This week, a divided Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision requiring New York City to pay for private school for a child with learning disabilities. The child had never attended public school. In addition, the child is the son of Tom Freston, former chief executive of Viacom, who got a roughly $85 million severance package. In other words, this is a case about principle, not the actual educational options a child will face. But as such, it could be a win for gifted education -- maybe.
You can read an article about the case here. In essence, the ruling means that parents do not need to first put a child in an educational situation they consider inappropriate before they file for tuition reimbursement at a private school. States pay private school tuition for thousands of disabled children across the country. Sometimes these payments are as high as $50,000 for children who require residential treatment. Others attend private schools that are focused on specific disabilities such as autism or blindness. New York's position was that the public schools should at least be able to try to serve these children before the parents enroll them in private schools. By letting the ruling stand, the Supreme Court is saying that's not the case. If parents don't think the public schools can meet their children's needs, the kids do not need to fail first in order to go elsewhere.
Freston does not actually need the money to pay for his son's private school tuition. Indeed he has donated all his tuition reimbursement money to public school tutoring programs. He has fought the case so other parents without $85 million good-bye gifts from Viacom can have the same opportunities. (Though interestingly enough, the New York City schools offered Freston's son a spot in the city's Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education - in many cities, such options don't even exist).
I certainly don't begrudge children with disabilities the opportunity to attend whatever school serves them best at public expense. But when I read about some of the dollar amounts involved, it makes me a little sad that most profoundly gifted kids -- who have special needs whether they have other disabilities or not -- are often stuck in whatever regular school happens to be nearby. Some could be best served by boarding schools elsewhere, or private schools in town, but their families can't afford it. Sometimes parents have sought disability dignoses solely to qualify for special education programs that can help.
In states with gifted education mandates, this case could possibly open the door for some families who have chosen private schools over inadequate public school options to file for tuition reimbursement. It may or may not work. But the door is slightly ajar.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Bastions of Privilege, and Other Myths
Education writer Peter Sacks is the author of Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education. Like me, he also blogs occasionally for the Huffington Post. Recently, he wrote a piece on how ability grouping has gone "underground" that left me shaking my head. You can read the piece, "Can Public Schools Fix the Achievement Gap? Yes, But They Won't" here.
Basically, it takes a certain sort of person to find evil in just about everything good that's going on in American education. He takes on AP classes, math and science magnet schools that are partially funded by corporations, and even a shocking move by some Berkeley High teachers to "quietly" offer what was called the Academic Choice program within the school (basically, a rigorous college prep curriculum). According to Sacks, all these are bastions of class and privilege. And as long as they exist, and every student is not enrolled in them, nothing will change.
So what is to be done? "With appropriate re-engineering and refocusing, American schools do have the capacity to diminish the achievement gaps that politicians like to talk about," he writes. "Schools need to pay a lot more attention to supplementing the cultural and social capital that disadvantaged students -- for a variety of reasons -- do not get from home because they, unluckily, were born to parents who lack education, information, and resources."
But I am trying to figure out how this would work in a schooling situation in which all separation of children has been deemed illegitimate. Let's say schools select out children from troubled backgrounds who are having academic difficulties for special attention. Perhaps they could be put in intensive math classes that would bring them up to speed. But would the children already performing at grade level need to be in the same intensive catch-up classes? Their presence would take attention away from those who need special help. But if these at-grade-level children are in separate classes from those who need extra help, we're back to some version of tracking, which will be viewed with much suspicion. Indeed, gifted education, when done right, is simply finding kids who need supplementation and giving it to them. Somehow this is OK if the kids have cultural and social capital needs. But not, in Sacks' view, if they have academic ones.
Of course, I would never claim that all is wonderful in the world of tracking and ability grouping. I know that in some schools, very bright poor or minority children are made to feel uncomfortable in college prep or AP classes. And too often, the "regular" tracks get bad teachers who don't challenge the kids. Sometimes honors classes don't challenge kids either, as we discussed in the last post. But the soft bigotry of low expectations is alive and well.
Still, say we took a high school and chose one of two options. Everyone takes whatever math class the most advanced 10 students are capable of, or everyone studies the level of math the ten students who are struggling most in the subject are able to handle. The first might be interesting. I would love to see an experiment with it. My guess is that some proportion of the next tier of students would rise to the occasion through diligent work. But among the rest, you'd have as much frustration and failure as if you told all students in a school to run a 20 minute 5k.
Unfortunately, when schools do away with ability grouping, they tend to choose some version of the latter option (not aimed at the very bottom, usually, but the lower middle). Good teachers can still figure out a way to make it work some of the time. With bad ones, though, it's a disaster. Every time some education writer or researcher goes on about the joys of heterogeneous grouping, I remember my 7th grade English class, in which the teacher spent day after day having us do pre-writing exercises called "clusters," since some kids simply couldn't handle an essay. Eventually, it got so boring that a number of the boys started jumping out the first floor window and running around the school. But who knows. Maybe this is what Sacks means by "tearing down the gates."
Basically, it takes a certain sort of person to find evil in just about everything good that's going on in American education. He takes on AP classes, math and science magnet schools that are partially funded by corporations, and even a shocking move by some Berkeley High teachers to "quietly" offer what was called the Academic Choice program within the school (basically, a rigorous college prep curriculum). According to Sacks, all these are bastions of class and privilege. And as long as they exist, and every student is not enrolled in them, nothing will change.
So what is to be done? "With appropriate re-engineering and refocusing, American schools do have the capacity to diminish the achievement gaps that politicians like to talk about," he writes. "Schools need to pay a lot more attention to supplementing the cultural and social capital that disadvantaged students -- for a variety of reasons -- do not get from home because they, unluckily, were born to parents who lack education, information, and resources."
But I am trying to figure out how this would work in a schooling situation in which all separation of children has been deemed illegitimate. Let's say schools select out children from troubled backgrounds who are having academic difficulties for special attention. Perhaps they could be put in intensive math classes that would bring them up to speed. But would the children already performing at grade level need to be in the same intensive catch-up classes? Their presence would take attention away from those who need special help. But if these at-grade-level children are in separate classes from those who need extra help, we're back to some version of tracking, which will be viewed with much suspicion. Indeed, gifted education, when done right, is simply finding kids who need supplementation and giving it to them. Somehow this is OK if the kids have cultural and social capital needs. But not, in Sacks' view, if they have academic ones.
Of course, I would never claim that all is wonderful in the world of tracking and ability grouping. I know that in some schools, very bright poor or minority children are made to feel uncomfortable in college prep or AP classes. And too often, the "regular" tracks get bad teachers who don't challenge the kids. Sometimes honors classes don't challenge kids either, as we discussed in the last post. But the soft bigotry of low expectations is alive and well.
Still, say we took a high school and chose one of two options. Everyone takes whatever math class the most advanced 10 students are capable of, or everyone studies the level of math the ten students who are struggling most in the subject are able to handle. The first might be interesting. I would love to see an experiment with it. My guess is that some proportion of the next tier of students would rise to the occasion through diligent work. But among the rest, you'd have as much frustration and failure as if you told all students in a school to run a 20 minute 5k.
Unfortunately, when schools do away with ability grouping, they tend to choose some version of the latter option (not aimed at the very bottom, usually, but the lower middle). Good teachers can still figure out a way to make it work some of the time. With bad ones, though, it's a disaster. Every time some education writer or researcher goes on about the joys of heterogeneous grouping, I remember my 7th grade English class, in which the teacher spent day after day having us do pre-writing exercises called "clusters," since some kids simply couldn't handle an essay. Eventually, it got so boring that a number of the boys started jumping out the first floor window and running around the school. But who knows. Maybe this is what Sacks means by "tearing down the gates."
Monday, October 08, 2007
Course Inflation
Course Inflation
Jay Matthews, the Washington Post education reporter, had an interesting column a few weeks ago about virtual AP classes. These can be a great way for gifted students in small districts to take challenging courses. There's also an added bonus in that, online, no one really knows how old you are. So a 14-year-old might feel more comfortable taking AP Bio online than she would in a class full of older children.
The most interesting part of Matthews' column, though, in my opinion, was the allusion to course title inflation. The young man he profiles was enrolled in honors 8th grade classes. But these classes didn't challenge him at all. AP Biology, on the other hand, has an actual, objective standard in the form of the final test. A 4 or 5 shows you learned basic college biology material. A 1 or 2 shows you did not. There's no smiling at the teacher for a better grade, or getting effort for trying. That makes these tests unpopular among some who like wiggle room, but many kids like a challenge. They rise to the occasion. Inflated course titles don't make the same demands on kids.
That's one of the reasons to view the new research on ability grouping that I cited in my last post as suspect. Many honors classes are anything but difficult for bright children. I have no doubt that they don't show progress in those programs. That doesn't mean ability grouping per se is good or bad. But there's a world of difference between, say, an AP Calculus class offered to a small group of freshmen and sophomores who are ready for it, and a general honors-track math class that just requires 75%+ on grade level standardized tests. If the latter isn't taught to be challenging, the difference will be even more profound.
Jay Matthews, the Washington Post education reporter, had an interesting column a few weeks ago about virtual AP classes. These can be a great way for gifted students in small districts to take challenging courses. There's also an added bonus in that, online, no one really knows how old you are. So a 14-year-old might feel more comfortable taking AP Bio online than she would in a class full of older children.
The most interesting part of Matthews' column, though, in my opinion, was the allusion to course title inflation. The young man he profiles was enrolled in honors 8th grade classes. But these classes didn't challenge him at all. AP Biology, on the other hand, has an actual, objective standard in the form of the final test. A 4 or 5 shows you learned basic college biology material. A 1 or 2 shows you did not. There's no smiling at the teacher for a better grade, or getting effort for trying. That makes these tests unpopular among some who like wiggle room, but many kids like a challenge. They rise to the occasion. Inflated course titles don't make the same demands on kids.
That's one of the reasons to view the new research on ability grouping that I cited in my last post as suspect. Many honors classes are anything but difficult for bright children. I have no doubt that they don't show progress in those programs. That doesn't mean ability grouping per se is good or bad. But there's a world of difference between, say, an AP Calculus class offered to a small group of freshmen and sophomores who are ready for it, and a general honors-track math class that just requires 75%+ on grade level standardized tests. If the latter isn't taught to be challenging, the difference will be even more profound.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Does Ability Grouping Harm Students?
Does Ability Grouping Harm Students?
Over the past few weeks, several publications have written about a new University of Sussex study purporting to show that ability grouping in math harms students.
This is news to those of us who follow education research. One of the biggest analyses of ability grouping to date (from James Kulik of the University of Michigan, surveying 23 major studies on grouping) found that when high-ability students receive accelerated classes, they advance as much as a whole year more than students of similar age and intelligence left in regular classrooms. Kulik's analysis found that specific subject grouping also helps slower students; low-achieving fourth graders put in a very focused group gained as much as two-thirds of an academic year over control subjects.
But the University of Sussex research, done by Prof. Jo Boaler and associated grad students, claims otherwise. The team followed 700 students over five years at three high schools. The press release states boldly that grouping kids by ability harms education. You can read an article about the research here. You can also read the report directly here.
Or you can read my take on it, rather than wading through the whole thing. I am always amazed, reading educational research, at how much the concept of "equity" excites some professors. Boaler studies math, and undertook her study to show that math classes could be used to advance the cause of democracy and caring for the least among us no differently than, say, civics class. She compared group-oriented, mixed-ability classes at a school poetically referred to as "Railside" (since it was near the railroad tracks) with two more suburban schools. The suburban schools used ability grouping. Though the students at Railside entered the school behind the suburban students, at the end of their four years, 41% of seniors were in advanced calculus or pre-calculus, v. 27% at the other schools.
That seems like a pretty clear win. But reading deeper, it becomes clear that the suburban schools were employing what I call the "boring" method of teaching mathematics. Teachers would lecture for 21% of the class; students would then work alone on problems in their textbooks for about half the class. Since this is the same thing they'd do for homework, I would not be surprised if kids spent whole periods watching the clock. When problems were discussed, teachers only spent about 2 minutes on each of them. There was very little opportunity for open-ended problem-solving.
At "Railside," on the other hand, when the teachers did discuss problems, they'd spend 5.7 minutes on a problem, and Boaler describes the process as far more interactive. The kids did a lot of group work -- approx. 70% of the class. There is nothing wrong with learning in groups. Math problem solving can often benefit from a shared approach. Of course, Boaler, being so into "equity," finds this very satisfying for a different reason. Students receive group grades! And best of all, they feel "responsible" for unmotivated students in their groups, rather than feeling that they are a "burden." The political implications are clear.
But I digress. What struck me, reading this study, is how well-trained the teachers at Railside must have been to make this set-up work. Since Boaler talks about "teachers" I am assuming that multiple ones employed this same group-work strategy. That means Railside had fairly strong quality controls in its math department. Teachers settled on a strategy and were committed to its implementation. They asked open-ended questions, and explained topics in depth. They roamed between groups during the problem solving sessions, meaning they were energetic enough to stay on-task for the entire class period. The beauty of the "traditional" approach (as Boaler refers to it) is that it allows the math teacher to read a copy of US Weekly for the 48% of the time the students are doing problems alone in their workbooks.
It begs the question. Given that Kulik's meta-analysis of major educational studies found that, in general, ability grouping helps both slower and faster learners learn more, isn't it possible that the better results achieved at Railside are the result of energetic, committed teachers, rather than the lack of ability grouping? Great teachers are highly correlated with great results.
Unfortunately, they're also rare. As I've written about ability grouping before on this blog, the benefit to that approach is that it fails better. Given a choice of a mixed ability class with a great teacher, and an ability grouped class with a lousy one, I'd take the former. But that is usually not the choice. This study compares intense, analytical, teacher-directed group learning with the "boring" method of teaching math. The former also happens to be heterogeneous in this case; the latter homogeneous. But when there are two big differences between things you're comparing, it's hard to know which one causes the results.
Two other quick critiques. First, while I think the teaching is more responsible for the gains seen at Railside than the ability grouping, the general type of ability grouping employed in American schools isn't finely tuned enough to challenge bright kids anyway. Creating three reading groups in a standard neighborhood school is slightly helpful. But it's far more helpful to create a gifted magnet program that draws students from, say, five counties. Then you can actually create classes for the top .1%. It wouldn't surprise me to find that most students in the 85-115 IQ range can do OK in a math class together. But if you try to throw, say, a Nate Bottman (2007 Davidson Fellow, topic: Analytically Determining the Spectra of Solutions of the NLS) in to a group-learning, mixed ability class, you will quickly find a problem with the approach. At Railside, "If they found that one student was standing out, by, for example, being faster in their mathematical thinking, they would find aspects of the work that the student was less good at and for which they needed more practice," Boaler writes. But a child who's learned calculus on her own at night is not going to need to practice more on any aspect of algebra.
And second, I assume the University of Sussex, and Stanford, where Boaler has also taught, aren't letting just anyone in these days. Their graduate programs and professorial hires are very much grouped by ability. This research was a group project between Boaler and her grad students. But this was hardly a true "mixed ability group." If Boaler really thinks ability grouping is harmful and inequitable, she should have pulled three people off the streets and asked them to work with her instead. I'm sure the results would have been just as good, and Boaler wouldn't have had to carry any extra weight in the computations at all...
Over the past few weeks, several publications have written about a new University of Sussex study purporting to show that ability grouping in math harms students.
This is news to those of us who follow education research. One of the biggest analyses of ability grouping to date (from James Kulik of the University of Michigan, surveying 23 major studies on grouping) found that when high-ability students receive accelerated classes, they advance as much as a whole year more than students of similar age and intelligence left in regular classrooms. Kulik's analysis found that specific subject grouping also helps slower students; low-achieving fourth graders put in a very focused group gained as much as two-thirds of an academic year over control subjects.
But the University of Sussex research, done by Prof. Jo Boaler and associated grad students, claims otherwise. The team followed 700 students over five years at three high schools. The press release states boldly that grouping kids by ability harms education. You can read an article about the research here. You can also read the report directly here.
Or you can read my take on it, rather than wading through the whole thing. I am always amazed, reading educational research, at how much the concept of "equity" excites some professors. Boaler studies math, and undertook her study to show that math classes could be used to advance the cause of democracy and caring for the least among us no differently than, say, civics class. She compared group-oriented, mixed-ability classes at a school poetically referred to as "Railside" (since it was near the railroad tracks) with two more suburban schools. The suburban schools used ability grouping. Though the students at Railside entered the school behind the suburban students, at the end of their four years, 41% of seniors were in advanced calculus or pre-calculus, v. 27% at the other schools.
That seems like a pretty clear win. But reading deeper, it becomes clear that the suburban schools were employing what I call the "boring" method of teaching mathematics. Teachers would lecture for 21% of the class; students would then work alone on problems in their textbooks for about half the class. Since this is the same thing they'd do for homework, I would not be surprised if kids spent whole periods watching the clock. When problems were discussed, teachers only spent about 2 minutes on each of them. There was very little opportunity for open-ended problem-solving.
At "Railside," on the other hand, when the teachers did discuss problems, they'd spend 5.7 minutes on a problem, and Boaler describes the process as far more interactive. The kids did a lot of group work -- approx. 70% of the class. There is nothing wrong with learning in groups. Math problem solving can often benefit from a shared approach. Of course, Boaler, being so into "equity," finds this very satisfying for a different reason. Students receive group grades! And best of all, they feel "responsible" for unmotivated students in their groups, rather than feeling that they are a "burden." The political implications are clear.
But I digress. What struck me, reading this study, is how well-trained the teachers at Railside must have been to make this set-up work. Since Boaler talks about "teachers" I am assuming that multiple ones employed this same group-work strategy. That means Railside had fairly strong quality controls in its math department. Teachers settled on a strategy and were committed to its implementation. They asked open-ended questions, and explained topics in depth. They roamed between groups during the problem solving sessions, meaning they were energetic enough to stay on-task for the entire class period. The beauty of the "traditional" approach (as Boaler refers to it) is that it allows the math teacher to read a copy of US Weekly for the 48% of the time the students are doing problems alone in their workbooks.
It begs the question. Given that Kulik's meta-analysis of major educational studies found that, in general, ability grouping helps both slower and faster learners learn more, isn't it possible that the better results achieved at Railside are the result of energetic, committed teachers, rather than the lack of ability grouping? Great teachers are highly correlated with great results.
Unfortunately, they're also rare. As I've written about ability grouping before on this blog, the benefit to that approach is that it fails better. Given a choice of a mixed ability class with a great teacher, and an ability grouped class with a lousy one, I'd take the former. But that is usually not the choice. This study compares intense, analytical, teacher-directed group learning with the "boring" method of teaching math. The former also happens to be heterogeneous in this case; the latter homogeneous. But when there are two big differences between things you're comparing, it's hard to know which one causes the results.
Two other quick critiques. First, while I think the teaching is more responsible for the gains seen at Railside than the ability grouping, the general type of ability grouping employed in American schools isn't finely tuned enough to challenge bright kids anyway. Creating three reading groups in a standard neighborhood school is slightly helpful. But it's far more helpful to create a gifted magnet program that draws students from, say, five counties. Then you can actually create classes for the top .1%. It wouldn't surprise me to find that most students in the 85-115 IQ range can do OK in a math class together. But if you try to throw, say, a Nate Bottman (2007 Davidson Fellow, topic: Analytically Determining the Spectra of Solutions of the NLS) in to a group-learning, mixed ability class, you will quickly find a problem with the approach. At Railside, "If they found that one student was standing out, by, for example, being faster in their mathematical thinking, they would find aspects of the work that the student was less good at and for which they needed more practice," Boaler writes. But a child who's learned calculus on her own at night is not going to need to practice more on any aspect of algebra.
And second, I assume the University of Sussex, and Stanford, where Boaler has also taught, aren't letting just anyone in these days. Their graduate programs and professorial hires are very much grouped by ability. This research was a group project between Boaler and her grad students. But this was hardly a true "mixed ability group." If Boaler really thinks ability grouping is harmful and inequitable, she should have pulled three people off the streets and asked them to work with her instead. I'm sure the results would have been just as good, and Boaler wouldn't have had to carry any extra weight in the computations at all...
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Davidson Fellows, 2007: Time, Access, Affection
The Davidson Fellows, 2007: Time, Access, Affection
I just returned home yesterday from the annual Davidson Fellows award ceremony in Washington DC. While the ceremony at the Library of Congress is always fun, this year was particularly nice for me because I got to interview most of the children that morning. I think the quality of fellows continues to improve as more people hear about the program. Among the winners this year were two performers from the Juilliard pre-college program, and another young woman who'd been featured on NPR. Several young writers talked with me about their creative process. The scientists are always a stand-out lot, and among them this year we had a young woman who figured out a new process for recycling plastic, one who figured out a way of penetrating drug resistant biofilms, and a young woman who'd developed a process for a potential urine test for the early detection of cancer. Anyone who's been through some rather invasive and unpleasant cancer screenings will immediately see the benefit of potentially coverting these screenings into nothing worse than a pregnancy test.
After the interviews, I had two main observations. First: These fellows often go to specialized secondary schools. On one hand, this is simple correlation. There are a growing number of specialized math and science high schools, and if you're interested in math and science, why wouldn't you go? Given that the students at these schools tend to be bright and eager to learn, if you're bright and eager to learn, you also would take advantage of them, even if math and science aren't your main gifts. Christina Beasley, one of the young writers, attends a school for science and technology. Much of her creative writing is extra-curricular, but since the students are so eager to learn, there are good programs for them in areas outside S&T.
But there's also a causal connection. To do a prodigious work as a young person, you need time and access (to labs, mentors, etc.) Specialized schools often arrange one or both. Shannon Lee, of Plano Texas, attends a compressed school that caters to gymnasts and actors. Students do their studies in the morning, and their special interest in the afternoon. This works for her musical schedule as well. Nora Xu attends the Illinois Math and Science Academy. She told me that she has no classes on Wednesday, and the school shuttles them to labs, or mentoring situations so the students can pursue independent work. Billy Dorminy, who is homeschooled, has a mom who favors "delight directed" education. He has time to pursue what interests him.
The other observation is that the sweet spot occurs when you have time, access and affection for what you do. You can force a child into a lab (and given the competition to get into top colleges, perhaps some parents do this). You can give them a free day every week to pursue independent projects. But you can't force them to love it, to travel after school and work all night in the lab as Danielle Lent did at SUNY Stony Brook -- and then switch off driving home with a friend to be at school the next day. As Yuqing Meng, a musician, told me, after one particular recital when he was little, he realized that he would always want to do music. Maybe he wouldn't make a career of it. But he couldn't imagine it not being in his life. Yale Fan spoke of doing his physics and comp sci work as a form of stress release.
When you love what you do, you naturally become better at it. You do a lot of of it. You ponder problems as you're taking the bus to school, and you doodle in your other subject notebooks. You figure out problems in this area because you find it fun. When you have a great love for something, and the time and mentors necessary to develop this affection, there's no telling what you can do. (Well, OK, here's one thing you can do: Impress the Senate Majority Leader. Bob Davidson, Colleen Harsin -- the Davidson Academy's principal -- and I got to meet Sen. Harry Reid the other day to talk with him about gifted education issues. When Bob and Colleen mentioned the work some of the fellows had done, Reid about fell off his chair. "A 17-year-old kid can do that?" he asked. Yep!)
I just returned home yesterday from the annual Davidson Fellows award ceremony in Washington DC. While the ceremony at the Library of Congress is always fun, this year was particularly nice for me because I got to interview most of the children that morning. I think the quality of fellows continues to improve as more people hear about the program. Among the winners this year were two performers from the Juilliard pre-college program, and another young woman who'd been featured on NPR. Several young writers talked with me about their creative process. The scientists are always a stand-out lot, and among them this year we had a young woman who figured out a new process for recycling plastic, one who figured out a way of penetrating drug resistant biofilms, and a young woman who'd developed a process for a potential urine test for the early detection of cancer. Anyone who's been through some rather invasive and unpleasant cancer screenings will immediately see the benefit of potentially coverting these screenings into nothing worse than a pregnancy test.
After the interviews, I had two main observations. First: These fellows often go to specialized secondary schools. On one hand, this is simple correlation. There are a growing number of specialized math and science high schools, and if you're interested in math and science, why wouldn't you go? Given that the students at these schools tend to be bright and eager to learn, if you're bright and eager to learn, you also would take advantage of them, even if math and science aren't your main gifts. Christina Beasley, one of the young writers, attends a school for science and technology. Much of her creative writing is extra-curricular, but since the students are so eager to learn, there are good programs for them in areas outside S&T.
But there's also a causal connection. To do a prodigious work as a young person, you need time and access (to labs, mentors, etc.) Specialized schools often arrange one or both. Shannon Lee, of Plano Texas, attends a compressed school that caters to gymnasts and actors. Students do their studies in the morning, and their special interest in the afternoon. This works for her musical schedule as well. Nora Xu attends the Illinois Math and Science Academy. She told me that she has no classes on Wednesday, and the school shuttles them to labs, or mentoring situations so the students can pursue independent work. Billy Dorminy, who is homeschooled, has a mom who favors "delight directed" education. He has time to pursue what interests him.
The other observation is that the sweet spot occurs when you have time, access and affection for what you do. You can force a child into a lab (and given the competition to get into top colleges, perhaps some parents do this). You can give them a free day every week to pursue independent projects. But you can't force them to love it, to travel after school and work all night in the lab as Danielle Lent did at SUNY Stony Brook -- and then switch off driving home with a friend to be at school the next day. As Yuqing Meng, a musician, told me, after one particular recital when he was little, he realized that he would always want to do music. Maybe he wouldn't make a career of it. But he couldn't imagine it not being in his life. Yale Fan spoke of doing his physics and comp sci work as a form of stress release.
When you love what you do, you naturally become better at it. You do a lot of of it. You ponder problems as you're taking the bus to school, and you doodle in your other subject notebooks. You figure out problems in this area because you find it fun. When you have a great love for something, and the time and mentors necessary to develop this affection, there's no telling what you can do. (Well, OK, here's one thing you can do: Impress the Senate Majority Leader. Bob Davidson, Colleen Harsin -- the Davidson Academy's principal -- and I got to meet Sen. Harry Reid the other day to talk with him about gifted education issues. When Bob and Colleen mentioned the work some of the fellows had done, Reid about fell off his chair. "A 17-year-old kid can do that?" he asked. Yep!)
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Gifted Exchange Turns 2!
Gifted Exchange Turns 2!
Today this blog celebrates its 2nd birthday. That's pretty good longevity for the genre! We've been averaging just under 3,000 visits a month, to read the roughly two posts per week (this is post 209, apparently) and it's the rare post that goes without a comment. Please keep me updated on what you'd like to see covered, ideas, tips, critiques, etc. And if you've had a favorite post, I'd like to hear that too. Thanks for reading, Laura
Today this blog celebrates its 2nd birthday. That's pretty good longevity for the genre! We've been averaging just under 3,000 visits a month, to read the roughly two posts per week (this is post 209, apparently) and it's the rare post that goes without a comment. Please keep me updated on what you'd like to see covered, ideas, tips, critiques, etc. And if you've had a favorite post, I'd like to hear that too. Thanks for reading, Laura
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Lower-Income, High-Achieving Students Fall Behind
Lower-Income, High-Achieving Students Fall Behind
It's a popular belief that gifted kids are "the kids with disposable income," as Mara Sapon-Shevin wrote in her book Playing Favorites. Since all gifted kids supposedly have well-off parents, there's no need for schools to concern themselves too much with their welfare. After all, these are the kids best able to fend for themselves.
Now a new report from Civic Enterprises, a think tank, and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, called The Achievement Trap, shows not only how wrong that assumption is, but that it's a dangerous assumption as well. Fully 3.4 million K-12 students with family incomes below the national median test in the top quartile for academic achievement. Unfortunately, a higher proportion test in the top quartile in first grade than later on. In other words, as these students progress through school, their achievement suffers.
As I mentioned in the last post, there is much to dislike about No Child Left Behind (though I think there's some evidence that it has created incentives to reverse failure in the worst schools). One thing to dislike is that these millions of high-achieving, low-income students are in fact getting left behind. Even as they fall out of the top quartile, they rarely test as "failing." And so they're ignored both by the standards movement, and by the folks who dislike gifted education because it's only for the kids with "disposable income."
I'm glad this report is out, and I hope it gets some attention, because it shines a spotlight on what many of us who are involved in gifted education know. The leveling impulse in schools hurts all gifted kids, but it does not hurt all gifted kids equally. Well-off parents can afford to move to a different district, put their kids in private schools, hire tutors, pay for summer courses, or give up a parent's income to homeschool. Low-income families are simply stuck with the schools they get. And so, these promising children wind up falling out of the top quartile, and going to college at lower rates than other children whose potential they matched in first grade.
Can anything change it? Under the current educational set-up, I think the best approach is to measure individual children's progress, not just the progress of groups and schools. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has hinted at shifting NCLB to this concept. What gets measured gets changed, and if schools are held accountable for the low-income children who drift from the 90th percentile in first grade to the 70th percentile in fifth grade, maybe that's a few more children who won't fall through the cracks.
It's a popular belief that gifted kids are "the kids with disposable income," as Mara Sapon-Shevin wrote in her book Playing Favorites. Since all gifted kids supposedly have well-off parents, there's no need for schools to concern themselves too much with their welfare. After all, these are the kids best able to fend for themselves.
Now a new report from Civic Enterprises, a think tank, and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, called The Achievement Trap, shows not only how wrong that assumption is, but that it's a dangerous assumption as well. Fully 3.4 million K-12 students with family incomes below the national median test in the top quartile for academic achievement. Unfortunately, a higher proportion test in the top quartile in first grade than later on. In other words, as these students progress through school, their achievement suffers.
As I mentioned in the last post, there is much to dislike about No Child Left Behind (though I think there's some evidence that it has created incentives to reverse failure in the worst schools). One thing to dislike is that these millions of high-achieving, low-income students are in fact getting left behind. Even as they fall out of the top quartile, they rarely test as "failing." And so they're ignored both by the standards movement, and by the folks who dislike gifted education because it's only for the kids with "disposable income."
I'm glad this report is out, and I hope it gets some attention, because it shines a spotlight on what many of us who are involved in gifted education know. The leveling impulse in schools hurts all gifted kids, but it does not hurt all gifted kids equally. Well-off parents can afford to move to a different district, put their kids in private schools, hire tutors, pay for summer courses, or give up a parent's income to homeschool. Low-income families are simply stuck with the schools they get. And so, these promising children wind up falling out of the top quartile, and going to college at lower rates than other children whose potential they matched in first grade.
Can anything change it? Under the current educational set-up, I think the best approach is to measure individual children's progress, not just the progress of groups and schools. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has hinted at shifting NCLB to this concept. What gets measured gets changed, and if schools are held accountable for the low-income children who drift from the 90th percentile in first grade to the 70th percentile in fifth grade, maybe that's a few more children who won't fall through the cracks.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Jonathan Kozol's Hunger Strike
Jonathan Kozol's Hunger Strike
No one can accuse education journalist Jonathan Kozol of being lukewarm about his causes. He is now 75 days in to a partial hunger strike protesting the impending re-authorization of No Child Left Behind. You can read about his strike here. He claims that NCLB is ruining inner city education with its emphasis on frequent testing.
Kozol is best known for his book Savage Inequalities, which documents the awful school conditions many poor, inncer-city school children endure. Roofs leak. Toilets overflow. Paint peels and heaters break. Kozol is wrong in his frequent assertion that no one would treat white children this way. He's wrong in his assertion that it's all about funding (in New Jersey, for instance, the state guarantees that high-poverty "Abbott" districts be funded at the same level as the best suburban districts, and many of these schools are still rotten). But he's certainly right that such conditions make it very difficult to learn.
The descriptions of awful school buildings hit you in the gut. But that's not the most disturbing part of Savage Inequalities. Kozol goes on about teachers watching soap operas, teachers letting kids entertain themselves while they read magazines, and other evidence of schools where adults simply do not care if the children learn anything at all.
There is much to lament about NCLB, as we often do on this blog. It raises the floor, not the ceiling. It tests schools, not individual kids' progress. But the one thing it has done is lit a fire under these so-called educators who've put no effort into actually teaching. There are consequences when schools fail year after year.
And yet, Kozol complains that NCLB "dumbs down" inner city education. He, of all people, should know that few failing schools were encouraging higher level thinking before the law. I wish all children were challenged by creative teachers who got the wheels in kids' heads turning. But if that's not yet possible, at least we should try to get kids reading and doing math at grade level. NCLB creates incentives to achieve that goal. You'd think Kozol might find something to like about the law.
No one can accuse education journalist Jonathan Kozol of being lukewarm about his causes. He is now 75 days in to a partial hunger strike protesting the impending re-authorization of No Child Left Behind. You can read about his strike here. He claims that NCLB is ruining inner city education with its emphasis on frequent testing.
Kozol is best known for his book Savage Inequalities, which documents the awful school conditions many poor, inncer-city school children endure. Roofs leak. Toilets overflow. Paint peels and heaters break. Kozol is wrong in his frequent assertion that no one would treat white children this way. He's wrong in his assertion that it's all about funding (in New Jersey, for instance, the state guarantees that high-poverty "Abbott" districts be funded at the same level as the best suburban districts, and many of these schools are still rotten). But he's certainly right that such conditions make it very difficult to learn.
The descriptions of awful school buildings hit you in the gut. But that's not the most disturbing part of Savage Inequalities. Kozol goes on about teachers watching soap operas, teachers letting kids entertain themselves while they read magazines, and other evidence of schools where adults simply do not care if the children learn anything at all.
There is much to lament about NCLB, as we often do on this blog. It raises the floor, not the ceiling. It tests schools, not individual kids' progress. But the one thing it has done is lit a fire under these so-called educators who've put no effort into actually teaching. There are consequences when schools fail year after year.
And yet, Kozol complains that NCLB "dumbs down" inner city education. He, of all people, should know that few failing schools were encouraging higher level thinking before the law. I wish all children were challenged by creative teachers who got the wheels in kids' heads turning. But if that's not yet possible, at least we should try to get kids reading and doing math at grade level. NCLB creates incentives to achieve that goal. You'd think Kozol might find something to like about the law.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Can Early SAT Scores Predict a Gifted Kid's Path?
For decades, gifted adolescents have participated in "talent searches." These involve giving these children out-of-level tests in order to more accurately measure their abilities. First pioneered by the late Julian Stanley of Johns Hopkins University, the concept is based on a simple observation. On grade-level tests, gifted kids tend to score at the 99th percentile. Give them a "tougher" test, such as the SAT in 7th or 8th grade, though, and their scores spread out over the entire bell curve. In theory, this should give educators information on which kids need just a bit of enrichment, and which need radical acceleration, early college, etc.
In theory. As readers of this blog know, the vast majority of schools do absolutely nothing with the scores besides congratulating the kids and maybe having a ceremony.
But anyway... Vanderbilt University just released a study noting that gifted children's scores in 7th and 8th grade can actually predict their career paths. You can read about the study in a Bloomberg article here. Young teens who did best on the math portion of the SAT tended to excel later in science, math, and technology. Young teens who did best on the verbal portion of the SAT tended toward the humanities.
I have two thoughts on this. The first is "no kidding." Children do not magically decide their professions at age 22 based on nothing more than pulling a career out of a hat. Usually there have been things that hold their interest along the way, clues that they excel in one particular area. A kid who's really good in math is quite likely to continue studying math and to choose a profession that involves math.
The second thought, though, is that this was entirely wrong in my case, for a reason that also hints at the limitations of talent searches in their current form. In 8th grade, I scored a perfect 800 on the math section of the SAT. I scored a 630 on the verbal. For a variety of reasons, math is viewed as a more cut-and-dried area in which to be gifted. The levels are more clear (first arithmetic, then algebra, then calculus...) It's more easy to show mastery. Add in the fact that I had a very mathematically gifted older brother, and my family and schools found it easier to accelerate me in math. I took algebra in 6th grade, took geometry the summer after 7th grade, and so knew everything that would be covered on the SAT math section by the time I took it as an 8th grader. My perfect score did not show that I should pursue math. It simply showed that my mathematical abilities had been nurtured.
Children with verbal talents, though, have a far rougher road ahead of them. In the early grades, writing is more about creativity than honing the craft. Grammar is a lost art. Few sixth graders are assigned analytical papers on, say, Tolstoy, in which they can advance some original interpretation. If you master the past tense, it's not entirely clear that the subjunctive is next. Reading will boost your vocabulary, but so does having well-versed people to talk with. Unfortunately, this is not really a reality for many gifted kids stuck in age-level classrooms.
So verbal ability is not as readily recognized. I spent hours writing stories at night as a kid, but my verbal scores lagged far behind my math scores. I thought for years that meant I should go into math or science, until I finally realized in college that writing is what made me happiest.
It's always a dicey idea to layer one's personal experience on top of a study in order to draw conclusions, but I would hesitate to draw the conclusion that Prof. David Lubinski of Vanderbilt did. He told the Vanderbilt News Service that since differences in potential can be noted at age 13, this offers "opportunities for educators and policymakers to develop programs to cultivate these individuals based on their unique strengths and abilities." I think it's just as important to follow the interests of the child. That will tell you as much as a score.
For decades, gifted adolescents have participated in "talent searches." These involve giving these children out-of-level tests in order to more accurately measure their abilities. First pioneered by the late Julian Stanley of Johns Hopkins University, the concept is based on a simple observation. On grade-level tests, gifted kids tend to score at the 99th percentile. Give them a "tougher" test, such as the SAT in 7th or 8th grade, though, and their scores spread out over the entire bell curve. In theory, this should give educators information on which kids need just a bit of enrichment, and which need radical acceleration, early college, etc.
In theory. As readers of this blog know, the vast majority of schools do absolutely nothing with the scores besides congratulating the kids and maybe having a ceremony.
But anyway... Vanderbilt University just released a study noting that gifted children's scores in 7th and 8th grade can actually predict their career paths. You can read about the study in a Bloomberg article here. Young teens who did best on the math portion of the SAT tended to excel later in science, math, and technology. Young teens who did best on the verbal portion of the SAT tended toward the humanities.
I have two thoughts on this. The first is "no kidding." Children do not magically decide their professions at age 22 based on nothing more than pulling a career out of a hat. Usually there have been things that hold their interest along the way, clues that they excel in one particular area. A kid who's really good in math is quite likely to continue studying math and to choose a profession that involves math.
The second thought, though, is that this was entirely wrong in my case, for a reason that also hints at the limitations of talent searches in their current form. In 8th grade, I scored a perfect 800 on the math section of the SAT. I scored a 630 on the verbal. For a variety of reasons, math is viewed as a more cut-and-dried area in which to be gifted. The levels are more clear (first arithmetic, then algebra, then calculus...) It's more easy to show mastery. Add in the fact that I had a very mathematically gifted older brother, and my family and schools found it easier to accelerate me in math. I took algebra in 6th grade, took geometry the summer after 7th grade, and so knew everything that would be covered on the SAT math section by the time I took it as an 8th grader. My perfect score did not show that I should pursue math. It simply showed that my mathematical abilities had been nurtured.
Children with verbal talents, though, have a far rougher road ahead of them. In the early grades, writing is more about creativity than honing the craft. Grammar is a lost art. Few sixth graders are assigned analytical papers on, say, Tolstoy, in which they can advance some original interpretation. If you master the past tense, it's not entirely clear that the subjunctive is next. Reading will boost your vocabulary, but so does having well-versed people to talk with. Unfortunately, this is not really a reality for many gifted kids stuck in age-level classrooms.
So verbal ability is not as readily recognized. I spent hours writing stories at night as a kid, but my verbal scores lagged far behind my math scores. I thought for years that meant I should go into math or science, until I finally realized in college that writing is what made me happiest.
It's always a dicey idea to layer one's personal experience on top of a study in order to draw conclusions, but I would hesitate to draw the conclusion that Prof. David Lubinski of Vanderbilt did. He told the Vanderbilt News Service that since differences in potential can be noted at age 13, this offers "opportunities for educators and policymakers to develop programs to cultivate these individuals based on their unique strengths and abilities." I think it's just as important to follow the interests of the child. That will tell you as much as a score.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Day Care and IQ
So my son, Jasper, started day care this morning. Up until now, he's been cared for by a nanny during the day at our house while I've also been working at home. So this will be a transition for both of us (though the center is only 2 blocks from the house - so I will be a frequent lunch time visitor!)
Day care is a very controversial issue in our society, so it's been studied a reasonable amount, both for its effect on social development, and its effect on academic development. The findings are fairly mixed. That's because the quality of day care matters a great deal. High quality day care can actually improve language and academic development among at-risk children by giving them the stimulation they might not get at home. This can reverse the measured drop in academic ability that can sometimes occur for these children as they grow. For middle-class white children, high-quality day care appears to have no particular effect on language or academic development one way or the other, according to this study. On the other hand, long hours in not-so-great day care can increase aggression.
Every time a major study is released, the chattering heads on television give it lots of airtime. This commentary from City-Journal on Fear and Loathing at the Day Care Center, hints at some of the controversy. It is "common sense" to many people that children are best cared for in their homes, by their mothers. Some research does show that children of mothers who spend more hours devoted to childcare and less to working have higher academic achievement in early adolescence. But this same study found that women who have high levels of satisfaction with their childcare arrangements also had children with more scholastic competence in 6th grade. Women who are also satisfied with their "roles" have children with more scholastic competence. In other words, a woman who devotes her time to childcare simply because this is what everyone says she "should" do, but who isn't happy about it, isn't really gaining much by that choice.
I find it all fascinating. The issue of maternal employment and child achievement always gets people riled up. I'm curious what choices others on this board have made with their children, and whether they felt it affected academic achievement.
So my son, Jasper, started day care this morning. Up until now, he's been cared for by a nanny during the day at our house while I've also been working at home. So this will be a transition for both of us (though the center is only 2 blocks from the house - so I will be a frequent lunch time visitor!)
Day care is a very controversial issue in our society, so it's been studied a reasonable amount, both for its effect on social development, and its effect on academic development. The findings are fairly mixed. That's because the quality of day care matters a great deal. High quality day care can actually improve language and academic development among at-risk children by giving them the stimulation they might not get at home. This can reverse the measured drop in academic ability that can sometimes occur for these children as they grow. For middle-class white children, high-quality day care appears to have no particular effect on language or academic development one way or the other, according to this study. On the other hand, long hours in not-so-great day care can increase aggression.
Every time a major study is released, the chattering heads on television give it lots of airtime. This commentary from City-Journal on Fear and Loathing at the Day Care Center, hints at some of the controversy. It is "common sense" to many people that children are best cared for in their homes, by their mothers. Some research does show that children of mothers who spend more hours devoted to childcare and less to working have higher academic achievement in early adolescence. But this same study found that women who have high levels of satisfaction with their childcare arrangements also had children with more scholastic competence in 6th grade. Women who are also satisfied with their "roles" have children with more scholastic competence. In other words, a woman who devotes her time to childcare simply because this is what everyone says she "should" do, but who isn't happy about it, isn't really gaining much by that choice.
I find it all fascinating. The issue of maternal employment and child achievement always gets people riled up. I'm curious what choices others on this board have made with their children, and whether they felt it affected academic achievement.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
When School Works
I have a column in today's USA Today called "When School Works" that talks about the Cristo Rey model of Catholic school that I first blogged about here a few months ago. Students work 1-2 days a week in corporate offices to earn most of their tuition. It's a concept born of financial necessity that has big side benefits. It turns out that getting kids out of the teen world for even a few hours a week gives them a much broader perspective. Even well-to-do teens spend more time watching TV and obsessing about trivia than they should. It's funny how a job keeps you level-headed.
Anyway, those of us who write about education can quickly become jaded about the "hot new thing" in education. Every week some celebrity is adopting a school and saying how it's transformed the lives of underprivileged youth. You hear about empowerment zones, and exciting new charter school concepts and yet.... American education overall continues to be pretty mediocre. I've read stories about the Young Women's Leadership School of New York and how wonderful it is (Sean Hannity wrote about it extensively in his book). But when I judged a MathCounts competition here in New York a few years ago, the team from that school came in last, which made me extremely cross. Leadership is one thing, but how about teaching some math? It is very hard to come up with a concept that is replicable and sustainable.
But Cristo Rey is different. For starters, the Catholic church knows a thing or two about running inner city schools, having done so for eons. The work-study model is financially sustainable. And since the kids are learning skills that they actually apply in their working lives, immediately, there's no need to rely on mass-recited slogans and cheers to keep up motivation, as a lot of the KIPP schools do. So I'm quite enthusiastic on the concept, and hope to write more about it in the future.
I have a column in today's USA Today called "When School Works" that talks about the Cristo Rey model of Catholic school that I first blogged about here a few months ago. Students work 1-2 days a week in corporate offices to earn most of their tuition. It's a concept born of financial necessity that has big side benefits. It turns out that getting kids out of the teen world for even a few hours a week gives them a much broader perspective. Even well-to-do teens spend more time watching TV and obsessing about trivia than they should. It's funny how a job keeps you level-headed.
Anyway, those of us who write about education can quickly become jaded about the "hot new thing" in education. Every week some celebrity is adopting a school and saying how it's transformed the lives of underprivileged youth. You hear about empowerment zones, and exciting new charter school concepts and yet.... American education overall continues to be pretty mediocre. I've read stories about the Young Women's Leadership School of New York and how wonderful it is (Sean Hannity wrote about it extensively in his book). But when I judged a MathCounts competition here in New York a few years ago, the team from that school came in last, which made me extremely cross. Leadership is one thing, but how about teaching some math? It is very hard to come up with a concept that is replicable and sustainable.
But Cristo Rey is different. For starters, the Catholic church knows a thing or two about running inner city schools, having done so for eons. The work-study model is financially sustainable. And since the kids are learning skills that they actually apply in their working lives, immediately, there's no need to rely on mass-recited slogans and cheers to keep up motivation, as a lot of the KIPP schools do. So I'm quite enthusiastic on the concept, and hope to write more about it in the future.
Friday, August 31, 2007
A Question of Geography
I promised a few weeks ago that I'd write more about the Davidson Fellows, the decorated group of 17 young men and women who will be awarded $10,000-$50,000 scholarships in Washington DC in late September. I still hope to connect individually with some of them in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, hunting through the $50,000 winners' bios, I noticed an interesting theme.
Raw talent can happen anywhere. But geography plays an important role in turning that talent into achievement.
I noted, for instance, that Davidson Fellow Laureate Katherine Orazem, a young writer, comes from Ames, Iowa. This is a small Iowa town, but not just any small Iowa town. It's also the home of Iowa State University. University communities have certain features that make them more welcoming for gifted young people than other places. For starters, professors at major research universities are smart people who often have smart kids. Having a concentration of smart kids increases the chances that the school district will choose to cluster and challenge them. That doesn't happen everywhere, as I've often written about my home of South Bend, IN (home to the University of Notre Dame and some awful secondary schools). But the odds are on your side.
In addition, the universities themselves offer resources that curious kids can take advantage of. You can audit classes (or enroll for credit). You can find mentors in the form of graduate students and professors. If your talents lie in scientific pursuits, you can possibly gain access to lab equipment that no secondary school will ever be able to purchase.
You don't have to live in a university town to succeed, of course. There are tales of previous Davidson Fellows traveling multiple hours several times per week to do lab work at far away universities. This requires parents who are particularly motivated to commute, or who have the time to do so. This is extremely tough to pull off in a two-income family, which is why it's easier to live in a university town in the first place.
So Yale Fan, winner of a $50,000 prize for technology, lives in Beaverton, Oregon (close enough to Portland State University to do research there). Alexandra Courtis, another young scientist, is from Davis, California. Madhavi Gavini, whose work combines medicine and science, is from Starkville, Mississippi, home of Mississippi State University. The lone musician of the group, Todd Kramer, lives in Port Jefferson, NY, which is on Long Island. While Port Jefferson is not a university town, it is the final stop on a branch line of the Long Island Railroad. I don't know if Kramer took the train or his parents drove him into Manhattan, but Penn Station is just a 5-10 minute subway ride south of the Juilliard school, where he studied.
In other words, geography matters. A child with much musical potential born in rural West Virginia will have a difficult time finding teachers and mentors to nurture that talent. While we all love the story of a diamond in the rough, even these gems must be cut and polished in order to shine. Some locations do a much better job of cutting and polishing than others.
I'm not sure what is to be done about this. If all teachers were trained in identifying gifted children, and all schools had partnerships with the nearest major universities, and all states had residential schools for gifted high schoolers, maybe geography wouldn't be so crucial. But for now, it is.
I promised a few weeks ago that I'd write more about the Davidson Fellows, the decorated group of 17 young men and women who will be awarded $10,000-$50,000 scholarships in Washington DC in late September. I still hope to connect individually with some of them in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, hunting through the $50,000 winners' bios, I noticed an interesting theme.
Raw talent can happen anywhere. But geography plays an important role in turning that talent into achievement.
I noted, for instance, that Davidson Fellow Laureate Katherine Orazem, a young writer, comes from Ames, Iowa. This is a small Iowa town, but not just any small Iowa town. It's also the home of Iowa State University. University communities have certain features that make them more welcoming for gifted young people than other places. For starters, professors at major research universities are smart people who often have smart kids. Having a concentration of smart kids increases the chances that the school district will choose to cluster and challenge them. That doesn't happen everywhere, as I've often written about my home of South Bend, IN (home to the University of Notre Dame and some awful secondary schools). But the odds are on your side.
In addition, the universities themselves offer resources that curious kids can take advantage of. You can audit classes (or enroll for credit). You can find mentors in the form of graduate students and professors. If your talents lie in scientific pursuits, you can possibly gain access to lab equipment that no secondary school will ever be able to purchase.
You don't have to live in a university town to succeed, of course. There are tales of previous Davidson Fellows traveling multiple hours several times per week to do lab work at far away universities. This requires parents who are particularly motivated to commute, or who have the time to do so. This is extremely tough to pull off in a two-income family, which is why it's easier to live in a university town in the first place.
So Yale Fan, winner of a $50,000 prize for technology, lives in Beaverton, Oregon (close enough to Portland State University to do research there). Alexandra Courtis, another young scientist, is from Davis, California. Madhavi Gavini, whose work combines medicine and science, is from Starkville, Mississippi, home of Mississippi State University. The lone musician of the group, Todd Kramer, lives in Port Jefferson, NY, which is on Long Island. While Port Jefferson is not a university town, it is the final stop on a branch line of the Long Island Railroad. I don't know if Kramer took the train or his parents drove him into Manhattan, but Penn Station is just a 5-10 minute subway ride south of the Juilliard school, where he studied.
In other words, geography matters. A child with much musical potential born in rural West Virginia will have a difficult time finding teachers and mentors to nurture that talent. While we all love the story of a diamond in the rough, even these gems must be cut and polished in order to shine. Some locations do a much better job of cutting and polishing than others.
I'm not sure what is to be done about this. If all teachers were trained in identifying gifted children, and all schools had partnerships with the nearest major universities, and all states had residential schools for gifted high schoolers, maybe geography wouldn't be so crucial. But for now, it is.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Failing Our Geniuses
Time magazine covers the Davidson Academy, and the issue of gifted education, in depth this week. You can read the article here.
Reporter John Cloud spent a week at the Academy meeting the kids (and apparently gawking at Bob's Ferrari, but anyway...) He reached many apt conclusions. Namely, that our schools are just not set up to handle highly gifted children. It's not because they don't know what to do. Acceleration, dual-enrollment, and other such accommodations are well-studied and known to be effective. It's just that we don't like doing them. Such accommodations hint at the idea that some children are -- and will always be -- smarter than others. And in the egalitarian world of education, that is simply not acceptable.
"At the academy, the battered concept of IQ--complicated in recent years by the idea of multiple intelligences, including artistic and emotional acuity--is accepted there without the encumbrances of politics," he writes. "The school is a rejection of the thoroughly American notion that if most just try hard enough, we could all be talented. Many school administrators oppose ability grouping on the theory that it can perpetuate social inequalities, but at the Davidson Academy, even the 45 élite students are grouped by ability into easier and harder English, math and science classes. The school poses blunt questions about American education: Has the drive to ensure equity over excellence gone too far? If so, is the answer to segregate the brightest kids?"
That's certainly one answer -- to congregate such students in a place like the Davidson Academy -- since schools have been so unwilling to do simple things like acceleration. Of course, as Cloud points out, it's a harsh choice for these students to have to move to Reno in order to find kindred spirits. It would be nicer if their home schools could figure out a way to challenge them. But instead, gifted programs wind up being about enrichment. Kids get 90 minutes a week of pull-out on topics such as bugs, or ancient Egypt, or forensics, or what have you, and these programs wind up being open to kids who may not be gifted, but who work hard and get good grades. Why not? Enrichment seems like a reward, not an intervention for kids who desperately need it. So why not reward kids with gumption and determination, regardless of IQ? We cling to egalitarianism and the hard work concept in intelligence even as we recognize that it's only part of the equation elsewhere. I run many hours and miles a week. If I ran more, and had a professional coach, I'd probably be able to run faster. But I would never run as fast as Paula Radcliffe. I simply don't have the physical ability.
Likewise, a child with an IQ of 155 is simply wired differently than a child of average intelligence. We can quibble over how meaningful individual IQ points are, and how high the scale can go, and whether our tests can actually test such a concept accurately, but no one who's been around children of average and extreme intelligence can deny a difference. Cloud talks about listening to the Davidson Academy children speak and realizing how different they sound than others their age (even as he notes that modesty is not a virtue of some).
He uses the standard line that these children will be the ones most likely to solve great problems in the future. Perhaps. That's a difficult argument to make, because plenty of gifted kids turn out to be very normal adults who don't move the world. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be given an education that meets their needs. That's a right we deserve simply for being human. I'm glad to see Time magazine feels the same way.
Time magazine covers the Davidson Academy, and the issue of gifted education, in depth this week. You can read the article here.
Reporter John Cloud spent a week at the Academy meeting the kids (and apparently gawking at Bob's Ferrari, but anyway...) He reached many apt conclusions. Namely, that our schools are just not set up to handle highly gifted children. It's not because they don't know what to do. Acceleration, dual-enrollment, and other such accommodations are well-studied and known to be effective. It's just that we don't like doing them. Such accommodations hint at the idea that some children are -- and will always be -- smarter than others. And in the egalitarian world of education, that is simply not acceptable.
"At the academy, the battered concept of IQ--complicated in recent years by the idea of multiple intelligences, including artistic and emotional acuity--is accepted there without the encumbrances of politics," he writes. "The school is a rejection of the thoroughly American notion that if most just try hard enough, we could all be talented. Many school administrators oppose ability grouping on the theory that it can perpetuate social inequalities, but at the Davidson Academy, even the 45 élite students are grouped by ability into easier and harder English, math and science classes. The school poses blunt questions about American education: Has the drive to ensure equity over excellence gone too far? If so, is the answer to segregate the brightest kids?"
That's certainly one answer -- to congregate such students in a place like the Davidson Academy -- since schools have been so unwilling to do simple things like acceleration. Of course, as Cloud points out, it's a harsh choice for these students to have to move to Reno in order to find kindred spirits. It would be nicer if their home schools could figure out a way to challenge them. But instead, gifted programs wind up being about enrichment. Kids get 90 minutes a week of pull-out on topics such as bugs, or ancient Egypt, or forensics, or what have you, and these programs wind up being open to kids who may not be gifted, but who work hard and get good grades. Why not? Enrichment seems like a reward, not an intervention for kids who desperately need it. So why not reward kids with gumption and determination, regardless of IQ? We cling to egalitarianism and the hard work concept in intelligence even as we recognize that it's only part of the equation elsewhere. I run many hours and miles a week. If I ran more, and had a professional coach, I'd probably be able to run faster. But I would never run as fast as Paula Radcliffe. I simply don't have the physical ability.
Likewise, a child with an IQ of 155 is simply wired differently than a child of average intelligence. We can quibble over how meaningful individual IQ points are, and how high the scale can go, and whether our tests can actually test such a concept accurately, but no one who's been around children of average and extreme intelligence can deny a difference. Cloud talks about listening to the Davidson Academy children speak and realizing how different they sound than others their age (even as he notes that modesty is not a virtue of some).
He uses the standard line that these children will be the ones most likely to solve great problems in the future. Perhaps. That's a difficult argument to make, because plenty of gifted kids turn out to be very normal adults who don't move the world. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be given an education that meets their needs. That's a right we deserve simply for being human. I'm glad to see Time magazine feels the same way.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Is Brainy Baby not so brainy?
It is, of course, the perfect story for snarky journalists: A recent study by researchers associated with the University of Washingon in Seattle concluded that for every hour per day 8-16 month old infants spend watching Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein type videos, they know 6-8 fewer vocabulary words than other children their age. You can read one story (of hundreds) on the topic here.
Everyone loves to make fun of the Baby-Industrial Complex (yes, I bought a Bugaboo stroller... and an Ouef crib...) The explosion of Baby Einstein videos purporting to make one's child smarter is certainly a data point in this trend, and no one can accuse the University of Washington researchers of not knowing how to generate PR. Imagine -- a video designed to make your kid smarter makes your kid dumber! You can hear the snickering seeping out of the newsprint.
But of course, it is almost impossible to prove causal relationships with anything involving childhood intelligence or achievement. The researchers asked about Baby Einstein because these are the videos that babies watch. My guess is that every hour per day that babies spend parked in front of "Days of Our Lives" or "What Not to Wear" likewise corresponds to fewer vocabulary words... as does the number of hours per day they spend parked in front of a blank wall. It's interaction with other people that sparks vocabulary development. If children are watching TV instead of interacting with adults, then they probably will have learned fewer vocabulary words at some arbitrary age.
But TV-v-pleasant-and-educational-adult-interaction is probably not the exact choice many people are making. Small children can be exasperating. If the choice is Baby Einstein v. mommy losing it and teaching the child some very interesting words, I'd say Baby Einstein is the way to go. The videos don't make your child smarter. But I doubt they, specifically, make your child less articulate either.
It is, of course, the perfect story for snarky journalists: A recent study by researchers associated with the University of Washingon in Seattle concluded that for every hour per day 8-16 month old infants spend watching Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein type videos, they know 6-8 fewer vocabulary words than other children their age. You can read one story (of hundreds) on the topic here.
Everyone loves to make fun of the Baby-Industrial Complex (yes, I bought a Bugaboo stroller... and an Ouef crib...) The explosion of Baby Einstein videos purporting to make one's child smarter is certainly a data point in this trend, and no one can accuse the University of Washington researchers of not knowing how to generate PR. Imagine -- a video designed to make your kid smarter makes your kid dumber! You can hear the snickering seeping out of the newsprint.
But of course, it is almost impossible to prove causal relationships with anything involving childhood intelligence or achievement. The researchers asked about Baby Einstein because these are the videos that babies watch. My guess is that every hour per day that babies spend parked in front of "Days of Our Lives" or "What Not to Wear" likewise corresponds to fewer vocabulary words... as does the number of hours per day they spend parked in front of a blank wall. It's interaction with other people that sparks vocabulary development. If children are watching TV instead of interacting with adults, then they probably will have learned fewer vocabulary words at some arbitrary age.
But TV-v-pleasant-and-educational-adult-interaction is probably not the exact choice many people are making. Small children can be exasperating. If the choice is Baby Einstein v. mommy losing it and teaching the child some very interesting words, I'd say Baby Einstein is the way to go. The videos don't make your child smarter. But I doubt they, specifically, make your child less articulate either.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Congratulations to the new Davidson Fellows!
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development just released its list of the 2007 Fellows. These amazingly gifted young people will win $10,000-$50,000 scholarships for their projects, which range from new scientific breakthroughs to musical compositions to short stories.
You can read about these young people and their projects here.
I'll be highlighting a few of their projects in coming weeks, but it will be hard to know where to start!
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development just released its list of the 2007 Fellows. These amazingly gifted young people will win $10,000-$50,000 scholarships for their projects, which range from new scientific breakthroughs to musical compositions to short stories.
You can read about these young people and their projects here.
I'll be highlighting a few of their projects in coming weeks, but it will be hard to know where to start!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Class Size and Gifted Education
It's one of the sacred doctrines of education that smaller class sizes equal better classes. School improvement efforts often focus on lowering teacher-to-pupil ratios, and teachers unions, which have their own economic reasons for supporting such efforts, constantly lobby for smaller classes as well. There's some evidence to support smaller classes; a long-term Tennessee study (discussed on this NEA page) found that students enrolled in smaller classes from an early age are more likely to finish high school on time than those in larger classes (72% vs. 66%). However, the results aren't overwhelming, and achieving the NEA's target of 15 students to 1 teacher would require massive new expenditures (since current rates are often in the 20's or higher). While it makes intuitive sense that when students receive more attention they do better, there's much to be said for teacher quality as well. Some of my most informative classes in college were held in 200-person lecture halls. And some top-performing Asian countries maintain class sizes in the 40's. You can read more about issues with the Tennessee study and the class size argument on the Ed Reform website here.
Anyway, that's the background story on class size, which is what came to mind when I read about a controversy in San Diego about class sizes in gifted education. Apparently the so-called "Seminar" classes in the San Diego Unified School District, which are aimed at students in the 99.6-99.9th percentile on achievement tests, once had a pupil-teacher ratio of 20-1. Due to some funding issues, and a desire to expand the program to cover all students who qualify, the schools now want to expand this to 25-1.
I never like to see gifted education subject to reduced funding levels, but my first thought, reading this story, is that there's no point identifying students as gifted if you're not going to serve them. If the ratio needs to go up in order to serve the gifted population with the available resources, then that's what needs to happen. Those worried about the ratio could better spend their time evaluating teacher quality, as a top notch teacher with 25 students will beat a mediocre one with 20 any day.
That said, the range of readiness levels between gifted kids can be as large as the range in a general classroom, and gifted kids do have special needs. Special education classes usually have lower pupil to teacher ratios because these children require more one-on-one time. I'm curious if parents on this board have experienced larger and smaller gifted classes, and what the difference has been.
It's one of the sacred doctrines of education that smaller class sizes equal better classes. School improvement efforts often focus on lowering teacher-to-pupil ratios, and teachers unions, which have their own economic reasons for supporting such efforts, constantly lobby for smaller classes as well. There's some evidence to support smaller classes; a long-term Tennessee study (discussed on this NEA page) found that students enrolled in smaller classes from an early age are more likely to finish high school on time than those in larger classes (72% vs. 66%). However, the results aren't overwhelming, and achieving the NEA's target of 15 students to 1 teacher would require massive new expenditures (since current rates are often in the 20's or higher). While it makes intuitive sense that when students receive more attention they do better, there's much to be said for teacher quality as well. Some of my most informative classes in college were held in 200-person lecture halls. And some top-performing Asian countries maintain class sizes in the 40's. You can read more about issues with the Tennessee study and the class size argument on the Ed Reform website here.
Anyway, that's the background story on class size, which is what came to mind when I read about a controversy in San Diego about class sizes in gifted education. Apparently the so-called "Seminar" classes in the San Diego Unified School District, which are aimed at students in the 99.6-99.9th percentile on achievement tests, once had a pupil-teacher ratio of 20-1. Due to some funding issues, and a desire to expand the program to cover all students who qualify, the schools now want to expand this to 25-1.
I never like to see gifted education subject to reduced funding levels, but my first thought, reading this story, is that there's no point identifying students as gifted if you're not going to serve them. If the ratio needs to go up in order to serve the gifted population with the available resources, then that's what needs to happen. Those worried about the ratio could better spend their time evaluating teacher quality, as a top notch teacher with 25 students will beat a mediocre one with 20 any day.
That said, the range of readiness levels between gifted kids can be as large as the range in a general classroom, and gifted kids do have special needs. Special education classes usually have lower pupil to teacher ratios because these children require more one-on-one time. I'm curious if parents on this board have experienced larger and smaller gifted classes, and what the difference has been.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Mensa-Wannabe Moms
The Savannah Morning News ran a humorous column called "Mommy I don't want to be a child prodigy" a few weeks ago. Columnist and new mom Anne Hart made fun of the British family that had their 2-year-old child (Georgia Brown) take the Mensa test. She passed and got in, which in theory could set off a lot of dithering among other parents. After all, we all want to believe our children are brilliant.
But personally, I've never understood the appeal of Mensa. It's so easily mocked (the Washington Post once put a note in the paper asking people to send in stories of Mensa members doing something really dumb -- the phrase "the wise man knows himself to be a fool" comes to mind). There's obviously something to be said for being around smart people socially. That's one of the reasons ability grouping is so important for kids. But with some careful career planning as an adult, you can work in an office of very smart people. With some careful social planning, your group of friends will share your intelligence. Kids can't choose their lives and choose who they spend their time with. Adults can. Which makes Mensa seem less necessary.
But I could be wrong! I'm curious if any readers of this blog have joined Mensa, thought about it, joined and quit, or what have you. Have your children ever expressed interest? Is there a place for a social organization made up of intelligent people? Or in this era of "bowling alone" is this another group that will lose clout?
The Savannah Morning News ran a humorous column called "Mommy I don't want to be a child prodigy" a few weeks ago. Columnist and new mom Anne Hart made fun of the British family that had their 2-year-old child (Georgia Brown) take the Mensa test. She passed and got in, which in theory could set off a lot of dithering among other parents. After all, we all want to believe our children are brilliant.
But personally, I've never understood the appeal of Mensa. It's so easily mocked (the Washington Post once put a note in the paper asking people to send in stories of Mensa members doing something really dumb -- the phrase "the wise man knows himself to be a fool" comes to mind). There's obviously something to be said for being around smart people socially. That's one of the reasons ability grouping is so important for kids. But with some careful career planning as an adult, you can work in an office of very smart people. With some careful social planning, your group of friends will share your intelligence. Kids can't choose their lives and choose who they spend their time with. Adults can. Which makes Mensa seem less necessary.
But I could be wrong! I'm curious if any readers of this blog have joined Mensa, thought about it, joined and quit, or what have you. Have your children ever expressed interest? Is there a place for a social organization made up of intelligent people? Or in this era of "bowling alone" is this another group that will lose clout?
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Schools Move Toward Following Students' Yearly Progress
A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story on something we've talked about a lot here on Gifted Exchange: using yearly NCLB testing to track individual student results, not just school quality. As it is, schools are graded based on the scores of fourth graders this year compared with fourth graders last year. But while that tells you if a whole school is stepping up its game, it tells you nothing about individual children. And last time I checked, we learn individually.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is aware of this, and she addressed the topic briefly during her speech at the opening of the Davidson Academy in Reno last summer. A number of states including North Carolina, Ohio and Florida have started participating in a pilot program that tracks individual results on achievement tests, comparing a fourth grader this year with the same kid as a fifth grader next year.
The New York Times article, "Schools Move Toward Following Students' Yearly Progress on Tests," by Winnie Hu, ran on July 6th. That means it's been moved to Times Select and, alas, is not available for free anymore. But here's the rather interesting opener: "The Cohoes city school district, outside Albany, is considering a gifted program for elementary students and adding college-level courses after discovering that its top students improved less on standardized tests in the past two years than everyone else in the district."
Yes, it seems that tracking individual test results shows what gifted education advocates have been saying for a while. Gifted kids are often being left behind. While they may continue to pass grade-level achievement tests, they are not truly learning as much as they could. That the Cohoes district is using this new knowledge to create new gifted programs is reason to celebrate indeed.
There's much to love about individual test result tracking. Schools with large concentrations of disadvantaged children like the concept because it means that they get credit if these kids improve, year over year, even if the kids don't meet a certain set cut-off. Schools that shortchange their brightest students will also be more likely to have a fire lit beneath them. So who's against it? Well, according to Hu's article, it's the usual suspects.
"It's detrimental for education," Aimee Bolender, the president of Dallas's American Federation of Teachers chapter told Hu. "It is pulling apart teams of teachers and it doesn't look at why test scores are low. From the very beginning, we viewed it as a slippery slope that did not do anything valuable to improve the educational environment in the schools." Bolender is fighting a decision by Dallas to remove 30 teachers whose students failed to show adequate progress. Bolender said many teachers call this individual growth model "voodoo math" because "you have to be a Ph.D. in statistics to even comprehend it."
And then there's Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust (which advocates for disadvantaged children). She told Hu that the individual growth model might put too much (!) attention on kids at the top. "It risks so broadening the federal government's involvement that its historical role will be dissipated," she told Hu.
So there you have it. The people who are upset about this don't like it because it means removing bad teachers from classrooms and focusing on gifted kids. From my perspective, that means there's a lot to like.
A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story on something we've talked about a lot here on Gifted Exchange: using yearly NCLB testing to track individual student results, not just school quality. As it is, schools are graded based on the scores of fourth graders this year compared with fourth graders last year. But while that tells you if a whole school is stepping up its game, it tells you nothing about individual children. And last time I checked, we learn individually.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is aware of this, and she addressed the topic briefly during her speech at the opening of the Davidson Academy in Reno last summer. A number of states including North Carolina, Ohio and Florida have started participating in a pilot program that tracks individual results on achievement tests, comparing a fourth grader this year with the same kid as a fifth grader next year.
The New York Times article, "Schools Move Toward Following Students' Yearly Progress on Tests," by Winnie Hu, ran on July 6th. That means it's been moved to Times Select and, alas, is not available for free anymore. But here's the rather interesting opener: "The Cohoes city school district, outside Albany, is considering a gifted program for elementary students and adding college-level courses after discovering that its top students improved less on standardized tests in the past two years than everyone else in the district."
Yes, it seems that tracking individual test results shows what gifted education advocates have been saying for a while. Gifted kids are often being left behind. While they may continue to pass grade-level achievement tests, they are not truly learning as much as they could. That the Cohoes district is using this new knowledge to create new gifted programs is reason to celebrate indeed.
There's much to love about individual test result tracking. Schools with large concentrations of disadvantaged children like the concept because it means that they get credit if these kids improve, year over year, even if the kids don't meet a certain set cut-off. Schools that shortchange their brightest students will also be more likely to have a fire lit beneath them. So who's against it? Well, according to Hu's article, it's the usual suspects.
"It's detrimental for education," Aimee Bolender, the president of Dallas's American Federation of Teachers chapter told Hu. "It is pulling apart teams of teachers and it doesn't look at why test scores are low. From the very beginning, we viewed it as a slippery slope that did not do anything valuable to improve the educational environment in the schools." Bolender is fighting a decision by Dallas to remove 30 teachers whose students failed to show adequate progress. Bolender said many teachers call this individual growth model "voodoo math" because "you have to be a Ph.D. in statistics to even comprehend it."
And then there's Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust (which advocates for disadvantaged children). She told Hu that the individual growth model might put too much (!) attention on kids at the top. "It risks so broadening the federal government's involvement that its historical role will be dissipated," she told Hu.
So there you have it. The people who are upset about this don't like it because it means removing bad teachers from classrooms and focusing on gifted kids. From my perspective, that means there's a lot to like.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Anything but Acceleration!
It's been three years since the Templeton report on acceleration, A Nation Deceived, came out. The report established that all the available evidence supports acceleration (aka "grade skipping") as a cheap, effective educational option for gifted kids. Accelerated kids tend to thrive academically, and there are no negative social consequences that lead accelerated kids and their parents to see the acceleration as a mistake.
Too bad so few education "experts" are actually listening. The Orlando Sentinel's Family Project section ran a Q&A from a parent whose 5-year-old son needed more challenge. Should the child be accelerated? The Family Project panel members "prefer not to see a child moved ahead in school," though all agreed that the parent would have to advocate for her son so he'd get the enrichment he needed.
There's just one problem with that advice. Enrichment may or may not happen. Maybe the parent doesn't have the time or expertise to advocate. Maybe the kid's teachers don't know how to enrich the curriculum. The good thing about acceleration is that if you put the kid in a grade where he's actually challenged by the basic material, you don't have to advocate.
But the panel did not mention this. Instead, they repeated the usual odes to socialization:
"The most important part of kindergarten is peer relationships and that's why panelist Maryellen Blass says she doesn't advocate advancement. 'Enrichment can be very easily integrated into kindergarten,' she says.
"Even very bright children need socialization skills more than anything at this age, panelists say. 'It's important to consider the whole child,' agrees panelist Joanne Nigito-Raftas. 'He is in the process of growing socially. If he's placed where he is academically, you may see effects in middle school when he's not at same place as other kids. It's very hard when a child is developmentally not ready.'"
Last time I looked at a sixth grade class, everyone was in a different place developmentally already. And likewise, unless these panelists socialize only with people born within six months of their birthdays, I'm afraid they don't have much of a case. Humans are social creatures, but we grow socially when we hang out with people we enjoy, and with whom we can interact in meaningful ways. A 5-year-old who wants to discuss the themes of the literature he's reading will not grow socially if he must spend all his time with kids who are just learning their letters. You'd think that educational experts would get that. But apparently not.
It's been three years since the Templeton report on acceleration, A Nation Deceived, came out. The report established that all the available evidence supports acceleration (aka "grade skipping") as a cheap, effective educational option for gifted kids. Accelerated kids tend to thrive academically, and there are no negative social consequences that lead accelerated kids and their parents to see the acceleration as a mistake.
Too bad so few education "experts" are actually listening. The Orlando Sentinel's Family Project section ran a Q&A from a parent whose 5-year-old son needed more challenge. Should the child be accelerated? The Family Project panel members "prefer not to see a child moved ahead in school," though all agreed that the parent would have to advocate for her son so he'd get the enrichment he needed.
There's just one problem with that advice. Enrichment may or may not happen. Maybe the parent doesn't have the time or expertise to advocate. Maybe the kid's teachers don't know how to enrich the curriculum. The good thing about acceleration is that if you put the kid in a grade where he's actually challenged by the basic material, you don't have to advocate.
But the panel did not mention this. Instead, they repeated the usual odes to socialization:
"The most important part of kindergarten is peer relationships and that's why panelist Maryellen Blass says she doesn't advocate advancement. 'Enrichment can be very easily integrated into kindergarten,' she says.
"Even very bright children need socialization skills more than anything at this age, panelists say. 'It's important to consider the whole child,' agrees panelist Joanne Nigito-Raftas. 'He is in the process of growing socially. If he's placed where he is academically, you may see effects in middle school when he's not at same place as other kids. It's very hard when a child is developmentally not ready.'"
Last time I looked at a sixth grade class, everyone was in a different place developmentally already. And likewise, unless these panelists socialize only with people born within six months of their birthdays, I'm afraid they don't have much of a case. Humans are social creatures, but we grow socially when we hang out with people we enjoy, and with whom we can interact in meaningful ways. A 5-year-old who wants to discuss the themes of the literature he's reading will not grow socially if he must spend all his time with kids who are just learning their letters. You'd think that educational experts would get that. But apparently not.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Stephanie Pace Marshall and the creation of IMSA
The Illinois Math and Science Academy, a residential high school for gifted kids in Aurora, IL is now 20 years old. It appears to be well-established. The newly appointed school president is actually the former Illinois state superintendent of schools. But none of this could have been predicted when Stephanie Pace Marshall, IMSA's first president, helped establish the school. She recently decided to step down, and this article from the Chicago Tribune talks about her legacy. IMSA has become a leading light in the field of gifted education, training hundreds of kids each year to see math and science as cool (I wish the school name included the humanities, but the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities in Indiana does, and it's partially modeled after Marshall's creation in Illinois). The school has survived budget cuts and constant criticism about its elite nature. It was always a great idea, but great ideas need practical people in order to bring them to fruition. Marshall managed to be both visionary and builder. While about a dozen states now have residential high schools for gifted kids, hopefully Marshall will use some of her free time to push the rest to step up to the plate. I recommend reading the linked article from the Chicago Tribune to get a feel for the debate over these specialized secondary schools, and to learn more about one of the best education ideas to come along in the past 25 years.
The Illinois Math and Science Academy, a residential high school for gifted kids in Aurora, IL is now 20 years old. It appears to be well-established. The newly appointed school president is actually the former Illinois state superintendent of schools. But none of this could have been predicted when Stephanie Pace Marshall, IMSA's first president, helped establish the school. She recently decided to step down, and this article from the Chicago Tribune talks about her legacy. IMSA has become a leading light in the field of gifted education, training hundreds of kids each year to see math and science as cool (I wish the school name included the humanities, but the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities in Indiana does, and it's partially modeled after Marshall's creation in Illinois). The school has survived budget cuts and constant criticism about its elite nature. It was always a great idea, but great ideas need practical people in order to bring them to fruition. Marshall managed to be both visionary and builder. While about a dozen states now have residential high schools for gifted kids, hopefully Marshall will use some of her free time to push the rest to step up to the plate. I recommend reading the linked article from the Chicago Tribune to get a feel for the debate over these specialized secondary schools, and to learn more about one of the best education ideas to come along in the past 25 years.
Monday, July 09, 2007
A Class of Bright Sparks
Like the U.S., Australia has long been trying to figure out what to do with its gifted children. As in the U.S., with its egalitarian culture, Australians sometimes talk about cutting down the "tall poppies." That means that anything that makes someone stick out is viewed as bad. This recent article, A Class of Bright Sparks, from the Brisbane Times, examines the issue in light of the New South Wales system of selective secondary schools. I really recommend reading it.
The issues of achievement and intelligence are hard to separate out, and so admission into these schools is seen as an honor, and the schools are perceived as "better." But, of course, the issue is never entirely clear-cut. Students who obtain admission, but choose to go to "regular" schools do just fine, and plenty of students (some of whom have been coached like crazy) who do go to the elite schools flounder. The article notes that attending the selective schools does not necessarily raise self-esteem, which is obvious to anyone who's ever attended a rigorous, ability-grouped school. You learn the first day that while you were the brightest kid in your previous class, you aren't now!
The article brings up the usual note that educators are divided on whether ability grouping is good for students (though no one who seriously considers the needs of highly gifted kids is divided on this). As gifted expert Miraca Gross says in the article "Research shows that children are less likely to succeed if they are not accepted in their peer group... The earlier you put a gifted child - for some period of time at least - with other children of similar ability the more confident a child becomes. They have less time to dwell on the fact that others may think they are weird or strange which may make them feel confused and unlikeable and lead them not to develop skills of friendship and be socially isolated." Some people seem to believe that ability grouping hurts "socialization" but the truth is the exact opposite. A highly gifted child kept in a regular class becomes nothing but the "smart one." Only in a situation with her intellectual peers is she allowed to become other things.
Like the U.S., Australia has long been trying to figure out what to do with its gifted children. As in the U.S., with its egalitarian culture, Australians sometimes talk about cutting down the "tall poppies." That means that anything that makes someone stick out is viewed as bad. This recent article, A Class of Bright Sparks, from the Brisbane Times, examines the issue in light of the New South Wales system of selective secondary schools. I really recommend reading it.
The issues of achievement and intelligence are hard to separate out, and so admission into these schools is seen as an honor, and the schools are perceived as "better." But, of course, the issue is never entirely clear-cut. Students who obtain admission, but choose to go to "regular" schools do just fine, and plenty of students (some of whom have been coached like crazy) who do go to the elite schools flounder. The article notes that attending the selective schools does not necessarily raise self-esteem, which is obvious to anyone who's ever attended a rigorous, ability-grouped school. You learn the first day that while you were the brightest kid in your previous class, you aren't now!
The article brings up the usual note that educators are divided on whether ability grouping is good for students (though no one who seriously considers the needs of highly gifted kids is divided on this). As gifted expert Miraca Gross says in the article "Research shows that children are less likely to succeed if they are not accepted in their peer group... The earlier you put a gifted child - for some period of time at least - with other children of similar ability the more confident a child becomes. They have less time to dwell on the fact that others may think they are weird or strange which may make them feel confused and unlikeable and lead them not to develop skills of friendship and be socially isolated." Some people seem to believe that ability grouping hurts "socialization" but the truth is the exact opposite. A highly gifted child kept in a regular class becomes nothing but the "smart one." Only in a situation with her intellectual peers is she allowed to become other things.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Birth Order and IQ
There has been much discussion, the past few days, about a new Norwegian study showing that birth order affects IQ scores. Oldest sons tend to score higher on IQ tests than later sons, but the difference appears to be because of how children are raised, not biology. Later-born sons whose older brothers died in infancy show similar IQs to those who were first-born.
So what's to be made of this? Probably not much. The difference was 2-3 IQ points, which is pretty much meaningless. But that doesn't stop people from drawing whatever conclusions they like. I particularly laughed at the quote from the UC-Berkeley expert in the AP article I linked, above, stating that eldest children were probably smarter because they tutored their younger brothers and sisters. This idea that kids benefit from tutoring each other is often expressed in education circles, because it lets harried teachers use gifted kids as unpaid teaching assistants and claim it's good for them.
But anyway -- if I had to guess, I'd say the tiny difference is because parents have more time and energy to pay undivided attention to their first born children during the first 2 years of their lives. An acquaintance of mine recently confessed that with his first daughter, he was reading stories to her in the womb and, presumably, with even greater frequency after birth. The second daughter got no in-the-womb story sessions. Likewise, with my baby, I spend a reasonable amount of time showing him different patterns and objects, exposing him to different sounds, etc. I can't imagine doing as much of this if I had a 2-year-old shrieking around the house. But if that's the reason for the difference, the study's conclusion is heartening to me. If all that difference in time and energy only adds up to 2-3 IQ points, it would take a lot for good intentioned parents to really mess their children up.
There has been much discussion, the past few days, about a new Norwegian study showing that birth order affects IQ scores. Oldest sons tend to score higher on IQ tests than later sons, but the difference appears to be because of how children are raised, not biology. Later-born sons whose older brothers died in infancy show similar IQs to those who were first-born.
So what's to be made of this? Probably not much. The difference was 2-3 IQ points, which is pretty much meaningless. But that doesn't stop people from drawing whatever conclusions they like. I particularly laughed at the quote from the UC-Berkeley expert in the AP article I linked, above, stating that eldest children were probably smarter because they tutored their younger brothers and sisters. This idea that kids benefit from tutoring each other is often expressed in education circles, because it lets harried teachers use gifted kids as unpaid teaching assistants and claim it's good for them.
But anyway -- if I had to guess, I'd say the tiny difference is because parents have more time and energy to pay undivided attention to their first born children during the first 2 years of their lives. An acquaintance of mine recently confessed that with his first daughter, he was reading stories to her in the womb and, presumably, with even greater frequency after birth. The second daughter got no in-the-womb story sessions. Likewise, with my baby, I spend a reasonable amount of time showing him different patterns and objects, exposing him to different sounds, etc. I can't imagine doing as much of this if I had a 2-year-old shrieking around the house. But if that's the reason for the difference, the study's conclusion is heartening to me. If all that difference in time and energy only adds up to 2-3 IQ points, it would take a lot for good intentioned parents to really mess their children up.
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Sorry State of Education Research
One of the biggest movements in education these days is to choose research-backed programs and reforms. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Education involves a ton of variables, which confound many attempts to figure out "what works."
For instance, the Gates Foundation's small schools initiative works great when you take a lousy, huge, failing high school and substitute smaller ones with high quality principals who have a lot of flexibility. Some early experiments in this concept featured schools with these qualities. But was the success because the schools were small or because of the principals and the flexibility? Other small schools experiments didn't turn out so well, particularly for gifted kids (because schools were split, and many educators didn't like the idea of ability grouping these small schools, gifted kids couldn't be concentrated, so the brightest kids became incredibly bored). Yet, across the country, school districts have seized on the small school concept... sometimes because of the availability of Gates money.
Likewise, every teachers union will tell you that "smaller class sizes" are the key to better school outcomes, and that this is proven by research. But this perceived truth is based on fewer studies than anyone will admit. And some countries with larger average class sizes than in the US do much better on international comparisons in math and science. So it's not clear that class sizes, by themselves, are the magic variable either.
So what is? And for the purposes of this blog, what works in gifted education? There's some research on ability grouping that shows better outcomes for both rapid learners and those who need a little more help. But this is certainly an area that could use more research. If large, rigorous studies showed that ability grouping helped both gifted kids and others learn better, more educators might change their views of such arrangements. Maybe. Then again, plenty of studies have shown that acceleration works (see "A Nation Deceived") but the prejudice against grade skipping remains alive and kicking.
The Davidson Institute has published a list of 12 Cost Effective Educational Options for gifted kids. More research backing up these 12 options with data would certainly be nice to see. I wonder if there are any other burning questions people would like to see answered? I hear, on occasion, from researchers looking into different educational topics, so I'd love to know if there are particular statistics that would make lobbying for gifted education programs easier. It's funny how putting a number to a problem or a solution changes the conversation.
One of the biggest movements in education these days is to choose research-backed programs and reforms. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Education involves a ton of variables, which confound many attempts to figure out "what works."
For instance, the Gates Foundation's small schools initiative works great when you take a lousy, huge, failing high school and substitute smaller ones with high quality principals who have a lot of flexibility. Some early experiments in this concept featured schools with these qualities. But was the success because the schools were small or because of the principals and the flexibility? Other small schools experiments didn't turn out so well, particularly for gifted kids (because schools were split, and many educators didn't like the idea of ability grouping these small schools, gifted kids couldn't be concentrated, so the brightest kids became incredibly bored). Yet, across the country, school districts have seized on the small school concept... sometimes because of the availability of Gates money.
Likewise, every teachers union will tell you that "smaller class sizes" are the key to better school outcomes, and that this is proven by research. But this perceived truth is based on fewer studies than anyone will admit. And some countries with larger average class sizes than in the US do much better on international comparisons in math and science. So it's not clear that class sizes, by themselves, are the magic variable either.
So what is? And for the purposes of this blog, what works in gifted education? There's some research on ability grouping that shows better outcomes for both rapid learners and those who need a little more help. But this is certainly an area that could use more research. If large, rigorous studies showed that ability grouping helped both gifted kids and others learn better, more educators might change their views of such arrangements. Maybe. Then again, plenty of studies have shown that acceleration works (see "A Nation Deceived") but the prejudice against grade skipping remains alive and kicking.
The Davidson Institute has published a list of 12 Cost Effective Educational Options for gifted kids. More research backing up these 12 options with data would certainly be nice to see. I wonder if there are any other burning questions people would like to see answered? I hear, on occasion, from researchers looking into different educational topics, so I'd love to know if there are particular statistics that would make lobbying for gifted education programs easier. It's funny how putting a number to a problem or a solution changes the conversation.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Should Gifted Education be Mandatory?
Colorado's governor signed a law recently that tightened the requirements on school district gifted programs. As an educator explains in this linked article from the Greeley Tribune, the law turns a lot of "mays" into "wills."
It raises the question: Should gifted education be mandatory? And if so, on what level should that mandate be sent down?
Over the years, a number of gifted education advocates have pushed for a national mandate similar to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This law requires that disabled children be given a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. It mandates individual education plans, and courts have sometimes interpreted the law as requiring vast services from districts, even if it means other priorities can't be funded (there are stories of art or music services being trimmed for everyone because one child needs profound intervention... though of course, these are not the only options -- trimming overhead or raising school taxes are always on the table too, even if people don't like to admit it). Since gifted kids have special needs, too, some gifted advocates want IDEA interpreted to include gifted, or else they want a similar national law to be passed for gifted kids.
Others have focused on the state level, and indeed some states do mandate gifted education. States vary in their enforcement, though. Sometimes, a requirement that all gifted kids receive IEPs winds up meaning that everyone's IEP says the same thing: 90 minutes of pull-out a week. Or districts may hire one or two gifted teachers who do "whole class enrichment" -- ie, word puzzles and games with whole, non-ability-grouped classes. None of this does much to challenge gifted kids to the extent of their abilities.
Colorado is attempting to address these issues. The new law allows the state to use its gifted dollars to push for more rigorous gifted programs. In theory this is a good idea. There's no point in spending money if it's not spent right.
But I'd like to hear from parents who read this blog about whether a move to make gifted education mandatory in your state or district has had any practical effect. Sometimes laws can change people's minds by showing that something is a priority. But sometimes, when things aren't a priority, culturally, people follow the letter of the law and not the spirit. In too many schools, gifted kids aren't a priority, whether gifted education is mandated or not.
Colorado's governor signed a law recently that tightened the requirements on school district gifted programs. As an educator explains in this linked article from the Greeley Tribune, the law turns a lot of "mays" into "wills."
It raises the question: Should gifted education be mandatory? And if so, on what level should that mandate be sent down?
Over the years, a number of gifted education advocates have pushed for a national mandate similar to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This law requires that disabled children be given a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. It mandates individual education plans, and courts have sometimes interpreted the law as requiring vast services from districts, even if it means other priorities can't be funded (there are stories of art or music services being trimmed for everyone because one child needs profound intervention... though of course, these are not the only options -- trimming overhead or raising school taxes are always on the table too, even if people don't like to admit it). Since gifted kids have special needs, too, some gifted advocates want IDEA interpreted to include gifted, or else they want a similar national law to be passed for gifted kids.
Others have focused on the state level, and indeed some states do mandate gifted education. States vary in their enforcement, though. Sometimes, a requirement that all gifted kids receive IEPs winds up meaning that everyone's IEP says the same thing: 90 minutes of pull-out a week. Or districts may hire one or two gifted teachers who do "whole class enrichment" -- ie, word puzzles and games with whole, non-ability-grouped classes. None of this does much to challenge gifted kids to the extent of their abilities.
Colorado is attempting to address these issues. The new law allows the state to use its gifted dollars to push for more rigorous gifted programs. In theory this is a good idea. There's no point in spending money if it's not spent right.
But I'd like to hear from parents who read this blog about whether a move to make gifted education mandatory in your state or district has had any practical effect. Sometimes laws can change people's minds by showing that something is a priority. But sometimes, when things aren't a priority, culturally, people follow the letter of the law and not the spirit. In too many schools, gifted kids aren't a priority, whether gifted education is mandated or not.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Thinking About Careers
I'm doing a number of radio interviews in the coming weeks in correlation with my book on the rise in self-employment among young people, Grindhopping. We're talking about the graduation theme of "You Don't Have to Hate Your First Job" (based on a USA Today column I wrote with the same name).
While it's fun to spin the topic this way, career choice is a source of considerable angst for most young people, and for gifted young people -- who have so many options -- in particular. My advice to graduates is to, first, realize that all that education is leading somewhere, so they should spend as much time thinking about what they want to do after school as they do studying for any given exam. And second, ask yourself some key questions, namely 1) what do I love to do so much I'd do it for free and 2) how can I get someone to pay me to do that.
There's no reason this process has to start in college. In fact, I think there's a good case to be made for asking gifted teens to really start thinking about the real world as soon as possible, even though they won't really be living in it, fully, for a long time (See the "Trashing Teens" post, below).
This was driven home to me this weekend, when I had the good fortune to make my Lincoln Center choral debut on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall. I was singing as a ringer with a few high school choruses who were performing Beethoven's Ninth. During rehearsal on Saturday, I was singing next to a young lady from a Long Island high school who asked me how old I was. I told her. "Wow," she says. "You're 28?" "Is that old?" I asked, defensive. "No, she said. It's just crazy. I'm singing next to a 28 year old!" That's when it struck me that this girl had probably never engaged in collaborative projects with adults. At school, she's working with other 16 year olds. If she goes to church, she's in a youth group and Sunday School with other people her age. My guess is she doesn't have a job during the school year, so she doesn't have exposure through the workplace to non-parent and teacher adults (who are authority figures, and have their own ways of interacting with teens). What a strange universe. The real world features peer relationships across age groups.
One of the reasons the Cristo Rey school model (see the When School Works post) works so well is that it brings teens into adult workplaces, gives them responsibilities, and lets them see that there is something beyond lockers and homeroom. I don't think many schools will adopt that model soon, but parents can use summer vacation to get kids thinking about these same things. One option is to have the kids start a business. The other is to have them work at a corporation or at a university. Volunteer projects that involve people of all ages can also expose them to different ideas about what people "do" with their lives. The point is to get the kids thinking about what they would like to do once their formal education is mostly completed. Because eventually they will have to answer this question. If you just start thinking about the question when your college's career counseling center holds a job fair, you will wind up at one of those companies that sponsors booths at such things. While those may be fine jobs, I don't think many people grew up dreaming about working for Avis or Georgia Pacific. It's hard to land a dream job if you don't think about what that dream job might be.
I'm doing a number of radio interviews in the coming weeks in correlation with my book on the rise in self-employment among young people, Grindhopping. We're talking about the graduation theme of "You Don't Have to Hate Your First Job" (based on a USA Today column I wrote with the same name).
While it's fun to spin the topic this way, career choice is a source of considerable angst for most young people, and for gifted young people -- who have so many options -- in particular. My advice to graduates is to, first, realize that all that education is leading somewhere, so they should spend as much time thinking about what they want to do after school as they do studying for any given exam. And second, ask yourself some key questions, namely 1) what do I love to do so much I'd do it for free and 2) how can I get someone to pay me to do that.
There's no reason this process has to start in college. In fact, I think there's a good case to be made for asking gifted teens to really start thinking about the real world as soon as possible, even though they won't really be living in it, fully, for a long time (See the "Trashing Teens" post, below).
This was driven home to me this weekend, when I had the good fortune to make my Lincoln Center choral debut on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall. I was singing as a ringer with a few high school choruses who were performing Beethoven's Ninth. During rehearsal on Saturday, I was singing next to a young lady from a Long Island high school who asked me how old I was. I told her. "Wow," she says. "You're 28?" "Is that old?" I asked, defensive. "No, she said. It's just crazy. I'm singing next to a 28 year old!" That's when it struck me that this girl had probably never engaged in collaborative projects with adults. At school, she's working with other 16 year olds. If she goes to church, she's in a youth group and Sunday School with other people her age. My guess is she doesn't have a job during the school year, so she doesn't have exposure through the workplace to non-parent and teacher adults (who are authority figures, and have their own ways of interacting with teens). What a strange universe. The real world features peer relationships across age groups.
One of the reasons the Cristo Rey school model (see the When School Works post) works so well is that it brings teens into adult workplaces, gives them responsibilities, and lets them see that there is something beyond lockers and homeroom. I don't think many schools will adopt that model soon, but parents can use summer vacation to get kids thinking about these same things. One option is to have the kids start a business. The other is to have them work at a corporation or at a university. Volunteer projects that involve people of all ages can also expose them to different ideas about what people "do" with their lives. The point is to get the kids thinking about what they would like to do once their formal education is mostly completed. Because eventually they will have to answer this question. If you just start thinking about the question when your college's career counseling center holds a job fair, you will wind up at one of those companies that sponsors booths at such things. While those may be fine jobs, I don't think many people grew up dreaming about working for Avis or Georgia Pacific. It's hard to land a dream job if you don't think about what that dream job might be.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Profoundly Bright and Profoundly Bored
ABC's Nightline featured the Davidson Academy of Reno, NV on Monday night. For those of you who didn't get a chance to see the show live, there's a written version available here.
I've been following the progress of this school since I attended the ribbon cutting last August. Setting up a school is never easy, and the teachers and administrators at the Davidson Academy had to do some quick thinking and reshuffling in order to make sure the kids were getting the education they deserved and the challenges they were able to handle. But as the Nightline story pointed out, they did it. That's the difference between a school that caters to profoundly gifted young people and one that simply does not. Often, kids are told to simply wait for the others to catch up, or that this is the solution that's been decreed for this year, so just deal with it. But as one parent who was homeschooling her gifted kid once told me, what works now is guaranteed not to work in six months.
That's a tricky proposition to create a school around. Schools by their nature are institutions that resist change. So the Davidson Academy's flexibility on this count is encouraging news, even if it has made the first year more of a challenge than many schools deal with.
ABC's Nightline featured the Davidson Academy of Reno, NV on Monday night. For those of you who didn't get a chance to see the show live, there's a written version available here.
I've been following the progress of this school since I attended the ribbon cutting last August. Setting up a school is never easy, and the teachers and administrators at the Davidson Academy had to do some quick thinking and reshuffling in order to make sure the kids were getting the education they deserved and the challenges they were able to handle. But as the Nightline story pointed out, they did it. That's the difference between a school that caters to profoundly gifted young people and one that simply does not. Often, kids are told to simply wait for the others to catch up, or that this is the solution that's been decreed for this year, so just deal with it. But as one parent who was homeschooling her gifted kid once told me, what works now is guaranteed not to work in six months.
That's a tricky proposition to create a school around. Schools by their nature are institutions that resist change. So the Davidson Academy's flexibility on this count is encouraging news, even if it has made the first year more of a challenge than many schools deal with.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Trashing Teens
A recent issue of Psychology Today has a fascinating interview with psychologist Robert Epstein about "the problem with teens." It's not what you think, and it has far-reaching implications for gifted education.
Over the past 100 years, modern societies have succeeded in extending adolescence for years (one survey found Americans don't consider people to be "grown up" until age 26!). As a result, teens are not allowed the responsiblities and freedoms of the adult world until years after they are physically mature enough to be adults. Many of these restrictions are codified into law. Teens have few property rights, for instance, and can't participate in the responsibilities of citizenship. They can't usually set up businesses or borrow money without an adult's supervision. They also can't determine what they'll spend their time doing -- most are warehoused with their age peers into schools for 7 hours a day where they learn what someone else has deemed important (and that someone is often wrong). As a result, a whole teen culture has sprung up which celebrates angst and stupidity, and encourages teens to spend time and money on trivial things. This is true even though in a study Epstein did, which measured 14 areas of adult competence (such as interpersonal skills, and handling responsibility), teens did as well as adults.
I think Epstein is onto something (though I'm not sure he's correct about teens being able to make good marriage choices -- perhaps if all the other restrictions are changed first! Then again, many adults don't make good choices in this area either.) He's speaking about average teens; the situation is much more pronounced for gifted teenagers.
Part of being gifted is the fact that your brain is older than your body. You develop the ability to think abstractly, to analyze and draw new conclusions before your peers. Many gifted children prefer the company of older kids and adults because they speak the same language. When your thoughts are grown up, but you have no responsibilities, no rights, and no say over your life, no wonder it's easy for intelligent teens to become depressed or to act out.
One solution -- for gifted teens, at least -- is to compress basic education into fewer years, so they can start higher education earlier. I've also recommended encouraging kids (all kids, not just gifted ones) to start their own businesses. Figuring out market niches, advertising, profits and all that encourages synthesis across many areas, and gives kids a stake in the adult world. So do opportunities to interact with adults through church or community groups, particularly if these groups undertake real projects like concerts or volunteer work. None of these make adolescence easy, but if Epstein is right, they could certainly make it easier.
A recent issue of Psychology Today has a fascinating interview with psychologist Robert Epstein about "the problem with teens." It's not what you think, and it has far-reaching implications for gifted education.
Over the past 100 years, modern societies have succeeded in extending adolescence for years (one survey found Americans don't consider people to be "grown up" until age 26!). As a result, teens are not allowed the responsiblities and freedoms of the adult world until years after they are physically mature enough to be adults. Many of these restrictions are codified into law. Teens have few property rights, for instance, and can't participate in the responsibilities of citizenship. They can't usually set up businesses or borrow money without an adult's supervision. They also can't determine what they'll spend their time doing -- most are warehoused with their age peers into schools for 7 hours a day where they learn what someone else has deemed important (and that someone is often wrong). As a result, a whole teen culture has sprung up which celebrates angst and stupidity, and encourages teens to spend time and money on trivial things. This is true even though in a study Epstein did, which measured 14 areas of adult competence (such as interpersonal skills, and handling responsibility), teens did as well as adults.
I think Epstein is onto something (though I'm not sure he's correct about teens being able to make good marriage choices -- perhaps if all the other restrictions are changed first! Then again, many adults don't make good choices in this area either.) He's speaking about average teens; the situation is much more pronounced for gifted teenagers.
Part of being gifted is the fact that your brain is older than your body. You develop the ability to think abstractly, to analyze and draw new conclusions before your peers. Many gifted children prefer the company of older kids and adults because they speak the same language. When your thoughts are grown up, but you have no responsibilities, no rights, and no say over your life, no wonder it's easy for intelligent teens to become depressed or to act out.
One solution -- for gifted teens, at least -- is to compress basic education into fewer years, so they can start higher education earlier. I've also recommended encouraging kids (all kids, not just gifted ones) to start their own businesses. Figuring out market niches, advertising, profits and all that encourages synthesis across many areas, and gives kids a stake in the adult world. So do opportunities to interact with adults through church or community groups, particularly if these groups undertake real projects like concerts or volunteer work. None of these make adolescence easy, but if Epstein is right, they could certainly make it easier.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Choosing Secondary Schools
One of the most common questions I get from readers of this blog is "which school is best for my gifted child?" It's a question that's hard to answer, even if money and location don't matter (and they do tend to matter for most of us). Different children have different learning styles. A Montessori education might delight a free-spirited child, but frustrate one who needs more structure.
That said, I've come across two lists of "good" schools for gifted kids recently that can serve as good starting points. The first is the broad Newsweek list of the 1200 best high schools in the US. (Follow the links from this page for the list and related articles). Dallas's School for the Talented and Gifted came out in the top spot, with Dallas's School of Science and Engineering coming in at number two. So if location is truly negotiable, Dallas might be worth checking out. It's also worth noting that Newsweek purposefully excluded selective schools like the Illinois Math and Science Academy and Bronx Science from consideration for reasons that aren't entirely clear; the magazine published a list of these excluded schools (link from the same main page). These are all good options.
The second list comes from the Malone Family Foundation, a non-profit that makes grants to support gifted education. The Foundation adds three independent secondary schools to its list of "good schools" each year, and bequeaths a large enough chunk of change to these schools to endow scholarships for gifted kids. Since the schools have to undergo a certain vetting to get on the list, most of these are pretty good options for secondary school kids as well.
If anyone reading this is going through the school selection process right now, I'd love to hear how you're making your decision.
One of the most common questions I get from readers of this blog is "which school is best for my gifted child?" It's a question that's hard to answer, even if money and location don't matter (and they do tend to matter for most of us). Different children have different learning styles. A Montessori education might delight a free-spirited child, but frustrate one who needs more structure.
That said, I've come across two lists of "good" schools for gifted kids recently that can serve as good starting points. The first is the broad Newsweek list of the 1200 best high schools in the US. (Follow the links from this page for the list and related articles). Dallas's School for the Talented and Gifted came out in the top spot, with Dallas's School of Science and Engineering coming in at number two. So if location is truly negotiable, Dallas might be worth checking out. It's also worth noting that Newsweek purposefully excluded selective schools like the Illinois Math and Science Academy and Bronx Science from consideration for reasons that aren't entirely clear; the magazine published a list of these excluded schools (link from the same main page). These are all good options.
The second list comes from the Malone Family Foundation, a non-profit that makes grants to support gifted education. The Foundation adds three independent secondary schools to its list of "good schools" each year, and bequeaths a large enough chunk of change to these schools to endow scholarships for gifted kids. Since the schools have to undergo a certain vetting to get on the list, most of these are pretty good options for secondary school kids as well.
If anyone reading this is going through the school selection process right now, I'd love to hear how you're making your decision.
Friday, May 25, 2007
How to Fix No Child Left Behind
Time magazine has a cover story this coming week on the problems and promise of NCLB five years in. First the good news. A number of high-poverty, low-performing schools are indeed doing better on reading and math tests. When it becomes public knowledge that only 10% of kids at a school score at grade level on these tests, most people find that fairly embarassing -- and they do something about it.
The bad news is that sometimes the things they do are not exactly going to help America's competitiveness in the global economy. As Time points out, states can choose their own standards test, and some, such as Mississippi, have chosen to make the tests so easy that they're meaningless. A surprising number of schools simply cheat. Others adopt drill and kill approaches and get rid of all curriculum that doesn't appear on the tests (science, history, art, music, etc.)
And then, of interest to readers of this blog, there's the perception of neglect of kids who will definitely pass the standards tests. The opening anecdote of the Time article describes a school focusing on a batch of kids with borderline scores. Maybe they'll pass, maybe they won't, so the school throws time and resources at pushing them over the bar. But what about the kids who are already over the bar? I haven't been able to find a lot of stories of schools actually getting rid of gifted education because of NCLB, but certainly many people feel it's no longer a priority. The same criticism of NCLB, incidentally, can be made on the other end of the spectrum. A child who is reading four grades below his age level can improve to one grade below, but still may not pass the test. In the NCLB world, this improvement is meaningless.
One of the best proposed reforms is to put the focus on individual student growth. As Sec. of Education Margaret Spellings points out, the data bases necessary to achieve that would be complex. But the idea is that schools would need to show adequate yearly progress for individual students. A gifted child who wasn't learning would suddenly be a problem for the school (well, provided the test was hard enough-- a national set of standards might improve the picture).
It's anyone's guess how much NCLB will be reformed. I don't think it's a big priority in Congress right now, and given the small percentage of education funding the federal government provides, states may rebel over too much meddling. In general, acountability is a good thing, so I'm hoping NCLB can be done right. I'm not too optimistic it will be, though.
Time magazine has a cover story this coming week on the problems and promise of NCLB five years in. First the good news. A number of high-poverty, low-performing schools are indeed doing better on reading and math tests. When it becomes public knowledge that only 10% of kids at a school score at grade level on these tests, most people find that fairly embarassing -- and they do something about it.
The bad news is that sometimes the things they do are not exactly going to help America's competitiveness in the global economy. As Time points out, states can choose their own standards test, and some, such as Mississippi, have chosen to make the tests so easy that they're meaningless. A surprising number of schools simply cheat. Others adopt drill and kill approaches and get rid of all curriculum that doesn't appear on the tests (science, history, art, music, etc.)
And then, of interest to readers of this blog, there's the perception of neglect of kids who will definitely pass the standards tests. The opening anecdote of the Time article describes a school focusing on a batch of kids with borderline scores. Maybe they'll pass, maybe they won't, so the school throws time and resources at pushing them over the bar. But what about the kids who are already over the bar? I haven't been able to find a lot of stories of schools actually getting rid of gifted education because of NCLB, but certainly many people feel it's no longer a priority. The same criticism of NCLB, incidentally, can be made on the other end of the spectrum. A child who is reading four grades below his age level can improve to one grade below, but still may not pass the test. In the NCLB world, this improvement is meaningless.
One of the best proposed reforms is to put the focus on individual student growth. As Sec. of Education Margaret Spellings points out, the data bases necessary to achieve that would be complex. But the idea is that schools would need to show adequate yearly progress for individual students. A gifted child who wasn't learning would suddenly be a problem for the school (well, provided the test was hard enough-- a national set of standards might improve the picture).
It's anyone's guess how much NCLB will be reformed. I don't think it's a big priority in Congress right now, and given the small percentage of education funding the federal government provides, states may rebel over too much meddling. In general, acountability is a good thing, so I'm hoping NCLB can be done right. I'm not too optimistic it will be, though.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Research Partnership on Gifted Education
The Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, and the Davidson Institute for Talent Development just announced that they would be working together to research highly gifted children. Some of the proposed projects actually look at the questions we've been talking about on this blog, namely, the problem of measuring potential.
As Nicholas Colangelo of the University of Iowa points out in the press release, there is very little research in this area. Decades ago, Louis Terman started a longitudinal study of children who'd scored very high on IQ tests. Like many researchers in this field, Terman assumed he was tracking the future movers and shakers of this country. Certainly, most of his subjects did very well in life. But his study missed some of the highest achievers from that age group (i.e., people you would have heard of, Nobel Prize winners, etc.). Similarly, the Glamour Top Ten College Women contest has missed almost every high-achieving woman you would have heard of who's lived in the United States over the past five decades. You can look at high-achievers and try to trace back to things that made them great. But it is very, very difficult to look at a group of kids and figure out who has the most potential to advance the culture, science, the economy, or what have you.
I liken this to magazine diet stories (stay with me here). You can read dozens of success stories in any given publication. But last year, Redbook tried an interesting experiment of following three women as they attempted to lose weight over a 12 month period. The women had access to nutritionists, trainers, etc. Only one of the three lost more than a few pounds. Why did she succeed where the others failed? Similar columns in Shape and other magazines have encountered this exact same problem. You can screen hundreds of applicants, but it is very difficult to measure motivation, gumption, discipline, drive -- whatever you want to call it. Some people simply will not let themselves fail, be it at becoming healthier or doing scientific research. It's hard to move the needle in any field. People who do tend to have that certain moxie.
Hopefully this research will, long-term, help supply the answers. Colangelo states that he thinks the Davidson Fellows in particular will show up more on the radar screen in future years than Terman's kids, because their awards are based on actual accomplishments, not just a test score. I think there's something to that. Hopefully this blog will be able to report on lots of research updates over the next few years.
By the way, thanks for all your kind wishes on the baby! We're all doing great.
The Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, and the Davidson Institute for Talent Development just announced that they would be working together to research highly gifted children. Some of the proposed projects actually look at the questions we've been talking about on this blog, namely, the problem of measuring potential.
As Nicholas Colangelo of the University of Iowa points out in the press release, there is very little research in this area. Decades ago, Louis Terman started a longitudinal study of children who'd scored very high on IQ tests. Like many researchers in this field, Terman assumed he was tracking the future movers and shakers of this country. Certainly, most of his subjects did very well in life. But his study missed some of the highest achievers from that age group (i.e., people you would have heard of, Nobel Prize winners, etc.). Similarly, the Glamour Top Ten College Women contest has missed almost every high-achieving woman you would have heard of who's lived in the United States over the past five decades. You can look at high-achievers and try to trace back to things that made them great. But it is very, very difficult to look at a group of kids and figure out who has the most potential to advance the culture, science, the economy, or what have you.
I liken this to magazine diet stories (stay with me here). You can read dozens of success stories in any given publication. But last year, Redbook tried an interesting experiment of following three women as they attempted to lose weight over a 12 month period. The women had access to nutritionists, trainers, etc. Only one of the three lost more than a few pounds. Why did she succeed where the others failed? Similar columns in Shape and other magazines have encountered this exact same problem. You can screen hundreds of applicants, but it is very difficult to measure motivation, gumption, discipline, drive -- whatever you want to call it. Some people simply will not let themselves fail, be it at becoming healthier or doing scientific research. It's hard to move the needle in any field. People who do tend to have that certain moxie.
Hopefully this research will, long-term, help supply the answers. Colangelo states that he thinks the Davidson Fellows in particular will show up more on the radar screen in future years than Terman's kids, because their awards are based on actual accomplishments, not just a test score. I think there's something to that. Hopefully this blog will be able to report on lots of research updates over the next few years.
By the way, thanks for all your kind wishes on the baby! We're all doing great.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Big News!
I'm happy to announce that my husband and I welcomed little Jasper Vanderkam Conway into the world at 2:15am on Wednesday morning. He was 7lbs 8oz, is very alert, and loves taking in the world around him. I'm attaching a photo of the little guy to this post. We are home from the hospital and enjoying getting to know each other. And sleeping on occasion!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
When School Works
From time to time, I like to share news about educational innovations with readers of this blog. One of the more interesting ones I've come across lately is the Cristo Rey network of schools.
Started in Chicago a few years ago, this network of college prep Catholic schools has a mission to serve the urban poor. Indeed, in most Cristo Rey schools, 80% of kids qualify for free or reduced lunch. The majority are black or Hispanic. Students receive a rigorous education and are expected to pursue college afterwards. Across the network of a dozen Cristo Rey schools, more than 90% of graduates go on to 2- or 4-year colleges.
There's nothing too crazy about this; Catholic schools have long provided a quality education to inner city kids. But over the past few years a number of urban Catholic schools have closed. For various reasons, archdioceses have run low on funds, and with fewer nuns and priests willing to teach for cheap, Catholic schools have had to pay salaries to lay people that are closer to public school salaries. That means they have to find donors or raise tuition. Raising tuition is seldom an option when a big proportion of your student body lives close to the poverty line, and even middle class families worried about college costs may be loathe to absorb big cost increases. But fundraising is expensive and time-consuming too.
So how do you develop an urban Catholic education model that's sustainable? Enter Fr. John Foley, a Jesuit priest. A few years ago he wanted to start a high school in Chicago, and he asked a management consultant friend to brainstorm funding ideas. The one they hit upon? Have the kids "work off" their tuition by apprenticing with area businesses. Basically, for about $25,000 a year paid to the Cristo Rey school, a company gets a full time equivalent worker in return. This comes in the form of a four student team. Each student works one day a week for the company doing something clerical or entry-level (and 2 days a week one day a month). Students spend the first 3 weeks of their freshmen year in a career bootcamp learning to shake hands, answer the phone, use computers, etc. Then the school matches them with a job that tempts their interests.
Since one of the big problems with high school is how unconnected it feels to the real world, this model has been a big hit. Kids at the Chicago Cristo Rey school would show up at downtown skyscrapers and find desks waiting for them. How cool is that? They'd bring their parents to see the buildings on weekends. Many had never been to the Loop before. Businesses that employ Cristo Rey kids like having these young people around, and Cristo Rey schools have to do very little fundraising.
Not that they're not attracting funds. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given several million dollars to the Cristo Rey network to help open seven new schools this fall, including in Newark, NJ. The Foundation is interested in learning if the model can be replicated broadly. I'm not sure how much of the schools' success is related to their Catholic nature, and how much is related to their rigor and career focus, but anything that helps bright kids from tough backgrounds see a world beyond their neighborhoods is worth praising.
From time to time, I like to share news about educational innovations with readers of this blog. One of the more interesting ones I've come across lately is the Cristo Rey network of schools.
Started in Chicago a few years ago, this network of college prep Catholic schools has a mission to serve the urban poor. Indeed, in most Cristo Rey schools, 80% of kids qualify for free or reduced lunch. The majority are black or Hispanic. Students receive a rigorous education and are expected to pursue college afterwards. Across the network of a dozen Cristo Rey schools, more than 90% of graduates go on to 2- or 4-year colleges.
There's nothing too crazy about this; Catholic schools have long provided a quality education to inner city kids. But over the past few years a number of urban Catholic schools have closed. For various reasons, archdioceses have run low on funds, and with fewer nuns and priests willing to teach for cheap, Catholic schools have had to pay salaries to lay people that are closer to public school salaries. That means they have to find donors or raise tuition. Raising tuition is seldom an option when a big proportion of your student body lives close to the poverty line, and even middle class families worried about college costs may be loathe to absorb big cost increases. But fundraising is expensive and time-consuming too.
So how do you develop an urban Catholic education model that's sustainable? Enter Fr. John Foley, a Jesuit priest. A few years ago he wanted to start a high school in Chicago, and he asked a management consultant friend to brainstorm funding ideas. The one they hit upon? Have the kids "work off" their tuition by apprenticing with area businesses. Basically, for about $25,000 a year paid to the Cristo Rey school, a company gets a full time equivalent worker in return. This comes in the form of a four student team. Each student works one day a week for the company doing something clerical or entry-level (and 2 days a week one day a month). Students spend the first 3 weeks of their freshmen year in a career bootcamp learning to shake hands, answer the phone, use computers, etc. Then the school matches them with a job that tempts their interests.
Since one of the big problems with high school is how unconnected it feels to the real world, this model has been a big hit. Kids at the Chicago Cristo Rey school would show up at downtown skyscrapers and find desks waiting for them. How cool is that? They'd bring their parents to see the buildings on weekends. Many had never been to the Loop before. Businesses that employ Cristo Rey kids like having these young people around, and Cristo Rey schools have to do very little fundraising.
Not that they're not attracting funds. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given several million dollars to the Cristo Rey network to help open seven new schools this fall, including in Newark, NJ. The Foundation is interested in learning if the model can be replicated broadly. I'm not sure how much of the schools' success is related to their Catholic nature, and how much is related to their rigor and career focus, but anything that helps bright kids from tough backgrounds see a world beyond their neighborhoods is worth praising.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
On Not Going to Harvard
I read a fascinating essay in the New York Times' parenting section last week on being Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard. The author, Michael Winerip, is a Harvard alum who does admissions interviews for that illustrious institution. He lives on Long Island, where the number of wealthy families hoping to give their kids any advantage in life is high. Out of 40 interviews he's done, he says, only one student has actually been accepted by his alma mater. So as he meets these highly accomplished young people, and talks to them, the thought that keeps going through his head is "Another amazing kid who won't get into Harvard."
The kids certainly do sound amazing. They've scored 5s on innumerable AP tests. They've done original research for science experiments (Winerip's school science experiments, he notes, involved plants in shoeboxes). They've traveled amazing places, often for charitable reasons. They are polished. They have Googled him. They write nice thank you notes.
Winerip writes, wistfully, that the stats that were good enough to get him into Harvard in the 1970's would be scoffed at now. Maybe. But I can't help think there's more to it than that. I can Google as well; I've learned in a quick search that the author is a man from a blue collar Massachusetts background who's won a Pulitzer for his writing in the Times, is a published novelist, etc. Perhaps the admissions committee saw in him a spark of ambition that Harvard could truly help, by giving this local boy an entrance into the elite world that he then wound up writing about for the next 30 years. The upper middle class (OK, let's not mince words, upper class) kids Winerip interviews now have a million routes to success available to them. Perhaps schools like Harvard don't like to perceive themselves as just another feather in a kid's cap.
But I don't know. I do know that even as recently as 10 years ago, Harvard was still open to not-terribly-polished kids -- like myself. Maybe it helps to be from Indiana, not Long Island. The admissions committee called a high school teacher of mine (in whose class I earned a "C") to figure out what had happened. The teacher said he wasn't sure, but I'd done much better in another class I'd taken with him later on. That apparently satisfied the committee enough to accept me (I didn't wind up going, but that's a different story).
Maybe everything has changed in 10 years, but I doubt it. The New York Times magazine did a cover story in 1996 about four near-perfect seniors at one elite high school who applied to Harvard that year. Only one got in. Winerip refers to recent "tragic" stories that recount the same odds. These tragic stores have been going on for awhile. I think he's even written some. Maybe in a sea of perfect applicants, it helps to be the kid who signs your own check for the application fee, who wrote your essays during your smoke breaks in the Fazoli's Italian Restaurant parking lot, whose transcript contains a few consonents, etc.
But what I found most interesting was his observation that "I see these kids -- and watch my own applying to college -- and as evolved as they are, I wouldn't change places with them for anything. They're under such pressure." As some readers of this blog know, I am expecting a baby any day (in fact, today is my due date; the kid is taking his sweet time). My kid is likely to grow up someplace where the ambition to go to Harvard is not uncommon. I will probably choose schools for him where kids can take 10 AP classes and will likely score 5s on all of them. Perhaps it will even be a school where, as Winerip recounts, a statistician is on hand to help run the numbers on kids' science experiments (OK, maybe not -- I hope I'd make the kid learn statistics on his own and run the numbers!). My husband and I are not unfamiliar with the ways of marketing; we could probably help the kid figure out some great story of why he should be admitted to all the top schools.
But the trade-off when everything is there for the easy taking is that you sometimes lack the spark that pushed one incredibly literary kid in Quincy, Massachusetts to apply to Harvard in the 1970's. One of the sweetest things in life is to want something so badly that little else matters, to throw yourself into working for it, and then finally to achieve it. Even better: to know you achieved it on your own. In that sense, I can see why Winerip wouldn't want to change places with the kids he's interviewing. It's hard to recreate that joy.
I read a fascinating essay in the New York Times' parenting section last week on being Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard. The author, Michael Winerip, is a Harvard alum who does admissions interviews for that illustrious institution. He lives on Long Island, where the number of wealthy families hoping to give their kids any advantage in life is high. Out of 40 interviews he's done, he says, only one student has actually been accepted by his alma mater. So as he meets these highly accomplished young people, and talks to them, the thought that keeps going through his head is "Another amazing kid who won't get into Harvard."
The kids certainly do sound amazing. They've scored 5s on innumerable AP tests. They've done original research for science experiments (Winerip's school science experiments, he notes, involved plants in shoeboxes). They've traveled amazing places, often for charitable reasons. They are polished. They have Googled him. They write nice thank you notes.
Winerip writes, wistfully, that the stats that were good enough to get him into Harvard in the 1970's would be scoffed at now. Maybe. But I can't help think there's more to it than that. I can Google as well; I've learned in a quick search that the author is a man from a blue collar Massachusetts background who's won a Pulitzer for his writing in the Times, is a published novelist, etc. Perhaps the admissions committee saw in him a spark of ambition that Harvard could truly help, by giving this local boy an entrance into the elite world that he then wound up writing about for the next 30 years. The upper middle class (OK, let's not mince words, upper class) kids Winerip interviews now have a million routes to success available to them. Perhaps schools like Harvard don't like to perceive themselves as just another feather in a kid's cap.
But I don't know. I do know that even as recently as 10 years ago, Harvard was still open to not-terribly-polished kids -- like myself. Maybe it helps to be from Indiana, not Long Island. The admissions committee called a high school teacher of mine (in whose class I earned a "C") to figure out what had happened. The teacher said he wasn't sure, but I'd done much better in another class I'd taken with him later on. That apparently satisfied the committee enough to accept me (I didn't wind up going, but that's a different story).
Maybe everything has changed in 10 years, but I doubt it. The New York Times magazine did a cover story in 1996 about four near-perfect seniors at one elite high school who applied to Harvard that year. Only one got in. Winerip refers to recent "tragic" stories that recount the same odds. These tragic stores have been going on for awhile. I think he's even written some. Maybe in a sea of perfect applicants, it helps to be the kid who signs your own check for the application fee, who wrote your essays during your smoke breaks in the Fazoli's Italian Restaurant parking lot, whose transcript contains a few consonents, etc.
But what I found most interesting was his observation that "I see these kids -- and watch my own applying to college -- and as evolved as they are, I wouldn't change places with them for anything. They're under such pressure." As some readers of this blog know, I am expecting a baby any day (in fact, today is my due date; the kid is taking his sweet time). My kid is likely to grow up someplace where the ambition to go to Harvard is not uncommon. I will probably choose schools for him where kids can take 10 AP classes and will likely score 5s on all of them. Perhaps it will even be a school where, as Winerip recounts, a statistician is on hand to help run the numbers on kids' science experiments (OK, maybe not -- I hope I'd make the kid learn statistics on his own and run the numbers!). My husband and I are not unfamiliar with the ways of marketing; we could probably help the kid figure out some great story of why he should be admitted to all the top schools.
But the trade-off when everything is there for the easy taking is that you sometimes lack the spark that pushed one incredibly literary kid in Quincy, Massachusetts to apply to Harvard in the 1970's. One of the sweetest things in life is to want something so badly that little else matters, to throw yourself into working for it, and then finally to achieve it. Even better: to know you achieved it on your own. In that sense, I can see why Winerip wouldn't want to change places with the kids he's interviewing. It's hard to recreate that joy.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Glamour's Top Ten College Women of the Year
The June 2007 issue of Glamour lists both the 2007 winners of the magazine's annual Top Ten College Women of the Year, and looks at winners from the past 50 years. The contest began as the "Top 10 Best-Dressed College Girls in America" in 1957 and mercifully evolved into an academic and leadership competition by the 1970's.
Regular readers of this blog know I'm a little wary of lists like this that purport to show who will be the movers and shakers of the next few decades. The young women Glamour chose are obviously very accomplished -- there are budding researchers, activists, musicians, etc. -- but potential is a tough thing to measure. So magazine and newspaper lists like these (USA Today also puts out a All USA Academic team list each year) give special weight to good stories.
On this year's Glamour list, there is, for example, a young woman with chronic asthma who lobbies to ban smoking indoors. She says her goal is to be the director-general of the World Health Organization. That's an interesting goal, since the WHO is part of the UN, and it's generally understood that people from the most powerful or controversial member countries (ie, the US) won't be heading up some of the major UN agencies like the WHO. These positions tend to be allocated politically to "uncontroversial" countries such as Norway, South Korea, Sweden, etc. Even Margaret Chan, the current DG, who's from China, was quite controversial. I'm not saying it will never happen, but if this young woman becomes the future DG, she won't be chosen for it on the same merits that she was chosen for the Glamour list (ie, being bright, optimistic, and having a good story).
Herein lies the problem of these lists. The same skills that get you noticed in the college application game, and the college award game, are not the same skills that get you noticed in the career game. Credentials matter less. Who you know matters a lot more. So does luck and timing. Our anti-smoking crusader could have the perfect credentials to be DG, but if South Korea is "owed" a major UN agency position, and then the person sticks around until our anti-smoking crusader is perceived as too old, she will not land the job. She can, of course, make a difference in the world of public health. But to do so, she will probably have to do something more entrepreneurial, like scale up her anti-smoking activities overseas. Will she do that when there aren't any major awards to win for doing so?
Indeed, the people you've heard of on these lists have often wound up doing entrepreneurial things. For instance, Martha Stewart was on the Glamour list in 1961 -- though she was actually the 11th girl chosen. One of the top 10 did something bad and was booted from the list. Stewart took her place. It is highly unlikely that the first has accomplished nearly as much as Stewart. People who take the time and effort to nominate themselves for these lists and complete the paper work and figure out what it takes to catch the judges' eyes care a lot about credentials and how other people perceive them. Entrepreneurial types do not. Credentialists often try to work their way up institutions, which can be incredibly frustrating and political. It often doesn't work, which is why you've not heard of most of the Top 10 College Women over the years. They become things like "assistant dean at Arizona State University" (as a winner from 1968 did).
Because of this bias toward credentialism, it's amazing when you think about some of the incredible women Glamour's Top 10 College Women list has missed. Since the list has been around for 50 years, pretty much any woman in any major leadership position you can think of (who's under 70 years old) wasn't on the list. Granted, it wasn't fully academic/leadership oriented until the 1970's, but that means any woman in a leadership role who's under age 57 was also missed. I find it fascinating that the assistant dean of Arizona State University made the list, but the female presidents of Harvard (incoming) and Princeton (current) did not. Perhaps our Arizona dean has better credentials, or is even smarter than the other two. I don't know. But she wasn't in the right place at the right time. Oprah Winfrey did not make the list. My guess is that she was too busy actually building her career as a television journalist when she was in college to care about such things.
I'm happy that these lists exist, because I think it's great to give attention to bright, ambitious young people, particularly in magazines that often spend a lot of time talking about how to tone your thighs or spend $300 on a blouse. But no one has yet come up with a great methodology for measuring potential, which is something to keep in mind while reading these lists.
The June 2007 issue of Glamour lists both the 2007 winners of the magazine's annual Top Ten College Women of the Year, and looks at winners from the past 50 years. The contest began as the "Top 10 Best-Dressed College Girls in America" in 1957 and mercifully evolved into an academic and leadership competition by the 1970's.
Regular readers of this blog know I'm a little wary of lists like this that purport to show who will be the movers and shakers of the next few decades. The young women Glamour chose are obviously very accomplished -- there are budding researchers, activists, musicians, etc. -- but potential is a tough thing to measure. So magazine and newspaper lists like these (USA Today also puts out a All USA Academic team list each year) give special weight to good stories.
On this year's Glamour list, there is, for example, a young woman with chronic asthma who lobbies to ban smoking indoors. She says her goal is to be the director-general of the World Health Organization. That's an interesting goal, since the WHO is part of the UN, and it's generally understood that people from the most powerful or controversial member countries (ie, the US) won't be heading up some of the major UN agencies like the WHO. These positions tend to be allocated politically to "uncontroversial" countries such as Norway, South Korea, Sweden, etc. Even Margaret Chan, the current DG, who's from China, was quite controversial. I'm not saying it will never happen, but if this young woman becomes the future DG, she won't be chosen for it on the same merits that she was chosen for the Glamour list (ie, being bright, optimistic, and having a good story).
Herein lies the problem of these lists. The same skills that get you noticed in the college application game, and the college award game, are not the same skills that get you noticed in the career game. Credentials matter less. Who you know matters a lot more. So does luck and timing. Our anti-smoking crusader could have the perfect credentials to be DG, but if South Korea is "owed" a major UN agency position, and then the person sticks around until our anti-smoking crusader is perceived as too old, she will not land the job. She can, of course, make a difference in the world of public health. But to do so, she will probably have to do something more entrepreneurial, like scale up her anti-smoking activities overseas. Will she do that when there aren't any major awards to win for doing so?
Indeed, the people you've heard of on these lists have often wound up doing entrepreneurial things. For instance, Martha Stewart was on the Glamour list in 1961 -- though she was actually the 11th girl chosen. One of the top 10 did something bad and was booted from the list. Stewart took her place. It is highly unlikely that the first has accomplished nearly as much as Stewart. People who take the time and effort to nominate themselves for these lists and complete the paper work and figure out what it takes to catch the judges' eyes care a lot about credentials and how other people perceive them. Entrepreneurial types do not. Credentialists often try to work their way up institutions, which can be incredibly frustrating and political. It often doesn't work, which is why you've not heard of most of the Top 10 College Women over the years. They become things like "assistant dean at Arizona State University" (as a winner from 1968 did).
Because of this bias toward credentialism, it's amazing when you think about some of the incredible women Glamour's Top 10 College Women list has missed. Since the list has been around for 50 years, pretty much any woman in any major leadership position you can think of (who's under 70 years old) wasn't on the list. Granted, it wasn't fully academic/leadership oriented until the 1970's, but that means any woman in a leadership role who's under age 57 was also missed. I find it fascinating that the assistant dean of Arizona State University made the list, but the female presidents of Harvard (incoming) and Princeton (current) did not. Perhaps our Arizona dean has better credentials, or is even smarter than the other two. I don't know. But she wasn't in the right place at the right time. Oprah Winfrey did not make the list. My guess is that she was too busy actually building her career as a television journalist when she was in college to care about such things.
I'm happy that these lists exist, because I think it's great to give attention to bright, ambitious young people, particularly in magazines that often spend a lot of time talking about how to tone your thighs or spend $300 on a blouse. But no one has yet come up with a great methodology for measuring potential, which is something to keep in mind while reading these lists.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Prufrock Press
EdNews.org recently published an interview with Joel McIntosh, publisher of Prufrock Press. Started in 1988, Prufrock is one of the biggest houses devoted to books and journals on gifted children. If you've ordered teaching materials for gifted kids or books on parenting them (such as James Delisle's books), you've heard of this house. You can access the article here.
He has a few interesting points. First, countering the general trend of putting down "pushy parents," McIntosh says that parents need to advocate for gifted children more than ever before. I don't quite share his view on No Child Left Behind being so awful (in general, accountability is a good thing), though I agree that what gets measured gets attention, and so gifted children tend to be ignored in schools that are worried about falling close to the line on showing adequate yearly progress. In such an environment, parents who want their kids to receive a challenging education have to step up to the plate to help make that happen.
The other interesting tidbit is where the name "Prufrock" comes from. Apparently, it takes its name from a T.S. Elliot poem called The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Although I'd heard some of the lines from this poem before ("Do I dare to eat a peach?") I don't think I'd sat down and read the whole thing. It was an enjoyable experience, and I recommend it! In the poem, Mr. Prufrock frets about no one understanding him. "Do I dare disturb the universe?" he asks. This poem appealed to McIntosh, because he thought this experience of thinking no one understands you, that the universe is absurd ("I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me") is pretty common for gifted kids. It is. That's why Kurt Vonnegut is always such a favorite writer among adolescents who actually think. And so McIntosh's publishing house became Prufrock Press.
EdNews.org recently published an interview with Joel McIntosh, publisher of Prufrock Press. Started in 1988, Prufrock is one of the biggest houses devoted to books and journals on gifted children. If you've ordered teaching materials for gifted kids or books on parenting them (such as James Delisle's books), you've heard of this house. You can access the article here.
He has a few interesting points. First, countering the general trend of putting down "pushy parents," McIntosh says that parents need to advocate for gifted children more than ever before. I don't quite share his view on No Child Left Behind being so awful (in general, accountability is a good thing), though I agree that what gets measured gets attention, and so gifted children tend to be ignored in schools that are worried about falling close to the line on showing adequate yearly progress. In such an environment, parents who want their kids to receive a challenging education have to step up to the plate to help make that happen.
The other interesting tidbit is where the name "Prufrock" comes from. Apparently, it takes its name from a T.S. Elliot poem called The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Although I'd heard some of the lines from this poem before ("Do I dare to eat a peach?") I don't think I'd sat down and read the whole thing. It was an enjoyable experience, and I recommend it! In the poem, Mr. Prufrock frets about no one understanding him. "Do I dare disturb the universe?" he asks. This poem appealed to McIntosh, because he thought this experience of thinking no one understands you, that the universe is absurd ("I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me") is pretty common for gifted kids. It is. That's why Kurt Vonnegut is always such a favorite writer among adolescents who actually think. And so McIntosh's publishing house became Prufrock Press.
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