Packaging Boyhood

While I've never been particularly girly, I'm sure that my childhood was shaped by my gender. That's something I'm thinking about now as I find myself raising a household of boys. What can I expect? What will be different? What influences boys and affects their character? We're still in the Elmo and Thomas the Train stage in my house, but I know that tough pop culture messages seep in more quickly than parents often realize.

So I was intrigued when I received a copy of Drs. Lyn Mikel Brown, Sharon Lamb and Mark Tappan's Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons From Superheroes, Slackers, and Other Media Stereotypes. The book documents "the narrow version of boyhood that is sold to our sons"-- a version that involves violence, being aloof and non-emotional, not caring about academic achievement, and often disrespecting women, or at least not seeing them as partners in this adventure called life.

I had interviewed Lamb, a professor of mental health at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, about girls and media in the past because she previously co-authored a book called Packaging Girlhood. She agreed to join us here at Gifted Exchange for a short Q&A.

Gifted Exchange: You (well, 2 of 3 of you...) wrote Packaging Girlhood before Packaging Boyhood. Is it tougher to raise girls or boys these days, or is that the wrong question to be asking?

Lamb: Thanks for mentioning that it might be the wrong answer. We are so trying to get away from 'battle of the sexes' and even though you're not really going down that lane, it's close enough. It's hard to raise kids and I find raising boys has particular challenges related to the kinds of stuff being thrown at them about what it means to be a boy or man in this society.

GE: Why do media messages aimed at young children enforce such strict gender segregation? And given that society is becoming more tolerant, why is the "sissy" label still so potent?

Lab: I think that there are a couple of reasons for the segregation. It's easier to sell to a stereotype than to a bunch of unique kids... And think about who are the people creating most media? White guys is my guess... But we all live in a world where these stereotypes abound. It's not like the creators of media start from scratch; they look around with no concern about gender stereotypes and write what they see. If we could work with these producers to be alert to the stereotypes and the harmful effects, they might write/produce differently. Re: the sissy label. It's homophobia -- and it still exists. Plain and simple.

GE: While there are plenty of slackers (and violence), at least many of the TV shows targeted at boys show the main character taking action to solve problems -- something many of us wish there was more of in girls' entertainment. Why should parents still be cautious about these messages?

Lamb: What kind of action? Sure it's a problem in girls' media that they too often are spectators... and yes boys get action. And solve problems. But with what emotional involvement? Do they have to solve these alone? Do they get friends? Can they rely on their parents? Are they allowed moments of desperation and sadness? Is the solution a solution that gets revenge? Those are the things to consider.

GE: Little girls are the target of increasingly sexualized messages from marketers. Did your research find this is starting to happen to boys, too?

Lamb: I don't think as much. But boys are being sexualized to be the ones that reinforce, call for, and celebrate the sexualization of girls as a form of bonding or to enhance their image as players... The sexualization of boys comes in the form of their not having a range of options of ways of being sexual. They can only be gung ho 24/7 and never have complex romantic feelings that might lead them to back away at times rather than "go for it."

GE: What advice would you give parents of highly gifted boys-- who sometimes behave like children and sometimes like adults -- about talking about media messages? How do you start these conversations? Why should you have them?

Lamb: Gifted boys will be great at deconstructing media messages and sharing this with their friends. The best thing for them to know, though, is that they are not immune. They may think because they're smart that they are able to fight the stereotypes and media messages in ads and such. But research shows that when people think they are most immune, they are most vulnerable to picking up these messages. Watch and listen with him, and have good conversations about what he enjoys as well as what he sees. Tell him it's okay to enjoy this stuff some times, as long as you don't let your guard down in terms of the really damaging stuff. Lyn, Mark and I are fans of some really stupid TV shows... what can we say? When some damaging stuff comes on, we get on email and deconstruct it. Sometimes we even complain to the shows!

Dual enrollment

Many gifted young people are ready for college-level work before they officially graduate from high school. When they enroll in college courses at the same time they attend high school classes, this is called "dual enrollment" and, according to this recent article in the Omaha World-Herald, the practice is catching on. At least four districts in the Omaha area, the paper notes, are planning dual enrollment programs.

Of course, if this conjures up images of kids actually going to college campuses, that appears not to be the case in Omaha. Local colleges contract with high school teachers, approve a syllabus, and the teachers teach at the high school itself. So on some level, one could just call this more rigorous high school classes... which (unlike, for instance, AP classes) students have to pay for by the credit hour.

On the other hand, they don't have to pay much, and they do get college credit. Since college isn't cheap these days, this means students who enroll in local colleges can save some serious money on tuition (a point the particular reporter who wrote this piece seems mildly obsessed with). Even those who don't will probably benefit from more challenging coursework. So, on the whole, if this is catching on, I think it's a positive development.

A good idea out of India... and the NAEP

Two interesting news items on the education front. First, everyone had the headline yesterday about American school children's scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This nationally benchmarked test is equivalent from state to state and year to year, and so, unlike many state tests used for No Child Left Behind, it actually means something. And unfortunately, what it showed wasn't great. Despite the accountability movement and an increased emphasis on teaching basic reading and math skills, 4th grade math scores did not improve from 2007 to 2009. Eighth grade math scores were up slightly, which is good, but the improvements weren't large enough to call for celebrating in the streets. What is clear is that for all the complaints from some parents and teachers of kids being stressed out by constant testing, or the emphasis on math and reading crowding out the arts, music, recreation, etc., all of that is either an exaggeration, or if it's true, then it isn't working.

This, of course, raises the question of what does work to raise student achievement and build the skills necessary for later careers -- and brings me to an interesting idea coming out of India on the science front. According to this article from the Times of India, the National Council of Science Museums has decided to create 1,000 "school science centers" across the country. Sometimes located far from any science museum, these centers will involve professional scientists mentoring teachers on how to help students conduct experiments, and will try to emphasize the hands-on nature of science.

Of most interest to us at Gifted Exchange, though, according to the article, is that this push to train more students in scientific methods is not just about broadening access. It's about using this broad access to identify top talent for future nurturing. The chairman of NCSM said, "We will keep a database of gifted students and follow their career paths closely after school." Another person involved in the project said the students identified as scientifically adept by the school science centers would get an opportunity to "work at the grass-roots level and help the community in solving its problems."

I personally think this is a fascinating idea. We may be trying to upgrade American school children's skills these days, but for the most part, very little about the push to do more testing has involved using individual results to identify top talent and then do something with it. Wouldn't it be interesting if we replaced state-level NCLB tests with the NAEP (or an equivalent internationally benchmarked test) and then not only got aggregated results, but identified the top 1% of scorers on, say, the math section, for further talent development? Wouldn't it be great to do this in other subject areas, too?

For years, people have tried to do similar things with the out-of-level tests used in talent searches (e.g. the SAT for 7th and 8th graders), but as long time readers of Gifted Exchange know, the vast majority of schools do absolutely nothing with these results. Kids who can afford it can use their high SAT scores to go to summer camps at Northwestern, Johns Hopkins and elsewhere. But schools for the most part give kids a certificate or an awards ceremony (if that) and then stick them right back in their grade-level classes. No wonder we're worried about falling behind India on the math and science front.

Jay Mathews: School Rules Stifle Gifted Student

Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews penned a piece recently on the struggles of Drew Gamblin, a 16-year-old gifted Maryland student who wanted the "real" high school experience after being homeschooled and taking courses at a local community college. His family's attempts to get high school credit for his various courses (and to show that he's fulfilled certain requirements) will, I'm sure, sound familiar to Gifted Exchange readers who've tried to carve out exemptions from usual school policies. In defense of Howard High School, it is tough to have one student do things differently than everyone else. But as Mathews points out, the state of Maryland regularly allows students who don't pass their high school exams to do special projects in order to graduate. It's unclear why creating an exception for a young person who clearly can (and has!) done the required work is so much more difficult.

Have any readers fought City Hall, as it were, in this kind of situation, and won?

Is "a widening gap" always a problem?

One of the major goals of No Child Left Behind, and the accountability movement in general, is to "close the achievement gap" between more-advantaged and less-advantaged students. It currently remains true in this country that children from poor or minority backgrounds tend to score lower on standardized tests, and to graduate at lower rates than white or more affluent students. Many people worry that such a gap will translate into reduced opportunities for disadvantaged young people later on. And so, education policy makers closely watch test results to see if the achievement gap is narrowing.

Now, data from the Center for Education Policy, written about in Education Week, show that in most states and in most cases, the gap is getting smaller. But as we achieve this goal, I think it's important to keep in mind that a narrowing gap is not necessarily a good thing in and of itself.

First, the easiest way to narrow the gap is to have more advantaged students suddenly do worse. If the average disadvantaged 4th grader is performing at a 3rd grade level, and the average more-advantaged 4th grader is performing at a 5th grade level, and you knock this down to the 4th grade level, you would have cut the achievement gap in half. But this would hardly be cause for celebration (one hopes). Fortunately, the Center for Education Policy data do not show that happening. In most cases, more-advantaged students seem to be making some progress, with disadvantaged students making more rapid progress.

Interestingly, though, in the roughly quarter of analyzed cases in which the achievement gap is widening, it does not appear to be because disadvantaged students are falling behind. They are making some progress, but more advantaged students are making more progress. In other words, everyone is still doing better. As Jack Jennings, the Center for Education Policy's president put it, all boats are "rising with the tide."

This raises questions. In these cases, the achievement gap is clearly widening. This is generally viewed as a bad thing. And yet everyone is doing better -- which tends to sound like a good thing.

So which is it?

I guess it depends on whether you view higher education opportunities, and the job market as fully competitive or as benefiting from rising skill levels in general. I think it's a bit of both. Getting into Harvard is competitive; there are only so many slots. But a million more students could graduate from high school college ready, and I bet there would, soon enough, be higher education slots somewhere to absorb them. Any given job opportunity is, of course, competitive; no business has an unlimited payroll. But in general, the more students who have solid math, reasoning, reading and writing skills, the better off our economy will be as these young people make productivity gains for their employers or start their own businesses.

So, in general, I'm of the opinion that as long as everyone is doing better, the actual gap is not worth fixating upon. But we shall see if that's the headline that comes out of these results.

On a personal note, we're on a bit of a lighter blogging schedule here at Gifted Exchange as I'm busy with the newest addition to my family, Samuel Dwight Conway. He was born on September 24, was discharged from the hospital at a sturdy 8lbs 8oz and is winning all of us over quickly-- even big brother Jasper! I'm still always looking for ideas for posts, though, so please send them along. (If you'd like to see photos, and you're on Facebook, just send me a friend request!)

Asperger's and unique gifts

USA Today ran a feature piece recently on professional surfer Clay Marzo, who has Asperger's syndrome. It's a fascinating profile of an incredibly physically and artistically gifted young man. While having difficulty with social interactions, media interviews and the like, he can be incredibly focused in the water, logging more hours surfing than many of his competitors, getting better -- rather than more tired -- as the day goes on. He scores fabulously in competitions when he wants to, but sometimes doesn't because he doesn't particularly want to play by the same rules as his competitors. Rather than waiting for waves that make it easy to show off certain skills, as the article notes, Marzo believes "there's merit in every wave." And so, like a sculptor seeing what the block of marble wants to be, Marzo rides the wave for what it is.

Reading the article, it becomes clear that this young man's brain is just wired differently -- but fortunately, there seems to be a place in this world for such a different brain. As Jamie Tierney, who directed a film about Marzo called Just Add Water, says, "Let's talk about Asperger's but not as disease or a disability. Clay is so good because he has Asperger's, not in spite of it. His level of focus in the wave is incredible, he makes instant natural connections with the water, something very few people have."

The Rubber Room

My maternity leave has not gotten off to quite as quick a start as I'd wanted (baby is now 8 days overdue) but at least I'm getting some extra time to catch up on the New Yorkers that are sitting around the house.

One particularly fascinating piece that I wanted to share with Gifted Exchange readers is called "Rubber Room" from the Aug 31 issue. In it, reporter Steven Brill pays a visit to one of New York City's "Rubber Rooms" -- places where teachers who have been charged with incompetence or misconduct, but who have not yet had a full hearing (which can take years), report every day in order to continue receiving their salary and benefits. I had read about a similar set-up for GM workers a few years ago (albeit not ones charged with misconduct -- just ones for whom there wasn't any available work). Basically, when union contracts specify that people have protected employment, but their employer decides that their services are either not needed or not desired, you have to do something with them. These rubber room situations arise because if an employer has to continue paying salary and benefits, it behooves them to make the experience as unpleasant as possible, in the hopes that people will quit. So rubber room policies tend to require people to clock in at a certain time, take certain specified breaks, and leave at a certain hour, but otherwise just sit there.

This sounds absolutely atrocious to me, but the fascinating thing is that often, people don't quit. In New York City, at least, teaching is pretty well paid (teachers with a master's degree start off around $50,000 with pretty good benefits, the contract is for a slightly-less-than 7-hour workday and tenure is granted nearly automatically after three years). So we New York City tax payers are funding the rubber rooms and also the bank of reserve teachers -- those let go because programs are cut but who either can't find or refuse to take another job in the system. They continue receiving their paychecks and benefits too. Given that excellent teachers are scooped up almost immediately, Brill makes the point that anyone on the reserve list after a year is probably going to be there indefinitely.

Of course, there's little point in writing a gee-whiz-isn't-this-crazy story; the broader question is whether this set-up can be changed in a way that is fair to teachers but doesn't waste massive amounts of taxpayer dollars. It is a question that turns out to be critical as a growing body of evidence shows that teacher quality is one of the most important factors in student achievement. In that sense, it is good that New York City isn't keeping incompetent (or in some cases, criminal) teachers in front of classrooms; on the other hand, the fact that hundreds of teachers sit in rubber rooms or on the reserve list, and continue to draw salaries, lessens any pressure on merely mediocre teachers to step up their game. Even after 7 years of what some people term "dictatorial" mayoral control of the schools, the percentage of New York City teachers who are not awarded tenure after three years has risen only a few points.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I think many people would be willing to pay for a system that lavished rewards on excellent teachers (with high value-add -- that is who can show student improvement even at the very high and very low ends) as long as bad ones could be weeded out. But this is proving very hard to do in practice. There is much hope that Pres. Obama and Ed Sec. Arne Duncan, who at least talk a good game of not being beholden to the education status quo, will shake things up with Race to the Top money. But we shall see if, over time, this manages to close the Rubber Rooms.

Gifted Exchange Turns 4!

This week marks the 4th anniversary of Gifted Exchange's founding in 2005. Blogging tools have definitely improved since then (I used to need to type whole strings of characters to put in links). We've covered a lot of interesting topics and have a fair number of regular readers. We now log, on average, more than 200 visitors per day. As always, though, I am looking for ways to make this blog more useful and interesting, and so I welcome feedback on what people like, and what I can do better. Thanks for reading!

Gifted Children and Sleep

An article on CNN's website claims that enforcing a bedtime improves health outcomes for children and also has a chart of how much sleep children need. Apparently, toddlers need 12-14 hours, slightly older preschoolers need 11-13 hours, and elementary school kids need 10-11 hours. For most children, this may be true (and enforcing the bedtime may be a good idea for all kids!) but a number of parents have found an interesting truth: some highly gifted kids appear to need a lot less.

There are various theories about this: the kids' brains don't really shut down, or they're just wired differently. While this can be a positive in families with two working parents (hey, more time together in the evenings!) it can be tough if the kid needs less sleep than the adults.

I'm curious if parents who read this blog have found this trait in their own children, and how you've dealt with it. How do you figure out how much sleep your child needs? How do you stay sane if your 3-year-old likes to go to bed at 10pm?

"Without skipping a grade"

Kay Williams, director of the Division of Accelerated and Enriched Instruction of the Montgomery County Public Schools, wrote a letter to the editor of Education Week regarding Richard Whitmire and my recent commentary "What Ever Happened to Grade Skipping?" We had noted that Montgomery County was debating whether to label 2nd graders as gifted or not gifted.

In her note, Ms. Williams highlights the various options that Montgomery County uses, such as allowing 8th graders to take algebra, and offering AP classes. She states that "acceleration is already an integral part of the program options in Montgomery County public schools" -- at least with math (the examples she notes, and which is the one subject schools tend to allow some acceleration in).

But what was most interesting to me is her statement that "The district’s systemwide model for acceleration ensures that students can access an appropriate, above-grade-level curriculum every day without skipping a grade." This was our main point -- why is it considered so horrible to skip a whole grade? Or two or three? Often highly gifted young people are ahead of their peers in many subjects, and need more mature classmates in order to fit in, socially, as well. If Montgomery County has a systemwide model in order to ensure that no one need (horrors!) skip a grade, this seems to show that the prejudice is alive and well.

Virtual Field Trips

Add this to the "fun stuff on the web" file: If you're looking for a rainy/winter day activity for young children that's slightly more enlightening than watching Happy Feet again (don't get me started on my kid's obsession), check out Meet Me At the Corner.

This site offers virtual field trips on topics kids find interesting, such as visiting a pet owner who is training a service dog for people with disabilities, and a trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's Chili Festival. The segments are about the length of Sesame Street's video clips (and have some similarity in terms of topics and videography). Upcoming episodes will deal with the wolf population in Colorado and San Francisco's cable cars.

Pink Brains and Blue Brains

As I'm not-so-patiently awaiting the arrival of my second son, I've been enjoying reading Lise Eliot's Pink Brain, Blue Brain, subtitled "How small differences grow into troublesome gaps and what we can do about it."

Eliot, a neuroscientist and mom of three (1 girl, 2 boys), examines the existing knowledge about children's brain development and gender differences. Are boys and girls different because of nature or nurture?

It will probably surprise no one that the answer is both, though often not in ways people enamored with explaining everything in what she refers to as the "Fred and Wilma scenario" (men used to hunt so they did this! women gathered so they did this!) mean.

First, differences between boys and girls as a whole are often quite small -- much smaller than differences between individual boys and individual girls. One of the most interesting, innate ones is that boys are born slightly bigger than girls, and mature slightly slower in the womb. Of babies born quite prematurely (say, at 24 weeks gestation) girls are a lot more likely to survive than boys, because, for whatever reason, they are about a week more mature. Because boys are bigger, birth is a slightly more traumatic experience. Couple that trauma with greater immaturity, and baby boys tend to be fussier.

So people interact with lnfant boys and infant girls differently right from the beginning, with girls getting lots of eye contact and cooing, and boys getting less because screaming babies just aren't that much fun to deal with. Is it possible that girls' vaunted social skills may arise out of just such differences?

For all modern parents try to raise their children in gender neutral patterns, we still have very set ideas of what is "good" for little boys and girls. When people in experiments are led to believe that baby girls are baby boys (and vice versa; researchers dress them as such or refer to them by incorrect but gendered names such as "Marie") the little girls are far more likely to be referred to as aggressive and independent (with corresponding more "little girl" attributes for the boys) than if people think the girls are girls.

We tend to notice events that fit with gender identities. Parents laugh about their sons turning dolls into guns, or little girls giving trucks a bath, but here's the thing: Jasper has given his trucks a bath, I just tend not to think about it much one way or the other. He likes to push his own stroller and he fought to play with a toy vacuum cleaner at a little girls' house recently. But I've never bought him a doll or a toy stroller or toy vacuum cleaner or toy kitchen even though, when we hauled out some tools the other day and he seemed fascinated, I mused that I should get him a toy tool box.

While toddler playtime is one thing, the magnification of small differences has much more profound consequences once children reach school age. Eliot notes that little boys are slightly better at understanding spatial relationships than little girls. But this is not an insurmountable difference; girls who spend as little as 10 hours playing certain video games can close parts of the gap, and in some cases Chinese girls who have to learn the intensely geometric Mandarin characters seem to do better on spatial reasoning than American boys. As Eliot writes, much of learning skills is like getting to Carnegie Hall: "practice, practice, practice." Small differences become large when little girls don't play with blocks or video games, and when little boys aren't given ways to get around their occasional difficulty with penmanship (so they learn to dislike writing and hence don't work at it).

I find it all very fascinating -- both from the perspective of trying to raise my sons and from what the various research into brain differences says about society. There is some evidence that little girls are becoming more open to playing with boy toys and doing "boy things" which makes sense as women have more paths open to them. On the other hand, boys are still being raised largely as boys -- we worry more about boys being sissies than girls being aggressive go-getters. Eliot also points out that a big problem with brain research is that studies that show gender differences tend to get the headlines. So, when one study seems to show that women do better on spatial reasoning when they are menstruating (and hence have less estrogen coursing through their blood), this gets trumpeted in the popular press with headlines like "Hormones make men and women better and worse at math!" Then, of course, when follow-up studies fail to replicate this result, there are no headlines.

I'm curious about gender differences parents who read this blog perceive in their sons and daughters, and if there are times you've caught yourself in stereotypical thinking. Are there specific ways you try to shore up what might be small differences in original abilities? (e.g. making sure girls play with blocks, or letting boys dictate stories they're having trouble writing?)

Perhaps here's a gender difference: I've written about this topic in the past but, when I started reading Pink Brain, Blue Brain, I didn't even think to check the index for my name. I'm not exactly self-effacing, but still. Imagine my surprise when I found myself quoted on page 248! The quote was from a USA Today piece about why girls are far more likely to go into, say, "Bio-statistics" than "statistics." Both are math-based, but put "bio" in front of it and it's perceived as being helpful to humanity. I wrote that math needed a Stephen Jay Gould explaining how helpful math is to the world, and engineering needed a Sylvia Earle doing likewise. I still do think that's true -- science and math are not nerdy disciplines for people who like to work alone, but that's still, too often, the perception.

Why it's better to be challenged

Some interesting new research from William Bowen, the former president of Princeton, finds that -- holding academic preparation constant -- young people who attend more demanding colleges are more likely to graduate.

Part of this may simply be expectations. Graduation rates tend to be higher at more selective universities, and when graduating on time is what everybody does, people tend to respond. Plus, these universities often have good systems in place to make sure that people take the classes they need and understand the requirements.

On the other hand, as we've pointed out with young gifted children, it's no blessing to find school easy. We are happiest when we are working hard at something that challenges us at close to the extent of our abilities. If college isn't demanding, then I'm guessing that some people find continuing their education to feel a little pointless. Certainly, many gifted children become dissatisfied with school because they are bored, and there's no reason to think this wouldn't happen for older students, too.

The Obama Speech

In case anyone missed it, there's a transcript of President Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren here.

In general, I thought it was a good speech. I had a few favorite sections. For instance, I appreciated that he challenged children not to think of themselves as victims:

"At the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying."

I also appreciated his realism: "I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things." No, you will not, and as he noted, "No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work."

I'm curious what others thought of the speech, and what your children thought, too.

The Myth of the Overscheduled Child

I have another back-to-school piece, this one featuring 2009 Davidson Fellow Erika DeBenedictis, on the Taste Page of the Wall Street Journal this morning. The essay is called "The Myth of the Overscheduled Child" and makes the point that many kids like being challenged and busy. And, often, it's quite good for them to be so! We are happiest when we are throwing ourselves into meaningful projects (like practicing with a sports team to improve, or doing independent computer science research) and making progress. Unfortunately, vast proportions of American teens never get to do any of this.

Anyway, it's been a busy week of back-to-school pieces, but we'll be back to specific gifted coverage next week.

Chat transcript

Glad to see at least one question about gifted kids in the chat! There's a transcript available here.

The Secret of School Success

My column on self-regulation and academic achievement, called "The Secret of School Success," ran in USA Today this morning. I'll be participating in a live chat at theforum.usatoday.com at 2pm Eastern, today, and anyone who'd like to is welcome to join!

Back-to-school chat at USAToday.com on Wednesday

Barring major breaking headline news, I will have a column running in USA Today on Wednesday (9/2) about self-regulation and school success. Barring me being in labor, USA Today will be hosting a "live" chat with me at 2pm eastern time about the topic. I'd love to have some Gifted Exchange readers drop by. I will post a link on Wednesday. Thanks!

Smart Child Left Behind

The New York Times ran an interesting op-ed yesterday from Tom Loveless and Michael Petrilli called "Smart Child Left Behind." It made the point that many Gifted Exchange readers have made in recent years: that No Child Left Behind is a wash at best for top achieving kids. This has the advantage (if you wish to look at it that way) of narrowing the achievement gap, though it's not clear that should be our top national educational goal.

What makes it more timely is that apparently the Center on Education Policy released a study finding that more students were making it to the "advanced" level on state NCLB tests (from the proficient level), thus indicating that top students were doing great too. But Loveless and Petrilli claim that these are simply small incremental gains, and that other tests (like the NAEP) don't show much upward movement. And, of course, we've pointed out here on Gifted Exchange that on international comparisons, the top 10% of US students would be considered middle-of-the-pack in countries such as Finland and South Korea. NCLB has not changed that.

As I've written before, I think the aims of No Child Left Behind are good. There needs to be accountability in schools, and the law is an improvement on having no accountability. What we need now is to stop using all these state tests -- some of which seem to declare you proficient if you can write your name -- and instead create a common, benchmarked national one, or use one that already exists for international comparisons. Our goal should not only be to raise achievement among kids most at risk of being left behind, but to have the top 10% of American students be the top 10% in the world. We are no where near that now, NCLB or no.

SAT Scores: Good news and bad news

This week, the College Board released information about college-bound seniors who took the SAT in 2009. The New York based non-profit, which oversees the famous college admissions test, definitely tried to spin the results in a positive manner. The headline on the website? "2009 College-Bound Seniors Are Most Diverse Group Ever to Take SAT® As More Minority Students Prepare for Higher Education."

This is true; about 40% of the 2009 test-takers were minority students, vs. 29% in 1999. About a third of the test-takers said their parents had not gone beyond high school, so the positive spin is that a bigger proportion of America's high school students are thinking about college and considering it a feasible goal to get there.

On the other hand, despite decades of school reform efforts, the overall scores have been fairly flat, with reading scores actually dropping over the long term (math scores are slightly up over the long term, but not by much).

It is one thing to encourage a diverse group of Americans to consider college (which taking the SAT amounts to doing); it is another thing for our schools to actually educate children to be capable of attending college. The scores indicate that while aspirations are high, the results on the ground are not so great...except if you happen to be Asian.

The average math SAT score for Asian young people hit 587 this year, compared with 536 for white students, and 426 for black students. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal today, Asian students tend to do better at all income levels. Officials said this was "because they tend to take more Advanced Placement and other rigorous courses, and their families place a strong value on success in education."

I would love to find a study that looks at the actual practices of Asian children and Asian parents -- where these daily differences between Asian families and, say, white families arise, and what they look like. When it comes to education and test results, there is little known about best practices. When you know what works, you can try to put it into practice in other places as well, and it strikes me that this would be a fruitful area for study.

A Cogito Update

Back in 2007, with the help of a $1.7 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the folks at Johns Hopkins' Center for Talented Youth launched a new website called Cogito, devoted to math and science. The target market? Gifted young people who are comfortable with technology, want to meet other kids like them, and need a safe place on the web to do it.

Building up content and readership always takes time (we're almost celebrating our 4-year anniversary here at Gifted Exchange!), but two years later, Cogito is feeling pretty fleshed out. This week, there's an article on the winners of the International Math Olympiad, an interview with Preya Shah, a top-10 finisher at the Intel Science Talent Search this year, and links to interesting popular articles about math and science around the web.

I'd love to hear feedback from GE readers with kids who are Cogito regulars, and I encourage anyone who hasn't given it a look to check the site out.

Can gifted kids become not-gifted?

I've been reading NurtureShock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's new tome about research-based approaches to education and parenting.

It's a fascinating book in many respects, aiming to show how little of what we think is obvious is actually backed up by any data. Of course, to do this, Bronson (whose voice carries the book) has to make a bit of a gee-whiz fuss over research that does exist and seems counter-intuitive.

Unfortunately, the chapter on gifted education -- "The Search for Intelligent Life in Kindergarten" -- gets a heady dose of that. Bronson maintains that testing for IQ too young results in many kids being put in gifted education that wouldn't be if tested later, and keeping some late bloomers out. As he puts it, "if a school wanted the top tenth of students in its third-grade gifted program, 72.4% of them wouldn't have been identified by their IQ test score before kindergarten." This, he claims, is a problem, because "earning this classification when young is nothing less than a golden ticket, academically. The rarified learning environment, filled with quick peers, allows teachers to speed up the curriculum. This can make a huge difference in how much a child learns. In California, according to a state government study, children in Gifted and Talented programs make 36.7% more progress every year than the norm."

I'd quibble with the golden ticket idea -- much of what makes gifted education into a controversy is that it's perceived as some sort of reward, as opposed to an educational intervention for kids who need it. But anyway, the headline one would take out of this chapter is that either "gifted education is a scam" or "you shouldn't test until 3rd grade, at the very very earliest."

But this isn't exactly what Bronson appears to be showing. As he points out, "even in kindergarten, a few children are clearly and indisputably advanced." There is nothing gained by failing to meet these children's needs by putting off interventions until 3rd grade or later (which is what I worry people reading the chapter will take away). Instead, "what stands out as problems are: the districts who don't give late-blooming children additional chances to test in, and the lack of objective retesting to ensure the kids who got in young really belong there."

I find this to be a far more fascinating idea. It is true that in many districts, schools screen once for gifted programs, and then don't allow a whole lot more additional screens later. More importantly, they don't look at their gifted classes to see if the situation is still the best match for these kids, or whether someone would be doing better in a more conventional classroom. These policies are based on the assumption that intelligence is an unchanging thing, but there's no particular reason we need to think of it as constant.

That's why I prefer the words "readiness grouping" to "ability grouping." It implies less about an innate quality, and more about simply giving children work that challenges them to the extent of their abilities. Likewise, if gifted education were truly perceived and treated as an intervention, not a reward, it would not be seen as so awful to remove children from the class based on retesting.

So what do you think, readers? I rather like the idea of more frequent evaluation, and kids moving between classrooms, grades, etc., as the need arises, as opposed to a certain IQ meaning you get 90 minutes of pull-out a week, and a lower IQ meaning you don't. Do you know of any gifted programs that offer lots of opportunities to come in and out?

Meet the 2009 Davidson Fellows!

The Reno, NV-based Davidson Institute for Talent Development announced its 2009 Davidson Fellows this week. These young people, who will receive $10,000, $25,000 and $50,000 scholarships, are profiled here.

They're a fantastically talented group of students, as usual, and my one regret is that I'm probably not going to meet them in person this year (since my baby is due right before the awards ceremony in Washington in September). But I've been thinking about their achievements in the context of larger academic issues nonetheless, and especially in light of the cultural narrative about "overscheduled" or "overworked" children who've been "hothoused" their whole lives (to use a few of the ideas thrown out there). Many of these young people are in multiple activities, in addition to the hours required to produce their projects. To some pundits, this is a recipe for an anxious breakdown.

But just as I have argued that adults are not nearly as overworked or under-rested as many of us seem to think, I'd argue that most children are not nearly as overscheduled or overworked as people seem to think, either.

According to studies done for the sociology book Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, the average teenager does a mere 4.9 hours of homework weekly (0.7 hours, or 42 minutes per day). He/she spends just 30 hours in school, which gives us a grand total of about 35 hours devoted to the teen's chief job of learning. Most adults would think a 35-hour workweek sounds pretty reasonable.

Furthermore, only about half of children participate in structured activities (such as sports, Scouts, etc.) A far greater consumer of time? TV and leisure computer activities, which account for around 20 hours of teens' weeks (Nielsen tells us that the average teen watches 3 hours and 20 minutes of TV a day, but time diaries give us a lower number -- probably the TV is on, but the kid is doing something else).

In other words, it's a very small percentage of teenagers who are hitting the books for large numbers of hours per week, or loading up on activities. And judging by what some of the Davidson Fellows have been able to accomplish by devoting their non-school hours to focused, meaningful activities, I'd say that it's far from clear that the outcomes of being "overscheduled" are so bad!

As you can imagine (given all the stats crammed into these paragraphs) this is a topic I'm writing about in conjunction with the back-to-school season, so I welcome thoughts on gifted kids and extracurricular activities. Thanks!

The Princess Problem

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on little girls and princesses (per the previous Gifted Exchange post on this). My column, The Princess Problem, ran in USA Today this morning.

EdWeek piece on gifted kids and acceleration

Richard Whitmire, author of the upcoming Why Boys Fail, and immediate past president of the National Education Writers Association, and I have a commentary in this week's Education Week called "What Ever Happened to Grade Skipping?" You can read the top with the link though you have to register for the entire piece. It is also in the print edition. And Richard seems to have put it up on his website.

The themes are the same ones we've talked about here at Gifted Exchange. In tight budgetary times, gifted education is an easy target. Acceleration, on the other hand, is cheap and usually a good solution. And yet most teachers don't like the idea, and a solid minority of schools don't even allow it -- with an additional chunk doing it so rarely that teachers can't even say what the school policy might be.

This antipathy is a bit strange. Parents have told me that schools are quite open to the idea of "red-shirting" kindergartners (especially boys) -- that is, having them start at age 6 or so. But try to start a kid who's already reading at age 4, and this will be a fight. People often bring up the concept of socialization, but what an artificial construct that people can only be socialized by others of the same age! It's a good thing that people don't hold this idea for adults, or my marriage and many of my friendships would never have happened.

Even with children, everyone develops at different paces. I have heard caveats from parents of children on the smaller side for their age, and this obviously has to be a family decision, but one thing to keep in mind is that adolescence is awkward for just about everyone. Everyone. Beautiful people like Mavis Leno and Gisele Bundchen have complained in profiles about how awkward they felt in middle school. Acceleration at least chips away at the problem of a mismatch between readiness and the academic curriculum.

Judging Teachers

I am back from vacation, and slowly gearing up to post more on Gifted Exchange as the school year resumes!

In my inbox this week -- a fascinating story from LA that is not about gifted education per se, but gets at one of the major problems in American education: a failure to reward and nurture excellence.

LA Times columnist Steve Lopez recently wrote "A Lesson from a Good Teacher" about a young and energetic teacher named Susan Requa who moved from Chicago in order to teach at James Monroe High School in the LA Unified School District. She won rave reviews from some veteran teachers in the school, and was taking on leadership roles and proving to be a natural in the classroom.

But then LAUSD ran short on cash and needed to lay off some teachers. So who goes? The teachers with the least seniority. That would be Requa -- not, as Ron Harris, a supervising teacher at the school laments, the burn-outs or the Holocaust denier he has on staff.

It's easy to blame teachers unions for this state of affairs -- and Lopez, the columnist, does -- but school districts have also acquiesced in creating these rules. We know that teacher quality matters a lot to student outcomes. It should not be a huge jump to look at student advancement during a year, coupled with supervisor, peer, parent, and student reviews (aka "360 degree feedback"), and figure out which teachers should be rewarded and which should be retrained or else seek a different line of work. But in the vast majority of districts, compensation and job security are based primarily on years of experience and advanced degrees. Not an honest comparison between teachers or against a set of standards of best practices.

This problem in LA is just part of a broader philosophical woe in American education: we do not value excellence. We are perfectly willing to squander talent in pursuit of someone's idea of "fairness." This is why challenging bright students to the extent of their abilities always gets the short end of the stick in funding and other resource allocation. It is why schools squash acceleration in favor of "socialization" and refuse to use homogeneous grouping as broadly as they could.

I am not sure where this idea comes from. In many other spheres, Americans are very much into talent. Sports is the obvious counter example, but we also swoon over entrepreneurs who come up with amazing ideas, or CEOs who truly transform their companies. Indeed, if you look at the bookshelves these days, it seems that companies everywhere are engaged in wars for talent. So why isn't the LAUSD fighting to keep teachers like Requa? Why aren't schools in general fighting over talent among students and teachers? The lack of competition is certainly one reason but the philosophical issue goes deeper than that. I wish I knew.

Gifted education and budget cuts

Education makes up a large share of any state budget, and with states facing falling tax revenue, it's inevitable that education budgets will take a hit. In Illinois, for instance, state education officials had to recently figure out a way to cut $146 million from funding levels from the year before. I'm sure no one will be surprised to hear that, according to this article from the Chicago Sun-Times, gifted education was simply zeroed out. In tough times, gifted education is treated as an optional perk. And unfortunately, many gifted programs leave themselves open to this criticism by focusing more on fun field trips to science museums or short pull-out enrichment programs than accelerated academic work.

It's really too bad that gifted education is going to wind up bearing a disproportionate amount of state budget cuts over the next few years. But here's what I hope will happen. Advocates for gifted kids -- mostly parents -- will use the absence of funds to truly press the case for acceleration, a.k.a. "skipping grades."

Acceleration costs nothing beyond the usual per-pupil funds. In the long run, it saves states and districts money, since it costs less to pay for 10 or 11 years of compulsory schooling vs. 13.

The evidence in favor of acceleration is very strong, and yet there is incredible academic resistance to it. I have yet to figure out why this is -- I'm curious what reasons parents who read this blog have heard. Anyone who's observed children between the ages of, oh, 8 and 16, knows they develop at different rates anyway. The whole notion of grades, per se, is relatively modern. In the 1-room schoolhouses of yore, it was not a distinction with much weight.

I don't want to let parents entirely off the hook here, either. If parents of gifted kids were completely unified in pushing for more widespread use of acceleration, I think school districts would find it harder to say no. But, just like teachers, some parents worry about social issues, sports, and perhaps some worry about just how hard a gifted 8-year-old might have to work to stay on top of the 6th grade curriculum, vs. always getting A's... and getting to go on science museum field trips with the gifted program.

But if the latter is no longer an option, maybe there will be a bit more of a unified front with acceleration. It is worth lobbying for as a broader solution than it is, currently. That would certainly be a silver lining in all this.

A National Curriculum -- Sort Of

The New York Times ran a fascinating article a few weeks ago called Newark Starts a Summer School Aimed at Advanced Placement. Advanced Placement, or "AP" classes, are accelerated high school classes originally designed to help students earn college credit early. Newark, NJ, a highly troubled urban district, is trying to offer more AP classes and -- more importantly -- make sure kids are prepared to handle their rigors. So an intensive summer program gives kids a taste of reading large volumes of text quickly, doing experiments and the like, before the curriculum begins in earnest in September.

Though Newark has a long way to go toward succeeding in this experiment -- only 16% of AP tests taken in the district in 2008 earned the 3, 4, and 5 scores necessary for college credit -- I think this is a great idea. It behooves all children to try something difficult, and experience the joy of throwing themselves into challenging work. Even in good schools, gifted young people often coast through classes easily, and in sub-par districts, this can be an even greater danger. Perhaps Newark's AP classes are not as well-taught as they should be, though the district has hired coaches to train AP teachers, and hopefully this will boost the pass rates.

But what's even more interesting is just how widespread AP classes have become in this country. According to the article, "Nationwide, 12,605 public schools offered Advanced Placement classes in 2008, up from 9,582 a decade before." There are about 37,000 public and private secondary schools in the US. There has been much talk lately about creating a set of common standards in US schools; to some degree, the AP curriculum is starting to become that. Texts, experiments and tests are at least somewhat standardized with AP courses, and a 5 on the AP Calculus AB exam means the exact same thing in Topeka as it does in Newark, whereas an "A+" on an individual teacher-designed test doesn't translate across districts at all.

Of course, the College Board is a private (albeit non-profit) group. One could argue that the US public missed an opportunity to create a rigorous national curriculum that wouldn't be controlled or administered by a private institution. However, as these things go, the AP curriculum isn't bad, and given that educational authorities have punted on this for so long, it's good that the non-governmental community has stepped up instead.

Little Girls and Princesses

This comes more under the "parenting" category of posts than anything related to gifted education, but I'm hoping that Gifted Exchange readers can provide some insight nonetheless.

I am fascinated by the Disney Princess cultural juggernaut (and the prevalence of princess images in other shows, toys, etc. marketed to very young girls). I am hoping to write more broadly about it, tied to some other cultural issues. However, since I don't have little girls myself, the toys and movies that are big in my house have more of a "truck" or "wild animal" theme.

For those of you who do have little girls, are they into princesses? What makes the princess image appealing? How prevalent is it (like what percentage of girls in your daughters' classes dress up as princesses for Halloween)? Is one of the Disney princesses more popular than the others? Why is that?

What do parents in general think of the princess phenomenon? Is there any worry about girls playing princess more often than, say, deep sea explorer or astronaut?

Thanks for your help in researching this! Marketing to children has gotten so much more sophisticated over the years, and I enjoy trying to understand exactly why some concepts hit it big.

Gifted Siblings

Per request, today's post is on giftedness and sibling love and rivalry. As any parent of two or more kids knows (and I will find out when baby number 2 arrives in September), just because kids are related doesn't mean they're anything alike. They have different interests, different temperaments, and in some cases within families, some children are highly gifted and others are not. What happens then?

When I first thought about this question, I assumed that when one sibling is highly gifted and the other is "normal" (whatever that means), this would lead to a certain level of strain. After all, if good grades and test scores come easy for one child, and require a lot of effort from the other, wouldn't the child who has to work so hard resent that? If a younger sibling can easily outpace the older on reading or -- seemingly worse -- is accelerated into the same class, wouldn't that be difficult to deal with?

But thinking about it a bit more, and reading about it a bit more, I realized that this (probably) conventional wisdom is not based in fact. For starters, not all highly gifted children are academic superstars -- the "normal" child might actually be happier in school. The child who is not intellectually precocious may have her own interests and talents.

This second version of events turns out to be backed up by some research. According to this report in the Duke Gifted Letter from Nancy Robinson, a study of 378 sibling pairs (ages 8-13, some involving 2 gifted siblings, some involving 1 gifted sibling, or none) revealed that "According to their mothers, the children with a gifted sibling had fewer behavioral problems, and in general they were described with more positive adjectives than the children in pairs with no gifted child. Gifted children described their siblings in a friendlier way, and their mothers confirmed their more amicable relationships. We noted not a single unfavorable difference. Our best guess, based on this study, was that having a gifted sibling was simply a ready excuse for the ordinary wear and tear that brothers and sisters inflict on each other."

Robinson has lots of great advice for how to deal with siblings of different levels of intellectual ability: "Teach your children that “fair” is not necessarily “the same” and that you will meet each child’s needs and passions as best you can. ...
Make time for companionship, hugs, fun, and time alone with each of your children. ... If you spend time chauffeuring one of them to lessons, use the wait time with the other child for a trip to a nearby park or library to practice ball skills or read a special book. At the dinner table, do not let the more verbal child dominate the conversation....Treasure each child for his or her own quirks and assets. Minimize comparisons. Most families — even families of identical twins — assign one child to be 'the smart one,' 'the grumpy one,' or 'the jock.' By implication, the other child is 'dumb,' 'sunny,' or 'a klutz.'"

Not much good can come out of locking children into sibling identities like that!

Summer Reading List

We're on our summer posting schedule here at Gifted Exchange (read: infrequent), but I'm always looking for topics so please send ideas along!

In the meantime, today's post covers summer reading. As part of my attempts to "make over" my time to get more out of days and weeks, I've been trying to read more fiction. I read a lot of non-fiction (often for book reviews) but as life gets busy, I often find myself not inclined to read books that I'm not getting paid to read. I know this isn't a good thing -- I like to write fiction, after all -- and I used to read fiction for hours as a kid, particularly on summer days. I recall reading Robinson Crusoe at one point (I believe an abridged version) while walking around outside barefoot. I stepped on something sharp but was too into the story to deal with it. Only hours later did I look down and notice the dried blood all over my toes. Talk about being absorbed!

This experience of being totally lost in a fascinating world is one of the most exciting a kid can have. I've never understood situations where parents have to force kids to read for 30 minutes every evening. Maybe the kids are just reading the wrong books!

In which case, I thought it would be helpful to provide a link to the winners of the Newbery Medal (and the honorable mentions) from 1922 to the present.

Every year, the American Library Association gives this award to the best book for young readers. While some may be darker or more intense than others, and deal with slightly more grown-up themes, in general, they are more appropriate for young gifted children (e.g. K-4th grade) who are capable of reading chapter books than books specifically marketed to adults.

Looking over this list brought back some great memories. There was Dicey's Song (Cynthia Voigt, 1983), Jacob Have I Loved (and other Katherine Patterson books), Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The High King (and other Lloyd Alexander books), From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (1963). Indeed, you probably couldn't go wrong just printing up a copy of this list, taking it to the library, and checking out any of the books that happened to be on it.

In that same spirit, Jasper and I have been working our way through the Caldecott winners this summer. These are also good, though since the award is given to the artist (who is often not the writer) the emphasis is more on the visual experience. Pretty sumptuous so far. Definitely beats yet another Elmo book. Unfortunately, this has also turned out to be an expensive undertaking, as he still has a tendency to destroy books, which means I don't want to risk the library's copy.

Making all young Americans "STEM Capable"

I wanted to call readers' attention to a new report from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Institute for Advanced Study called "The Opportunity Equation." This report takes a broad look at math and science education in the US, sets a number of goals, and makes recommendations.

There's some interesting food for thought. The big goal is that all young Americans should be "STEM capable" -- that is, capable of choosing science, technology, engineering and math careers if they so choose. At least one survey found that young people are quite interested in such topics, but the proportion who believe they have the skills to enter these professions has no basis in reality.

Some of the recommendations for pursuing that goal are pretty boiler plate (we should have a national call to action! The public, alas, grows weary of such calls).

Others are more interesting. For instance, the report calls for common and fewer standards. One complaint of math education, at least, is that American schools hit dozens of topics each year in a shallow fashion and then repeat them the next year. Better to delve deep into a few and then move on. The report also calls for more rigorous math tracks that feature data analysis and statistics as opposed to calculus as the end point. In many schools, there is one "college prep" math track that leads to calculus, which is definitely useful, but all students need to know statistics and data analysis to have scientific and math literacy. Just because you don't plan to study calculus doesn't mean your math classes should be easy.

There are some good ideas about alternative certification programs for math and science teachers, and using scholarships and pay incentives to keep them in the classroom. Given that math teachers are in much higher demand than English teachers, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to pay them the same amount. And yet, most schools do. Net result? A math teacher shortage. Math for America is one innovative program that gets around this by paying math teachers more out of private funds. The report calls for more research on teacher effectiveness, to invest in cyberlearning, to make better use of universities and museums in communities, and to close and replace failing schools.

Unfortunately, when it comes to gifted education, though, the report doesn't deliver as much as one might hope. In the opening sections, the report states that we should be "providing opportunities for the most successful students in math and science to accelerate beyond what is traditionally available in high school." Yes, we should!

Unfortunately, none of the recommendations in the executive summary, which is all the vast majority of people are going to read, deal concretely with acceleration, telescoping, sending kids to college math classes early, giving advanced students the opportunity to do real science research in college labs, etc.

This is a missed opportunity, because while I definitely think it's a nice idea to have all young people be STEM capable, the reality remains that the big innovations are going to come, largely, from students in the top 10%. Many of these kids are already STEM capable, but they are not performing nearly at the level of students in some other rich countries.

So here's what I would have written as the key goals: All young Americans should be STEM capable, and the top 10% of American K-12 students should outperform the top 10% in all other countries.

In a flat and largely free world, we can no longer bank on the top 10% from other places coming here for college or graduate school and staying. Having a truly exceptional elite -- as well as solid preparation for everyone else -- is the true key to prosperity in the future.

US funds boarding schools for kids whose needs can't be met locally...in Vietnam

While doing some background research on a group called the East Meets West Foundation, I came across a fascinating press release about the new Kon Ray Boarding School in Vietnam. Providing an adequate education for the ethnic minority students in Vietnam's central highlands has long been a problem for this developing country. Families are scattered, which means that kids have to walk long distances to go to school. With poverty as an additional obstacle, many wind up dropping out. So USAID has helped to fund the new Kon Ray Boarding School, which has provided lodging and education for 180 students this past school year.

It certainly sounds like a good solution to the problem. Of course, as readers of this blog know, there are students a lot closer to home whose needs are not being met in their local schools either. Over the past three years, Gifted Exchange has covered the issue of boarding schools for gifted kids several times. While big cities can have magnet schools which concentrate highly or profoundly gifted children, in less populous areas, this becomes more difficult, with kids either needing to travel long distances, or else forgo an education with their intellectual peers. Some families move -- for instance, to be closer to the Davidson Academy in Reno, a school for profoundly gifted children -- but often this is not an option (either because of parents' jobs, or because other siblings are having their needs met locally).

In these cases, public boarding schools for gifted kids can be a great option. About a dozen states have public residential schools for gifted high school students -- usually those in their junior and senior years -- though there's no reason these couldn't cover other years as well. So reading this press release, I'm struck by the question: if we think this is a good policy decision in Vietnam (and I think it probably is), why don't we see more such schools here in the States?

The Permanent Recession

I have a column in USA Today this morning called "The Permanent Recession." It touches on some topics we discussed here in recent weeks -- namely, that mediocre schools have an economic cost, and that underachievement is not just a problem confined to poor students in poor districts. It affects most students at most schools. Scores for the top 10% of US 15-year-olds on international tests are way below the top 10% in countries such as Finland and South Korea. That means that students who might qualify for some of the broadest defined gifted programs here in the US would be considered, at best, B-team material in some other rich countries.

I call for judging schools and states against international standards, and making those very public. I also got to quote Kyle Hutzler, a 2008 Davidson Fellow, who referred to NCLB as the educational equivalent of the Articles of Confederation. I think that's a very apt description. For all the problems of testing, we know that accountability is important, and NCLB was a feint in that direction. The issue now is making something that actually works.

Should Gifted Kids Know their IQ Scores?

I was particularly struck by this headline from ABC News the other day: Should Genius Kids Know Their IQs?

The question came up due to the media attention received by some precocious children. If headlines are blaring a kid's IQ scores (problematic though some of the higher ones may be due to controversies about the test used for 160+ scores) it's pretty hard to keep that under wraps. But what about with children who are simply being tested as part of determining an optimal education approach?

The easy answer is "no," though as any parent of a highly gifted kid knows, that's easier said than done. For starters, gifted kids are incredibly observant. They know they're being screened for something. Some may even then decide to research giftedness and realize that often something called IQ is involved. Since gifted kids love to ask questions, "Mommy, what's my IQ?" is bound to come out right along with "Why is the sky blue?"

So what do you do? I'm curious how parents who read this blog handled the situation, and if you ever told your kids, and if you did, how you framed the answer or what you told the kid to do with it.

Career advice for gifted young people

As some of you know, I am deep in the throes of writing another book, called 168 Hours, to be published by Portfolio about a year from now. There are 168 hours in a week, and this book is about how successful, happy people get the most out of them (I'm still looking for people to profile, and people to "makeover" their schedules, so if you know anyone who's interested, let me know! Lvanderkam at yahoo dot com is the best way to reach me, though of course I read public comments here too).

Anyway, right now I'm working on a set of career chapters which look at how people build big Careers with a capital C in the middle of already full lives. A lot of it is advice culled from interviewing hundreds of people, and looking back at what I wish people would have told me.

Sue Shellenbarger's Wall Street Journal "Work and Family" column touches on this topic this morning. She starts with tales of woeful grads who tried to major in "hot" areas like accounting and finance, only to see those industries enter deep recessions. She then talks about how parents can help younger kids build skills for the new economy. You need to be adaptable -- answering the endless "why" questions, and helping children puzzle through these -- you need to encourage children to explore new areas so they're always open to change, and teach them how to seek out opportunities to put new ideas in play.

I think it's good advice, and I'd certainly like to hear advice from parents who read this blog on how they're helping their kids and teens prepare for life after school. Here are a few things I wish people had mentioned.

* For creative types: If you are, objectively, pretty good at what you like to do, there's no reason you can't make a career out of it, or at least try. Your twenties are a great time to do this. If it doesn't work, so what? You go and get a real job.

* You will always need to be entrepreneurial. No one is going to create the right job for you. You will probably work for yourself for parts of your life, and even when you're working for someone else you'll have to figure out ways to change the job description to get closer to what you want. One example: I recently profiled Kraig Derstler, a UNO paleontology prof, for Scientific American. He was not hired to research dinosaurs -- that wasn't his original area of expertise, so he didn't have any grants or papers in that area. So to finance his research, he started bringing along paying lay people on his digs, more or less like Tom Sawyer getting people to white wash his fence. But it worked and he got tenure, and is now doing all dinosaurs, all the time.

* The right job combines a few elements. First, the "stuff" of it is what you love and do best (and hopefully that others can't do nearly as well -- your "core competencies" as it were). Second, it affords you a lot of autonomy -- you can work in the way that works best for you. Third, it challenges you at close to the extent of your abilities. There is much joy to be gained by working hard, whether it's in school or at work, and it's a shame that too many gifted young people don't have experience with the riskiness of trying something you might fail. If you're working in an organization, there's a fourth criteria: your co-workers can't be total jerks. I don't have a lot of advice on the last front, since I'm a confirmed soloist, but I do understand that it matters a lot.

* A lot of people mistake things that look like work for actual work. Do not fall into this trap. Keep your eye on the revenue line, the "stuff" of your job, or what you'd like to be doing long-term. The fact that you had 3 meetings and 2 conference calls does not mean you're being productive unless something came out of all of those that advanced you toward the life you want.

* The best productivity boost comes from getting better at your professional craft. Practice does help! When I first started writing professionally, I'd be assigned a piece at 1000 words, and when I'd do my first "word count" it would be 1600 words -- difficult to edit without changing the focus, getting rid of key things I spent a lot of time researching, etc. Now, when I'm assigned a piece at 1000 words, my first count is always between 900-1100 words. I'm not counting as I go, I just have a sense of what kind of thesis will fit a certain length. I imagine that after a while, chefs never crack their eggs in anything but a perfect circle. I don't know why the idea that I'd get better at my job came as such a surprise, but it's true.

* Everyone needs a story. Life is about marketing these days -- hopefully with substance behind it -- but from college applications to job interviews to publicity, it helps to have a good line for why you're interested in something, why you are the right person to do it, etc. It's a competitive world.

Feel free to post more!

Why do gifted kids drop out of college?

While it's become an article of public faith that almost all high school graduates should go to college -- because a college degree is critical in a knowledge economy -- it turns out that many colleges are doing a lousy job of helping their students finish. According to this article in USA Today about an AEI study, 4-year colleges in the US only graduate 53% of their students in 6 years. While people with "some college" often do better than those with just high school diplomas on the job market, the big payoffs come from the degree, which means that about half of people who start college will leave -- thanks to expensive tuition and loans -- perhaps no better than they started.

What's most fascinating about this is that some similar colleges do much better than others. As AEI and USA Today noted:

"•Among schools that require only a high school diploma for admission, Walla Walla University and Heritage University, both in Washington state, reported graduation rates of 53% and 17%, respectively.

•Among colleges that require high school grades averaging a B-minus or better, John Carroll University in Cleveland and Chicago State University in Illinois graduated 74% vs. 16%, respectively.

•In the "most competitive" group, Amherst College in Massachusetts and Reed College in Portland, Ore., graduated 96% vs. 76%, respectively."

These are not minor differences, and suggest that low graduation rates are not inevitable. They may also shed light on why some gifted students don't make it through college.

Over the years, I've talked to a number of grown-up gifted kids, who tend to have varying outcomes. Some, obviously, become smashingly successful. But for many, college seems to be a turning point. If students have coasted through high school, then the more difficult college curriculum can be unnerving. Being around other smart kids is often a relief for isolated gifted kids, but some perceive it as a challenge to their worldview. One young man once told me that the people around him didn't understand him -- and that was why he had to leave school. Add in the complexities of trying to afford college or get in the right classes, and graduation rates can coast down.

Since there are always going to be reasons not to follow through with something, this would suggest that as young people and their parents look for the right college, all things being equal, you should choose the one with the highest graduation rate. People respond to cues around them, and when almost everyone graduates, failing to do so becomes a less viable option.

LAPD High

The online version of my story in the spring 2009 City Journal called "LAPD High" finally went live. Back in January, I visited the Reseda Police Academy Magnet, one of a handful of LA schools sponsored by the local men (and women) in blue. They're getting reasonable results for at-risk kids, and suggest an interesting model of career-focused education.

Homeschooling on the rise

According to a new report from the US Department of Education (discussed by USA Today here), 1.5 million US children are now being homeschooled. This is up from less than a million in 1999, and puts the homeschooling rate at just shy of 3%. The homeschooling rate is much higher among college-educated parents; indeed, nearly 7% of college-educated parents now homeschool their children. Also, though American incomes haven't risen very much since 1999, homeschooling is now more popular among higher-income families. In 1999, 63.6% of homeschooling families earned less than $50,000 per year; now this figure is only 40%, with 60% earning more than $50,000.

That last stat is interesting to me because it's generally been assumed that homeschooling families are 1-income households, with one parent forgoing a paying job in order to teach. Naturally, 1-income households are going to be lower income than 2-income households, even if the breadwinner is highly likely to be college educated. But I suspect that the rise of "free agency" (self-employment, contract work, small business ownership, etc.) is enabling at least some 2-income households to homeschool. After all, if dad does freelance graphic design, for instance, he can work at his home office while a child is taking an online geometry course in the next room. I wrote about this issue some for USA Today last fall (with several Gifted Exchange reader families participating). In other words, free agent parents are deciding to educate free agent children!

Since homeschooling is quite common among families with gifted children, I think it's good to see it rising, overall, as a potential option. When more families consider this option, school districts wind up developing processes that make it easier for everyone (and there tend to be more support groups as well).

What should a principal do?

The New York Times had an interesting article the other day on the principals who've graduated from the New York City Leadership Academy, the city's new boot camp for school leaders. Under Chancellor Joel Klein, the city has been trying to change the job of principal from a position that one takes after climbing up the teaching ranks, to one that attracts top Ivy League grads, trains them in school leadership, and then gives them much autonomy in exchange for accountability.

The article claims the results have been mixed. Since the new breed of principals is sometimes earning more, and supervising smaller schools, the principal payroll has climbed in the city, and in general, paying more for administration is not seen as a reform best practice. Teacher turnover is up at schools with Leadership Academy principals, though this could be seen as good or bad. If new principals are getting rid of deadwood teachers, great. If they're driving out good ones, that's a problem. It's hard to know. More troublesome, schools with Leadership Academy principals have not improved on the city's report cards as much as many people hoped they might. There's some speculation that this is because these principals are very new on the job and people, in general, get better at their jobs over time. But this stumbles into one of the major HR philosophy dilemmas you see in the corporate world as well. Sometimes it's great to hire untested but brilliant people who will shake things up. And sometimes that philosophy produces Enron.

From my time studying education, and corporate management, here's my opinion. The key non-parental factor in education is teacher quality. So the best principals would be the people who are the best leaders of teachers. This means being able to find and hire excellent teachers, coach them to become even better, and make sure they have the tools to succeed.

In terms of gifted education, principals can also play a key role by setting school tone. Leaders articulate a vision and inspire everyone to follow it. So for gifted education, a good principal would make it clear that the school will challenge all children to achieve their potential, and support teachers as they do whatever is necessary to achieve that. I'd love to hear from parents who have worked with principals who feel that way!

SAT Coaching Boosts Scores -- Barely

The SAT has a fascinating history as a test. Started as more of an "aptitude" assessment designed to find highly intelligent children who hadn't had top-notch academic preparation, it later turned into an "achievement" test designed to cover high school coursework. It was "re-centered" in the mid-1990s to push declining average scores back toward 1000 on a 1600 point scale. Then, four years ago, the College Board added a writing section, putting the potential point total at 2400.

In all its versions, though, here is one thing we do know about the SAT. It is one of the few academic measures that means something nationally. High schools vary vastly in their rigor; it is quite possible for two children at two different high schools to take math classes with the same names, both get As, but have one score 200 points higher on the math section of the SAT. In that sense, it is harder to manipulate.

So it's no surprise that a cottage industry of folks who don't like the fact that the SAT can expose bad schooling has sprung up to claim that the SAT can be rigged, too. The chief criticism is that scores are meaningless because they can be coached. Rich parents can afford to pay thousands of dollars for Kaplan courses or tutoring, and hence buy their children admission to top colleges. The commercial coaching companies give ammunition to this idea by advertising massive score increases. According to an article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Elite Educational Institute says its average score improvement is 240 points. Ivy West guarantees a score increase of 200 points. Revolution Prep promises 200 points, Summit Educational Group says their proven increases are 180-400 points, and Sylvan pledges 160 points.

I've always been skeptical of these claims because if it were so easy and straightforward to raise your score by 400 points just by paying a fee, why don't you see more 2400s than you do? Why doesn't every kid who's been coached get a 2400? It's not that I don't believe coaching helps -- I paid for voice lessons for 2 years, for instance, and saw an improvement in my singing -- but I believe that any increase is coming, largely, from the fact that the kid is learning material that's on the SAT and that she didn't know before, or becomes familiar with the test. You could learn the material in school, too, but for a variety of reasons, that doesn't always happen as it should. There are also a variety of old SATs available from the College Board or even the library, so one can gain test familiarity without paying a cent.

Now, a new report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling released this week says I'm on to something. The average gains from commercial coaching were more in the neighborhood of 30 points on the SAT (the old version, which was out of 1600 points), not the 100 or 200 points claimed by many coaching companies. NACAC accuses some colleges of fueling the industry by setting cut-off scores that give 30 points a significance they shouldn't have, but as William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's admissions dean, told the Wall Street Journal, "It breaks my heart to see families who can't afford it spending money they desperately need on test prep when no evidence would indicate that this is money well-spent."

So what's behind the massive score increases claimed by the commercial coaching companies? Apparently a high school senior named Jonah Varon from San Francisco came up with a theory. As the Wall Street Journal noted, he took a mock SAT from a company called Revolution Prep, and scored a 2060. Then, without doing any of the company's coaching, he took the real SAT a few weeks later, and scored a perfect 2400 -- more than 300 points higher. He was suspicious. So he had several of his classmates do the same thing. Almost all of them scored hundreds of points higher on the real SAT than the mock SAT, with no coaching whatsoever. He wrote an article for his school paper claiming that the mock SATs were either harder or scored more harshly than the real SAT in order to inflate gains and make it look like the coaching created a miracle. It all makes perfect sense.

Gifted with ADHD

Having a high IQ doesn't protect you from the impairments caused by Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), according to a new study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders.

The researchers gave 157 adults with ADHD and IQs over 120 several tests designed to gauge their executive function. Executive function refers to the brain processes that control planning, choosing appropriate actions, and selecting relevant information. The researchers found that despite their high IQs, these adults were worse at these tasks than the general population.

As we've talked about here at Gifted Exchange before, it's important for teachers to have training in identifying giftedness, because in the absence of such training, a logical first assumption is that a gifted kid is one who acts "smart." In many cases, this means paying attention in class, turning in homework on time, following rules, etc. A highly gifted child with ADHD may not do any of those things. Indeed, the child may be downright lousy at such academic tasks -- doing worse than an average student. But that doesn't mean the child isn't gifted. It's tough to know how many children might be missed or misdiagnosed because of this.

An Unfortunate Correlation

It turns out that severe morning sickness during a mother's pregnancy is associated with higher tested IQ in the child, according to a recent study. The likely explanation is that something about the hormones that cause nausea and vomiting also help with neurological development. I guess that's a small comfort if you're feeling really sick. But boy, I know I wished whoever designed pregnancy decided, instead, to have the hormones make you feel heavenly...

"Where Are They Now?" Turns One

For the past year, I've been writing a weekly online column for Scientific American called "Where Are They Now?" The series profiles former finalists in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. For six decades, this contest found highly gifted young people from around the United States, and honored them for their science projects (it lives on today as the Intel Science Talent Search).

These young people went on to live varied lives. You can read the series, which celebrates its first birthday this week, here (for 2008 columns) and here (for 2009).

The Secret of Self Control

The May 18 issue of the New Yorker has an interesting piece on self-control and how it relates to children's achievements. Years ago, at the Bing Nursery School on Stanford's campus, psychologist Walter Mischel designed an experiment. He'd put a 4-year-old in a room with some marshmallows. He'd tell the kid that she could have one now, or if she waited for him to return in a few minutes, she could have two. Then he'd leave the kid with a bell and say that if she rang it, he'd come running back and she could have one marshmallow immediately (though she'd forfeit having any more).

As you can imagine, most children were not able to hold out. Some chunk didn't even bother to ring the bell -- they just ate the marshmallows. Others would stare at the treats for 30 seconds and then ring the bell. Another 30%, though, were able to hold out until the researcher returned 15 minutes later. It's not that they didn't like marshmallows. The researchers filmed the children as they sat there waiting, and discovered that they had all sorts of mechanisms for distracting themselves. They'd play games, look at something else in the room, etc. As the New Yorker article puts it, "These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist."

So what, right? Well, follow up studies 3-4 decades later have found that, on the whole, the children able to delay gratification were doing much better in life. In high school, those with the most self-control had SAT scores that were, on average, 210 points higher than the kids who could only wait 30 seconds. The same pattern held in the career world, and in things like body mass index (kids who can't resist a marshmallow can't resist the donuts as grown-ups). As journalist Jonah Lehrer writes, "For decades, psychologists have focused on raw intelligence as the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life. Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework. 'What we're really measuring with the marshmallows isn't power or self-control,' Mischel says. 'It's much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can't control the world, but we can control how we think about it.'"

While it's typical New Yorker to downplay IQ, this could be an interesting piece of the puzzle for those dealing with gifted children. In general, people with higher IQs do better in life than those with lower IQs, but there are always plenty of high IQ people who don't seem to be able to succeed in the adult world. Some just don't fit in, but others seem to be shooting themselves in the foot with their inability to pass their college classes if they have to work at it, or hold a job for reasonable periods of time if things don't immediately go their way. Perhaps these people would have scored lower on self-discipline tests as children.

Of course, the other question is whether self-discipline is innate and hard-wired or can be learned. Lehrer raises several points that suggest it can be partially taught. When researchers taught children how to distract themselves from the marshmallows, far more were able to do it. But who knows if that will last past a half-hour research session. Some of the KIPP Academies, known for helping underprivileged children with high standards and strict discipline, are trying specifically to teach children habits of self-control. And some parents do this automatically. No, you can't watch TV or have dessert until after dinner. No, you can't open presents until Christmas morning. You have to wait until after your brother plays with that toy. Maybe these turn out to be very important lessons.

Do High School Exit Exams Work?

The "standards" movement has been brewing for quite a while, and one result is that about half of states now require something called a high school exit exam. Several years ago, there was a spate of stories about high school graduates being unable to read their diplomas, so states began adding exit exams to their graduation requirements in order to signal to employers and higher education institutions that a high school diploma meant something. It does not signal much -- exit exams are often based at around an 8th-10th grade level of knowledge -- but it should signal something.

Has it worked? At least one study looking at California's High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) says "not really." You can read the recently released results from Stanford here. The researchers made several efforts to control for variables that often confound social science research.

The study found that of bottom quartile students, those subject to the CAHSEE requirement graduated at a significantly lower rate than those who weren't (50 percent vs. 35 percent). Interestingly, while white students did not see large drops in graduation rates, minority groups did, including Asians. The Stanford researchers talk a lot about stereotype threat to explain why -- for any given level of performance on the California Standards Tests -- minority students had lower CAHSEE pass rates, but I'm not convinced on this point. After all, the California Standards Tests are tests, too. Why would the stereotype threat affect one set of assessments but not another? The difference in pass rates is quite curious and deserves more study.

The study's point, though, was not so much about graduation rates. After all, lower graduation rates are going to be inevitable if the CAHSEE is doing its job of screening out people who should not graduate in the first place. The benefit of such a test would be if it spurs higher academic performance among low performers who might on the margin make it. At least according to this study, though, there was no rise in academic performance among students subject to CAHSEE compared with those who weren't.

Personally, though, I think the high school exit exam phenomenon could be more useful for another reason. I think these exams should really test what a high school graduate should be expected to know. They should be extremely rigorous -- covering four years of English, four years of math, history, foreign language, etc. And then -- this is the key part -- they should be available to anyone who wants to take them, and people who score above a certain level should qualify for a high school diploma. That may include older adults (obviously the GED serves this purpose, more or less). But it should definitely include younger gifted students who'd like to go to college early and still be considered high school graduates. Why not? If you already know the material that is to be covered in high school, all graduating shows is that you also have an ability to go sit in a seat somewhere that someone else tells you to for 180 days a year. This probably is a valuable signal to employers, though our economy is changing in that way too. Few of us work in factories anymore. Something to keep in mind.

One Day a Week

I was excited to see an article from The Tampa Tribune a few days ago called "School board to consider expanded gifted program." Given that many districts are talking about cutting funding, how nice to see one place where gifted students' needs are being considered in the mix!

A closer look, though, brought up many of the issues we've been talking about here in the past. The school board planned to meet to discuss a proposal that all gifted students in Brooksville would be able to spend one day a week at the Quest Academy gifted center in Spring Hill. I'm sure whatever these kids would be doing at the center would be fun and more engaging than what they're doing in their home classrooms. It's also nice to be able to spend one day a week with your intellectual peers.

But here's the question: Why only one day a week? It seems we're back to the pull-out approach, with gifted kids getting one day a week of special programming, when what they need is academic work on a daily basis that challenges them to the extent of their abilities. It leads me to a new rule for designing gifted programs. If you're not willing to do whatever it is you're proposing for the lion's share of a child's instructional time, it's probably not really going to meet their needs. And it's going to sow a lot of discord, as the comments below the article make very clear.