much “pressure” on students.

For whatever reason, in the past few years, mass media in the US -- and Australia, which does not escape the English language media echo chamber -- have decided that kids are under too much pressure. They feel pressured to do well on tests, get into good colleges, participate in the right activites, etc.

Of course, given children’s actual test scores, the percentage of kids enrolled in college who need remedial classes and other such realities, I’d say they could use a bit more pressure. Or maybe any pressure they’re feeling isn’t applied in a direction that achieves results. I’d also point out that children in the US watch an average of 4 hours of TV a day, and some measurements in Australia have clocked well over two hours a day for children. If families turned off the tube, some of that time pressure might be alleviated.

But I digress. Fortunately, Prof. Gross has several good responses for those who worry that accelerated gifted kids will be under too much pressure of the kind news stories claim all kids are under. “Most of these kids would be topping the class if they went up a grade. They don't realise that,” she says.

And then the kicker: “Teachers equate acceleration with pushing the child. Teachers are afraid of hurting a kid by pushing them, so they feel better doing nothing -- but that can in fact do more harm.”
Hopefully, Prof. Gross’s new study will lay the ground work for acceleration becoming the default option for kids who need more challenge -- the accepted option -- rather than something strange and “pressured.”

Prodigies in the age of Big Media

Terry Teachout, the Wall Street Journal's drama critic, wrote a fascinating profile of a young composer named Jay Greenberg in a recent issue (unfortunately, the WSJ web page is subscription only, so I can't give a link). Greenberg is 14 years old.
He's written five symphonies and more than a dozen piano sonatas. Samuel Zyman, his teacher at Juilliard, compared him to such composing prodigies as Mendelssohn and Mozart.

Greenberg, unlike Mozart or even the more recent Benjamin Britten, though, is growing up in an age of celebrity. Our 24 hour news culture likes to find the next big thing, chew them through and spit them out.
Teachout recently listened to Greenberg's debut CD, to be released by Sony this fall. Greenberg's Fifth Symphony is strikingly well-made, he noted, though it is conservative (young Greenberg seems to be consciously following Brahms -- not a bad person to imitate, of course, but composing is about creating something new). Because it is conservative, it's unlikely that anyone will be listening to it 200 years from now, Teachout states.

So what? We won't be listining to Beyonce, either. But quality does matter with classical music, which isn't written to be flash-in-the-pan. The fact that Sony rushed to get a CD out while Greenberg is a marketable young prodigy means that he hasn't had time to perfect his craft in private. "If his handlers have their way, the immature student efforts he might someday have chosen to suppress will instead be recorded for posterity and hawked to a world-wide audience with a short attention span," Teachout writes. When audiences have a short attention span, you need to go out with your best shot. I have old stories I've written stashed places around the house. Let me just say, I'm glad they stay in the house and the world will never see them. Sometimes when young people get rushed into things -- remember the Opal Mehta flap? -- their otherwise promising adult careers get snuffed out before they can start.

On the other hand, I think people -- including Teachout -- worry too much about prodigies losing their childhoods in order to pursue their dreams. He cites Ruth Slenczynska, a pianist who made a recital debut at age six and later wrote a memoir called "Forbidden Childhood." Does that "say it all" as Teachout claims? Not really. Plenty of people who don't get to pursue their talents have miserable childhoods. Prodigies likewise may or may not enjoy being children. My guess is most wouldn't anyway.
Since they're profoundly gifted, their brains will be years ahead of where their ages and bodies allow society to interact with them. That's seldom a recipe for a happy youth.

What does make people happy, though, is losing themselves in doing something they love. Which makes the hours many a prodigy spends practicing per day more like therapy than the child abuse popular culture makes it out to be.

Insufferable Genius

Thanks to blog reader Kim Moldofsky for sending this one in... A parent of a highly gifted 3-year-old wrote in to John Rosemond, a McClatchy Newspapers advice columnist, about how to deal with the daughter's lack of respect for adult authority. Now, the 3-year-old was definitely getting away with some bad behavior (such as telling her grandmother that she was the boss of the house). But reading the response, boy, does Rosemond have a chip on his shoulder about something.

You can read the exchange here. Sample quotes include:

*"You're not going to make any progress with this child as long as you think you're dealing with some unique being that represents a quantum evolutionary leap for all of humanity."

*"She is rapidly turning into a 3-year-old insufferable brat, and no one is more insufferable than an insufferable genius."

*"Stop treating her like she's an adult! Take her to a restaurant, and before you go in, let her know that you are doing the ordering, not her. If she doesn't like it, take her home and serve her beans and franks. Stop letting her make decisions that you would not be letting her make if her IQ was 100. Pick out her clothes for her in the morning, and don't let her come out of her room until she has put on what you picked out."

*"In every situation with her, ask yourself, "How would I handle this if my daughter was a normal, run-of-the-mill, garden-variety 3-year-old?" Then treat her that way, and if she doesn't like it, send her to her room until she's willing to accept her new reality."

I'm curious how the parents of precocious young kids who read this blog have managed to keep their children in check without keeping them from making all decisions on things like clothes. I thought raising self-reliant children was a good thing... But even more, I think Rosemond doesn't recognize that there are certain discipline issues that arise when a child's brain is older than her body. Simply berating parents for acknowledging this doesn't help. How have you dealt with this?

Keeping Our Edge

The Educational Testing Service (the folks who run the SAT) recently released the results of its annual poll on how American schools are doing. The results, which can be found here, show a few interesting results for gifted kids and folks who care about them.

For starters, the poll provides a useful teaching tool on how answers vary depending on how you ask the question. Half of Americans said schools are doing enough to challenge the brightest students; 46% said schools were coming up short. Among college faculty, 69% said schools were coming up short. Fair enough.

Pollsters also asked respondents to identify major problems facing the schools (from a list). 64% of Americans said that it was a big problem that gifted kids were not being sufficiently challenged to be able to compete with the best students from around the world. 84% of college faculty identified this as a big problem.

So in both cases, a good portion of people said the lack of challenge was a big problem, but they wouldn't claim schools weren't doing enough? Hmmm.... I'm still trying to figure this one out.

What Percent Gifted... Again...

From time to time, I come across an article that basically hits all the hot buttons in gifted education in one fell swoop. A recent article in the Springfield, Illinois State Journal-Register falls into that bucket.

The Springfield school district has created the Iles School for gifted elementary school children in the city. All kindergartners take a standard intelligence test; the children who test highest are invited to look into the Iles school.

So far so good. Education would be in a much better state in this country if all districts had advanced schools for gifted children, and if all districts cast as wide a net as possible to see which children needed the challenges a school for the gifted can supply.

But after the test, things get a little funny in Springfield. The district identifies more children as gifted than can be placed at Iles. So once parents respond to the notice letter, and ask to be considered for Iles, their children's names are placed in a lottery. Which means that every year, a certain percentage of parents learn their children are gifted, according to Springfield, and then are told "sorry!" This happens randomly; a child with an IQ of 160+ who may be completely failed by a regular school can be turned down in favor of a child with an IQ of 120, who might do fine in a good, regular school.

Furthermore, even getting into the lottery requires parents to receive the letter from the district, recognize that Iles might be a good choice, and take the initiative to be included. Not surprisingly, middle-class parents are more likely to take these steps; indeed, Springfield determined that black parents were participating in the lottery at lower rates than white parents, even though all their children had been identified as gifted. So much for the district being inclusive.

At the same time, people have been worried that Springfield's high rate of giftedness (about 9% of children are deemed gifted after the IQ test) means the program will be watered down. There's something to this. Children whose IQs put them in the top tenth of 1% of the population have very different needs than those whose IQs put them in the top 5-10%.

But this leaves the question: How should Springfield structure its program? I'm guessing that one of the reasons so many students are identified as gifted is that the district worries a higher cut-off will mean fewer kids from minority backgrounds or lower socioeconomic levels will attend Iles. I think they worry needlessly -- gifted kids come in all colors. But if some parents are responding at lower rates than other parents, the wide net concept isn't working as well as it should.

My preference would be to set a cut-off for the gifted designation in Springfield at exactly the level that the Iles school can accommodate. Then children who test above that level should be assigned automatically to Iles. No opting in. No lottery. (Parents could pull children out if they wished).

This would be an arbitrary cut-off, for sure. If Iles built more classrooms, the definition of gifted would expand. If there was a baby boom in Springfield, the gifted definition would likewise shrink to a smaller percentage. But designating children as gifted is always somewhat arbitrary when it comes to cut-offs. It is less arbitrary, though, when it comes to the individual highly gifted children who need special challenges. Children in the top tenth of 1% are just different than other kids. Of course, that's a hard thing to build a broad policy around! Continuing to use the intelligence test, and having parents opt out, rather than in, maximizes the chances of those highly gifted kids getting the education they need.

I'm curious how other people would like to see Springfield structure its gifted program.

Business Week: Bill Gates Gets "Schooled"

This blog has, over the past year, criticized the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Small Schools Initiative for missing the boat when it comes to challenging bright kids. The theory is fine -- kids in small schools feel like they're part of a community. They're less likely to drop out.

Unfortunately, when the Gates Foundation has taken on troubled schools and split them into 3-4 small schools, too often they have not concentrated children by ability or interest (say, a selective math/science school). Sometimes, the schools have been downright hostile to the idea of ability-grouping, choosing to "detrack." But gifted kids learn best when they're challenged to the extent of their abilities in an environment with their intellectual peers. Because the gifted children from the previous big schools are scattered around these new Gates small schools, there are too few gifted kids in each individual school to justify programs that meet their needs. So, their needs aren't met.

Now some other publications are picking up on this. Business Week ran a cover story in its June 26 issue called "Bill Gates Gets Schooled." The opening anecdote describes one Manual High School in Denver. A low-income school with low test scores, Manual was a testing ground for the Gates's ideas. People working with the Foundation split the 1,100 student population into three small schools. But these new schools had no particular theme and became indistinguishable. The new principals had no experience managing schools. Even worse, notes Business Week, "Because the schools were so small, they couldn't offer as many electives as before. French was eliminated, leaving only Spanish for many students who already spoke it. Advanced Placement courses were reduced. Sports teams struggled just to field squads. When the famed choir was limited to one school, the popular director left, and that program withered, along with band and theater."

Fortunately for Manual's students, Denver laws allow kids to transfer to other schools if there's room, so most of Manual's best students managed to escape this downward spiral. But of course, that just accelerated the trend. With just 580 students enrolled for this fall, Business Week says, Denver is shutting the school.

Lest anyone think Manual was just a particularly rough test case, Business Week visited 22 Gates-funded schools around the country. Notes the magazine, "they deserve no better than a C when it comes to improving academic performance." Gates schools show only slightly improved reading achievement, and worse results in math. Kids do graduate at higher rates. But if they know less when they graduate, it's hard to see how that was an improvement.

Business Week notes that some schools have turned out quite well. Mott Haven Village Preparatory School in the South Bronx, for instance, has doubled its graduation rate, and, more importantly, posts Regents pass rates of 96% for math and 98% for English ("Regents exams" are the tough exams that show New York students have mastered the high school curriculum -- about half of state high school students pass the exams each year). Of course, it's not clear that being small is what pushed Mott Haven's success. The school has an excellent principal. Gates money pays for SAT tutoring which, when you think about it, often winds up being advanced, accelerated, one-on-one work.

But another school profiled, High Tech High in San Diego, shows the philosophical problems with some of the Gates Foundation's work. High Tech High graduates 99% of its students, with most being college-ready. High Tech High also has an amazingly charismatic principal, Larry Rosenstock. He attempted to work with a network of other schools to recreate his success. But it hasn't gone smoothly.

"One point of contention has been Rosenstock's belief that dividing students into honors and non-honors classes lowers expectations for ordinary students and undercuts the benefits he sees when teens learn as a team," says Business Week.

What Rosenstock -- and the Gates Foundation -- don't seem to understand is that only in the presence of absolutely top-notch teachers and principals (like Rosenstock) can un-tracked schools have a chance of succeeding. Most teachers aren't so adept at figuring out every child's needs and meeting them. It would be great if all teachers were Teacher-of-the-Year quality (the kind Rosenstock can lure with the $17 million his school received from Gates) and capable of meeting gifted kids' needs in the regular classroom. Even with the addition of Warren Buffett's money to the Gates pot, I don't see that happening on a national level any time soon. Untracked schools have a better chance of winding up like Manual in Denver instead. It becomes a great race to the middle -- the lower middle. Only 16% of students at Gates schools make the grade in math, Business Week, says, compared with 27% of students at traditional schools in the same districts. In other words, for all the Gates Foundation's money, students in the schools it funds have often wound up slightly worse off.

I have hope that this strange love of detracking is just a result of the ideology of the people the Gates Foundation has hired to manage its education programs. Foundations have a tendency to attract people with utopian do-gooder ideas that sometimes crowd out a realist commitment to results. But Bill Gates was a very gifted little boy. Now that he is stepping down from Microsoft to devote himself full-time to the Foundation, he may demand more accountability and evidence of results for his investments -- particularly among the brightest kids at his schools.

At least I hope so. It's a shame to squander the minds of gifted kids in low-income schools just to pursue a certain ideology.

New Jersey's Governor's School: Update from Laura Overdeck

Following up on yesterday's post... New Jersey's Governor's School, the prestigious, free summer program for gifted high school students, had been canceled due to budget cuts. Thanks to private donations, the programs will run as planned this summer.

On the webpage for the New Jersey Governor's School of Science (to be held at Drew University), the school specifically thanks John and Laura Overdeck for their generous contributions, which allowed the school to stay open. Mrs. Overdeck graduated from Princeton a few years before I did, so I contacted her through the school's alumni directory.

First, she told me she's reading Genius Denied!

Second, it turns out that she was a Governor's Scholar in Science in 1986, the program's third year. "It was an amazing, life-altering experience: it's a big reason I went on to major in astrophysics at Princeton," she told me. "I also made lifelong friends, one of whom was in my wedding a few years ago."

When Corzine announced the budget cut, NJGSS notified alumni, including Overdeck. "My husband John and I are wholehearted advocates of gifted education, self-pacing, accelerated curriculum, and programs that recognize and nurture young talent (he was an early attendee of Johns Hopkins' CTY-SET)," she says. "So after some discussion, we decided to offer to fund the Governor's School in Science for this summer." Their $200,000 donation would pretty much cover the program's costs.

But, amazingly, when Overdeck offered the state $200,000 to keep the program running, the state rejected it! She was told the program simply had to shut down. "This upset me enough that I notified the Newark Star-Ledger. Others had complained as well, and it hit the front page that week."

Long story short, NJ decided to accept the $200,000 and also recruited former state first lady Ruthi Byrne to raise the $1.9 million necessary to keep all six schools open this summer.

From her interactions with Corzine and others, Overdeck says she thinks state leaders believe NJ Governor's School should continue as a tuition-based program. The thinking is that some families can afford to pay, so why not ask them to contribute? But those families already have other options, such as summer programs at Harvard and other universities. What makes NJ Governor's School unique is that it doesn't charge tuition. Kids who can't afford expensive summer programs are as welcome as those who can. No need to apply for scholarships or financial aid. No one decides not to apply because of sticker shock. Says Overdeck, "John and I strongly believe it should remain free for all attendees. It's an honor to be selected, and tuition-free ensures that talented kids of all income groups can go."

As I said yesterday, I'm thrilled that NJ's gifted high school students still have this option, thanks to gifts from people like the Overdecks. Of course, I can't help thinking of the parallels. Can you imagine if Corzine had announced that there was no more funding for bilingual education, and that if people thought it was important, they could step up to the plate and raise the money themselves? Various state and federal laws mean he can't do that. But no one requires states to put their money where there mouths are when it comes to meeting the needs of gifted kids.

New Jersey's Governor's School survives

A few months ago, I wrote a blog entry about NJ's Governor's School. This program allowed 600 academically advanced high school students to study advanced material for four weeks over the summer at no cost to them. As private summer enrichment programs can run several thousand dollars, Governor's School was a life raft for bright kids without extra income. The program cost $1.92 million, which New Jersey retroactively cut from the 2006 budget. That means that 600 students received acceptance letters for the summer, and were then told to make other plans.

Fortunately, it turns out they don't have to. Thanks to some generous donations from corporations and private individuals, the programs will now run as planned this summer. Meanwhile, alumni and others concerned about gifted education are lobbying the New Jersey legislature and Jon Corzine, the governor, to make sure funding is restored for fiscal year 2007. You can read about some of those efforts here.

I am thrilled that students will have the opportunity to study arts, sciences, engineering, and other great things this summer. But I also want to point out that New Jersey isn't relying on private contributions to make sure that other kids with special needs receive the education they deserve. Hopefully Corzine and the legislature won't get the idea that this is the way things should work in the future.

Poetry Out Loud

Here's a fun new contest that readers of this blog might like to know about: the Poetry Out Loud annual poetry slam/bee from the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation. The first national contest was held in April of this year. The winner, Jackson Hille of Ohio, walked away with $20,000 in scholarships.

Here are the details. Once upon a time, kids memorized and recited poems as a way of learning about this literary form. This method of learning fell out of favor for awhile, but now it's back. When you memorize a poem, you get closer to it -- and understand it better -- than you do when you're just parsing verses for meter and reading the footnotes about how others have interpreted the words. Indeed, most poetry was meant to be experienced out loud. Our oldest poems (The Odyssey, for instance) were experienced this way. When we're little, we hear nursery rhymes out loud, and delight in how the words sound together.

So now high school kids are reliving that experience, memorizing poems such as Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, or Billy Collins' Forgetfulness and hamming it up on stage as they recite them. About 500 schools participated last year; the Foundation intends to make it truly national this coming school year.

If your kids are bored for the summer, memorizing great poems (and doing some recitation for neighbors) would be a good way to spend the time and get a jump start on participating in this contest. If you really want to give them a challenge, have them memorize a poem in another language! (and use a language dictionary or online resources to figure out roughly what it means). For more information on Poetry Out Loud, check out the Poetry Foundation's website.

Florida Students Get "Majors"

As part of a push to make high school more meaningful for kids, Florida legislators passed a law last week that requires students to declare majors. Students take a variety of core courses, then four electives in their major, and four other electives.

In theory, this is a good idea. Too much of high school focuses nothing on the world beyond it. So I'm inclined to wait and see how it goes. Perhaps schools will start expanding their offerings to include advanced science classes for science majors, specific literature genres (say, 20th century, or women writers, or Latin America) for literary types.

But I worry that, instead, this well-intentioned program will lead to bad results for gifted kids. Many high schools are a bit narrow-minded on what constitutes a career. South Carolina instituted "career clusters" recently to boost student interest. This link leads to some literature about each of the clusters. I'm not sure I could have chosen journalism, for instance -- or that a budding Egyptologist would find much to interest her (unless she could somehow link it to the hospitality industry). Kids who want academic majors would also, under the Florida majors plan, have far less time to take arts electives like orchestra or choir. This will force kids with "multipotentiality" to commit to one interest, or else fund their study on their own after school.

Ideally, schools would have adopted the "majors" approach on their own, and kids would be free to move between schools in a given area. That way, if students were interested in a focused, in-depth study in a career or academic area, they could attend that school. But it's easier to enact policies on a state level, so that's what Florida has chosen to do. We'll see how it turns out.

William Huston, the "Brightest Boy"

Today's New York Times has an obituary on William Huston, who was chosen by Thomas Edison as the nation's "brightest boy" in 1929. Edison had bemoaned the lack of interest in math and science among youth (sound familiar?) and sponsored a nationwide scholarship contest to find the brightest young person and give him a full scholarship to college. Girls were not part of this contest; apparently Mr. Edison never considered that the brightest kid in America (if such a thing can be determined) might be female.

Anyway, William Huston won the contest and a scholarship to MIT. He died May 25 in Arizona at age 93. You can read about his life here.

For all the talk of prodigies flaming out, Huston offers a different version of this tale. Tagged at a young age as being the nation's brightest boy, he didn't let that label get to him. He did "rocket science" research for NASA, had a seemingly rewarding family life (a long marriage and six children), and basically didn't berate his children with tales of being the brightest boy (they say he never mentioned it). Given how many people constantly rehash their glory days as, say, high school football players, I found the tale pretty refreshing.

The Decline of the Chemistry Set

Quick quiz: What do Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, internet guru Vint Cerf, and Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard have in common? Besides their later tech accomplishments, all spent their childhoods blowing things up with chemistry sets.

And unfortunately, they may be the last generation able to do so. "There's no question that stinks and bangs and crystals and colors are what drew kids -- particularly boys-- to science," Nobel Prize winner Roald Hoffmann told Wired magazine recently. "Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been legislated out."

Yep, chemistry sets are fun stuff for bright kids who want to do more real science than the ball-dropping "experiments" in school allow. But good luck finding a decent one these days.

According to Steve Silberman's recent story in Wired on the topic, the crackdown began after Timothy McVeigh used commonly available chemicals to construct the bomb that tore through Oklahoma City in 1995. General terror worries after September 11 prompted more concern. Then add the crystal meth epidemic to the mix. Thirty states have passed laws in recent years restricting sales of chemicals and equipment that can be used to make that drug. According to Wired, in Texas, you have to register Erlenmeyer flasks with the state's Department of Public Safety. The rise of the internet means enterprising kids can now concoct explosions straightaway, without having to tinker with the set for a while, first. And did I mention how litigious people have become? Imagine the lawsuits a real chemistry set could inspire.

But all this means that the old Porter Chemical Company Chemcraft labs-in-a-box can no longer be sold. That set had enough equipment to perform 800 experiments. The new Mr. Wizard Science Set, by contrast, comes with only five chemicals, including laundry starch. Ho hum.

The only "real" set still available, according to Wired, is the Thames & Kosmos C3000, which retails for $200. But even this top-of-the-line set comes with a list of chemicals you must purchase elsewhere in order to actually do certain experiments. Ted McGuire, the company's head, told Wired that "A lot of retailers are scared to carry a real chemistry set now because of liability concerns... The stuff under your kitchen sink is far more dangerous than the things in our kits, but put the word chemistry on something and people become terrified."

That's too bad because, in case anyone hasn't noticed, America is cranking out fewer scientists than we once did. The kind of science practiced in a lot of classrooms looks nothing like the real thing, where you have to come up with questions and find answers that aren't in the back of the book. Chemistry sets help you do that. Too many inquisitive kids these days, unfortunately, are going to have to settle for a sanitized version of the subject.

The Condition of Education

The U.S. Department of Education released its annual Condition of Education report recently. This phone book-size list of statistics has a lot of fascinating information (a list of indicators is available here), but two things in particular touch on subjects we've discussed on this blog.

First, the "boy troubles" are for real. Women now comprise 59% of all graduate students, including 50% of professional degree students (ie, law, medicine, business). While the parity is nice, it's come about partly because of an 11% drop in men seeking professional degrees. Women continue to earn the vast majority of undergraduate degrees. The findings are so striking that that's the statistic the Associated Press chose to highlight in its article on the Condition of Education report.

Second, homeschooling is rising, and it's becoming an interesting blend of working at the kitchen table and other things. Over two percent of all US students are now homeschooled according to this indicator. While the majority of homeschoolers (82%) received all their instruction at home, some 12% of homeschoolers attended school for up to 9 hours a week, and 6% were enrolled between 9-25 hours.

These are positive statistics, because they show that at least 18% of schools are willing to show some flexibility on homeschooling. Most districts maintain that you're either all in or all out, and some homeschooling families want nothing to do with their local schools, for religious or ideological reasons. But many parents of gifted kids homeschool because they don't see any other options for getting their kids the challenge they need. Many of these parents would like to have their children take music, art or gym classes with other students, or specialized subjects (for instance, Mandarin) that the parents themselves might not be able to teach. That 18% of schools are willing to consider such options is a start. By the time a third say it's OK, we'll reach critical mass-- and see a lot more a la carte education. More flexibility is always a good thing for kids who don't fit inside the educational box.

Individual tracking comes to NCLB

On this blog, I've complained that No Child Left Behind testing doesn't track progress for gifted kids. For starters, NCLB compares groups of students over time -- say, African American fourth graders in 2004 vs. African American fourth graders in 2005. Since these aren't the same kids, the test results can show broad changes in a school, but don't show whether individual kids are learning. Second, the use of grade level tests means that children who score at the 99th percentile for their grade don't register a change one way or the other -- so you don't know if they're in a holding pattern or growing.

At least NCLB is now addressing the first problem. The federal Department of Education recently chose two states, North Carolina and Tennessee, to participate in a pilot program that tracks individual student progress. A kid in fourth grade in 2006 will be compared against his own test scores from 2005. If he doesn't show adequate yearly progress, the school can be held accountable.

If the pilot program produces usable data, then the program could spread to other states. That's a start. Then we need NCLB to ask schools to use above grade-level tests for gifted kids. A fourth grader who scores at the 75th percentile on a 7th grade test, and then at the 88th percentile on an 8th grade test a year later, is making progress. We don't know if that's true if she just takes the fourth grade, then fifth grade test.

Indiana Academy graduation, 2006

I spent this Saturday at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities in Muncie, Indiana. The school flattered me greatly by asking me to give the commencement address. So I did, and had a great time doing it. I was also thrilled to see that there were about 140 kids graduating. When I graduated in 1997, fewer than 100 of us walked across the Emens Auditorium stage. It's great that this public, residential school for gifted kids is growing. May it continue to do so!

You can read my speech at my website.

I am happy to report that the graduates did not throw rotten eggs at me. In fact, some seemed to like the speech :)

Boy Troubles

I was excited to learn yesterday that Richard Whitmire, an editorial writer at USA Today (and my former colleague), had just landed a six-figure book contract to expand on his recent New Republic article called “Boys and Books.” In that essay, Whitmire called attention to the declining academic performance of boys. He lists reasons for their sliding college enrollment rates. (Unfortunately, the New Republic website is subscription only)

Schools, Whitmire says, not only don’t shortchange girls, they favor them. That’s not intentional – it’s just that the standard college curriculum and today’s workplaces require a lot of verbal and reading skills. Boys, for whatever reason, on average, are slower to learn these skills as children. Then there’s the social aspect. While middle- and upper-class fathers read at night after work, in many blue-collar type families, reading is a “sissy” thing (as Whitmire puts it). Fathers do a lot less of it. Then the boys go to school and all day long do something they think isn’t very important – and so they disengage.

I have mixed feelings about this thesis. Whitmire has some interesting excuses for boys’ failures in school. Take this one: “Basing grades on turning in homework on time guarantees lower grades for boys. Studies consistently show boys have more trouble than girls turning in homework on time. Some educators and parents explain this by saying that many boys simply forget or decline to turn in completed homework. Here's the boy-thinking: If I answered the homework question to my satisfaction, the task is done. Why turn it in?” Yet even in very male worlds like banking and consulting, you get no credit for solving a problem until you share the answers. Those are systems set up by men who are probably a lot more egocentric than the average boy. I’d buy the forgetfulness thesis first. Maybe boys will be boys when it comes to having their growing brains leap around frenetically.

On the other hand, I would agree that many classrooms are more girl-friendly than boy-friendly. I came across this fascinating list of classroom practices that hurt boys. Culprits range from distracting, frilly decorations to journaling to the lack of male teachers in many schools. Sitting still through boring classes is hard for girls and boys, but boys can be more rambunctious about it (and are labeled as ADD more often). Competition drills get frowned upon, and class discussions reign.

Of course, you don’t have to be male to dislike class discussions on people’s feelings. I always hated them because, well, the teacher knows things the other children in the class don’t. There’s limited info to be gained from listening to your classmates blather before they’ve had time to study the material. A recent Simpsons episode made fun of these stereotypes by having Springfield Elementary split into girls and boys schools. The girls talked about their feelings about math but, much to Lisa’s chagrin, never did any of it. So she dressed up as a boy to study their math, only to learn the boys found it fun to beat each other up constantly. They bounced off the walls.

As the show suggests, I don’t think splitting up boys and girls is the answer. Then people become too inclined to give credence to gender stereotypes. As Whitmire points out, the answer is to look at schools that overcome the gender gap. These schools tend to have high expectations for everyone and work with kids to find what works for each of them. That’s not a terribly snazzy solution to this latest educational crisis but, on the other hand, you do get results.

Miss America vs. the Spelling Bees

A few weeks ago, I complained on this blog that spelling bees gave a false impression of what intelligence is. That may be true, but on the other hand, they're getting some amazing attention of late. USA Today has an interesting piece today pointing out that, this year, while ABC dropped the Miss America pageant, it is broadcasting the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in prime time. Clearly, something has happened when a major network decrees that letter-slinging 12-year-olds make better TV than swimsuit-clad co-eds.

I have a theory on this. The Miss America pageant has turned viewers off these past few years by becoming horribly confused. It's not really a "beauty pageant" anymore, it's a "scholarship contest." So the contestants wind up being pretty, but not too pretty, talented, but not too talented (they can't be professional performers), and they have to feign interest in the most politically correct causes imaginable. The girls are smart, but they're not judged on their academic prowess. Who wants to watch that?

On the other hand, the Scripps National Spelling Bee has no such confusion. Candidates win by spelling words correctly. Anyone can figure that out. I compare it to the Miss USA pageant, which is pretty much all about looks. Miss USA has seen its TV ratings rise of late, and so has the spelling bee. Are you all tuning in to the spell-down finals on June 1?

Another Early College Program

One of the things I'm trying to do with this blog is to help parents of gifted kids find the resources that are available to them. To that end, I want to share another early college option I've come across: Simon's Rock College in Massachusetts.

This small, private liberal arts college is set up specifically for younger scholars. Students usually enroll after their sophomore year in high school. They live on campus, and either complete 2-year degrees and transfer, or complete a 4-year degree. Simon's Rock is affiliated with nearby Bard College. You can read more about their programs at www.simons-rock.edu.

One of the reasons I find Simon's Rock appealing is that the institution really does try to create the "collegiate" feel that students enrolling early elsewhere miss out on. The Portland Press Herald (of Maine) had an interesting article two weeks ago about a 14-year-old girl who was admitted to the University of Maine -- and indeed was given a full scholarship -- but wasn't allowed to live on campus. You can read the story here.

I understand the university's point. College dorms are sometimes a more adult environment than 14-year-olds should be exposed to, even if the 14-year-olds are mature. And the university is no doubt worried about liability. On the other hand, living with other scholars is a big part of the fun of going to college -- discussing ideas with other bright young people, making friends, and all that. Simon's Rock lets 15- and 16-year-olds do that in an environment set up for them. It certainly isn't cheap -- tuition, room and board top $41,000 a year -- but it is an option for kids too bored with high school to see staying two more years.

Entrepreneurship Education

Yesterday I met with Steve Mariotti, a former high school teacher (and business executive) who founded and runs the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. NFTE's offices are located on Wall Street. Indeed, much of the backing comes from banks and investment firms. Most of NFTE's main work, however, is done in low-income high schools across the country, and in low income communities around the world.

Basically, students take a course in entrepreneurship that uses a text book called How to Start and Operate a Small Business. Kids learn about profits and losses, calculating rates of return, writing business and marketing plans, dealing with customers and all those things. Many of the schools that use the curriculum have students start a (very low capital) business and ask them to try running it for part of the course's duration.

Mariotti came up with this idea when he noticed that his students at his South Bronx high school were not interested in many academic things, but they were interested in money (aren't we all?) Specifically, they were interested in ways of making money. Many had a street-smarts sense of marketing, and they enjoyed hearing about Mariotti's experience running an import-export company. I'll back up there for a second -- Mariotti started his career at Ford, started an import-export business, then was mugged in the early 1980's by a group of New York City kids. They shoved him around a bit when they realized he had only $10 in his wallet at the time. Shaken by the whole experience, he decided to confront his fears and try to change a few kids' lives by becoming a teacher. Thus his job in the South Bronx, and thus the eventual founding of NFTE.

The Harvard Graduate School of Education has done some research on NFTE's programs in Boston's schools. The results are fascinating. Only a small percentage of the children who take the high school course in entrepreneurship actually continue running small businesses. Many realize it's a far tougher job than working for someone else!

But low-income students who study entrepreneurship for a year do experience a 32% increase in their level of interest in college. A control group of Boston students experienced a 17% drop during that same period. Students who studied entrepreneurship showed an increase in time spent reading independently; students who didn't spent less time reading on their own. A follow up study found that NFTE students scored about five times higher than the control group on a scale measuring something called "locus of control." That's a fancy way of saying how in control of your own life you feel. People with high scores believe that they can change things in their lives and make things happen that they wish to see happen.

That last finding is pretty exciting. Those of you who've read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People know that this locus of control (called "Be Pro-active" in 7 Habits) is the first habit. People who take control of their lives achieve far more than people who don't. That teenagers who've no doubt suffered a lot of discrimination, deprivation and other things can learn to see themselves as the architects of their own existence is cool, to say the least.

The more I've been thinking about the curriculum, the more I've been thinking that parents of gifted kids can adapt some elements for their own children's education. Learning how to run a business requires a kid to draw together information from vastly different areas. Rather than learn something because the text book says he should learn it, he learns it because he figures out that he needs to know it. He does this on his own (and hence increases that locus of control measurement).

Certainly running a business ropes in the 3 R's -- reading marketing literature, writing a business plan or letters to advertisers or literature for customers, using arithmetic to calculate unit costs and profits. And it's also very practical. Interviewing the lady who runs the beauty parlor down the street connects you with the real world in a way that very little in school does.

So parents looking to turn their kids on to a challenging project might try this for the summer. Brainstorm business concepts and, if you're able, provide some small amount of start-up capital (ie, $20 to make post cards about a dog-walking business to distribute to neighbors). Check out several books on starting a business from the library, and have your child make reports on the business's progress (i.e. to you, the main investor). Who knows, at the end of the summer, he might decide to continue. But even if not, he'll have learned some interesting lessons about money, budgeting, and taking control of his education.

Gifted Kids Skip Standardized Tests

In high school, I once opted out of a grade-level standardized test because it would have required me to miss several days of my above grade-level math class. This required some intense negotiation with the school. Grade-level tests are pretty much useless to gifted kids. When taken broadly by all kids, though, test scores can make a school look good or bad. So there's a trade-off. The gifted kid taking the grade-level test is bored, and has her time wasted. But the school gets the benefit of having a high score included in its average. Obviously, given the stakes these days, schools will do anything they can to keep kids from opting out. In most states they aren't even allowed to do so (my school took the line that such tests were like jury duty-- though eventually they relented).

In this era of increased standardized testing, this battle is heating up even more. The Sacramento Bee ran an article last week called Kids Skipping STAR Test noting that 135 students at Davis Senior High School refused to take their grade-level tests. These STAR tests were given right before the SAT and AP tests. So students and their families elected to have the kids stay home and study for the AP exams and SAT, which matter more for individuals.

The school was furious. Only 34 parents requested exemptions last year.
As the principal pointed out, the results of the STAR test are used to rank schools. Davis is, no doubt, a school that posts high test scores. Now the test results might not show that. Indeed, with 100 more high achievers opting out, the school's test scores will drop.

I see the school's point. But of course, my sympathies lie with the bright kids who opted out. The principal may claim that the evidence of so many 99th percentile scores would indicate that Davis is a good school, but gifted kids will score at the 99th percentile on grade level tests even if they're not learning a thing. Such scores tell you nothing about the quality of the school with regard to gifted kids. A school that challenged gifted kids would show a rise in an individual's test scores. To get that for kids who start at the 99th percentile, you have to test them above grade level.

I'd like to see a testing rubric that does just that. A few months ago on this blog, we discussed testing software that would let you answer questions at a higher and higher level until you hit your max. That would give you an indication of your real grade level. You could take a similar test at the end of the school year. If you scored higher -- good for the school. If you didn't, the public should know that -- even if you're testing three grades above level, and would have scored a 99 both times on a grade-level test.

But California doesn't have such an option in place. There are other compromises, of course. The state and the schools could develop some formula for subbing SAT scores and AP scores for grade-level tests. This would require an asterisk in the report. But personally, I'd be more interested in learning that students earned a lot of 5's on AP tests than a school's grade-level scores. The AP tests are enough above grade level that 5's do tell you something. We shall see if anyone tries anything along these lines. In the meantime, though, expect to see a lot more battles in this area over the next few years.

Indiana Academy Graduation

I'll be speaking to the graduating class of 2006 at the Indiana Academy in Muncie, Indiana in about two weeks. As some of you know, this is my alma mater, so I'm very excited about (and flattered by) this opportunity.

The Academy (as students call it) is one of about a dozen public, residential schools for gifted kids nationwide. It's also a little different from most in that the word "Humanities" is in the full school name, and these fields are a crucial part of the curriculum. Almost all of the 150 or so graduating seniors will be going on to college after graduating.

I've been working on a speech, but of course I don't want to take myself too seriously or offer too much life advice when I've only been out of high school nine years myself. So here's a question for Gifted Exchange readers. What do you wish your high school graduation speaker would have said to you?

One possible theme. I just turned in Grindhopping, my next book, to McGraw-Hill today. One of the chapters deals with the idea that fairy godmothers are lazy people. You need a lot of luck to build a good life and a good career, or even to get everything out of college you can. But you can't leave too much up to chance. You have to know where you're going and be prepared to seize on chance opportunities that will help you get there as they arise.

Oh, and another one. Be sure to see the world outside Indiana. Too soon you wind up getting caught up in work and school and family and travel gets a bit more difficult.

Thoughts?

Losing our Programming Edge

Though most folks have been paying attention to a different Duke team, Business Week has an interesting article in the May 1 edition about the Duke computer programming squad. Competing in the finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in San Antonio, they completed only one of the challenging problems posed to them. The Russian team that won nailed six. Business Week reads into this event a Red Flag in the Brain Game.

Young American students, apparently, do not have the discipline and dedication that winning international computer programming contests requires. Business Week then sets about finding reasons this is so, and actually blames the lovely, inviting green collegiate quads that detract from programming time, Ultimate Frisbee, and all that.

The blaming is a bit tongue-in-cheek. Business Week also notes that many young American programmers are worried that the good programming jobs are going overseas. The magazine then assures us that this is not entirely true -- people with a good head for business and a knack for managing teams will always be in demand here. True. But I'd go a step farther. I think the reason American teams aren't sweeping computer programming contests anymore is that young programmers -- with their logical brains -- are looking at the job market very logically and allocating their time based on what they see.

These programmers know they are good at math and science. They're realizing that people with great math skills can command high salaries on Wall Street. Plenty of people with science and math PhDs also choose to go into management consulting, because they find it more interesting than straight programming. It's those distracting activities and green quads again. As American per capita incomes rise, the brightest, most ambitious people migrate to higher-level, higher-margin jobs. Rather than being the people in companies doing research, they become the folks arranging for licensing deals to acquire that research. Rather than become programmers, they become the people who figure out which problems programmers need to solve.

There's plenty to fret about with American schools not training kids in science and math as rigorously as they might. But this latest lamentation sounds almost like old industrialists claiming the American economy is doomed because we don't make most of our own widgets anymore. Somehow, incomes keep rising. I think our young computer whizzes will do pretty well in life, regardless. Maybe they realize that spending all their time in dark rooms programming won't add as much to their future marketability as networking with their fellow classmates and professors will. We don't seem to be losing our edge in that.

Bullying

Jean Sunde Peterson, a professor at Purdue University's College of Education released an interesting study on gifted kids and bullying last month. The university's official press release is available here.

I'm always wary of studies on gifted kids and bullying, because of certain social stereotypes. We assume that gifted kids are the ones with the Coke bottle glasses getting their lunch money stolen and being called "nerd" or "geek." Indeed, since the bullying definition used in Peterson's study included name-calling, it's no surprise that about two-thirds of gifted kids said they'd been bullied. A slightly more surprising result: 16% of gifted kids identified themselves as bullies. And in fact, based on some other studies of bullying, it appears that gifted kids are no more likely to be bullied than other kids. Everyone gets it at some point or another. Perhaps we should be more surprised that one-third of gifted kids hasn'tbeen bullied.

The one difference that does matter is the one Purdue points out in the headline: gifted kids are especially vulnerable to bullying when it does occur. Anyone who's spent a lot of time around gifted young people knows they have a heightened interest in fairness and social justice. This makes it tougher to brush off bullying of themselves -- or others.

Like other children, some gifted children respond to bullying with thoughts of violence. As the researchers pointed out, this could be anything from kicking a trash can to blowing up the school. The problem is that gifted kids are often quite imaginative -- and may dream up more elaborate methods of revenge than a kid whose brain doesn't work that far out ahead. The infamous school shooters had psychoses that begged to be treated, but many of them were also of above-average intelligence. Clay Shrout, who in 1994 murdered his family and took a class hostage in Union, Kentucky, had a tested IQ of 160. At the sentencing of Kip Kinkel, the Springfield, Oregon school shooter, his psychiatrist noted, "He's cognitively bright, above average. Even though he has a learning disability, his overall IQ is high."

There is no easy way around this. In a world where 16% of gifted kids admit to being bullies themselves, ability grouping will create classes where being smart isn't a teasible characteristic, but won't get rid of bullying. The bullies will find something else to attack.

In general, when kids feel good about their accomplishments and their place on the planet, they don't bother bullying other kids, and they brush it off themselves. This isn't a call for self-esteem building exercises, though. When kids are challenged, work hard, and have caring adults around them, self-esteem follows. That will make bullying less of a problem for gifted kids and other kids alike.

Gifted Homeschooling

A few parents have remarked on this blog that they're investigating homeschooling their gifted kids. It's a popular option. When we were doing research for Genius Denied, the Davidsons told me that about half the families the Davidson Institute for Talent Development works with homeschool their children at some point during the kids' K-12 career. Few parents start off intending to homeschool. They're not religiously or philosophically opposed to public schools. It's just that the regular education programs their local schools offer don't work for their kids. Attempts to make accommodations go awry. So the parents take their kids out of school and attempt to teach them at home.

Of course, with gifted kids, this can be a problem too. As one mom told us, "Homeschooling an extremely gifted child is daunting. What works today is guaranteed not to work in six months. 'Canned' curricula are useless. Every single day is a challenging adventure."

So most parents of gifted kids don't wind up just teaching them at the kitchen table from the various curricular packages. They cobble together "school" from college classes, tutors, distance learning, and even half-day programs or pull-out programs at schools that are OK with that sort of thing. For instance, a kid might take calculus at the high school, music and art electives with her age-peers at the local middle school, study literature through an online provider like Stanford's Educational Program for Gifted Youth, and Spanish with a neighbor who speaks it fluently. That might work for one year. Then you have to find something else that works for the next year. Flexibility is key.

Fortunately, homeschooling parents tend to be wired types who like to help others in the homeschooling community. So there are a lot of homeschooling resources on the internet. I can recommend Hoagies' Gifted Education Pages on homeschooling, available here. While you're there, be sure to read the article in Reason magazine from Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation (available directly here.) He points out that this mish-mash style of education is actually closer to the way a lot of us assemble our careers than the cookie-cutter style too many schools promote. That may be small comfort when you're tearing your hair out because you carved out 6 months to learn multiplication and your kid learned it in 6 hours. But it might inspire a smile.

More Books for Gifted Kids

Thanks to everyone who's been posting on the Izzy the Impatient "books for gifted kids" thread. People have also emailed me some names of books, and DITD sent me along some lists. For instance, here is a list of recommended biographies for young gifted kids (I attached the cached page because the actual link was broken for me, but it might not be for you; search "Brookline books gifted kids" for the actual site).

If you scroll down on this list of books for gifted kids, you'll find them broken up by appropriate age. Looking them over, I'd say most of the "junior high/high school" books are fine for younger readers too -- just give them a quick look over before giving the OK. A few I'd really like to recommend: Katherine Patterson's books (from the Great Gilly Hopkins to Jacob Have I Loved) are beautifully written; I also loved Cynthia Voigt's Dicey's Song series. Madeleine L'Engle is exciting for all ages. I think I kept trying to draw the fifth dimension (not terribly successfully) after reading Wrinkle in Time.

Another interesting thing -- some of these lists break apart books for girls and boys. There is a certain comfort in reading about a hero or heroine of your same gender, but many books can easily cross gender lines.

That said, I was at a writing conference this weekend and listened to a panel given by children's book and magazine editors and agents. To a person, they said they are desperate for books for boys. They get very few of these crossing their desks. I wonder if this is a function of the fact that most YA and children's authors are women (as you can see from these lists I've linked to). It's easier, as a woman, to write from a female character's perspective -- Harry Potter being a notable exception (though even that's third person, not first). Maybe parents of boys reading this list can urge their children to grow up to be children's book authors, and expand the literature for future gifted boys.