Individual tracking comes to NCLB

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

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

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

Indiana Academy graduation, 2006

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

You can read my speech at my website.

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

Boy Troubles

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss America vs. the Spelling Bees

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

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

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

Another Early College Program

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

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

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

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

Entrepreneurship Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gifted Kids Skip Standardized Tests

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indiana Academy Graduation

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts?

Losing our Programming Edge

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

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

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

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

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

Bullying

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gifted Homeschooling

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

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

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

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

More Books for Gifted Kids

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

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

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

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

Opal Mehta and the Prodigy Puzzle, Redux (another long post)

A few months ago on this blog, I wrote about the dearth of literary prodigies. Mathematicians? Musicians? Sure. But you don't see a lot of teens and early 20-somethings cranking out great literature. I said this was partly due to young people not having experienced the full range of human emotions. But then I was happy to learn a 17-year-old Indian-American woman named Kaavya Viswanathan had written a funny, smart book called "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" about the trials of getting into Harvard. She got a $500,000 3-book contract (the stuff we writers dream about, by the way).

Well, the story appears to be too good to true. Viswanathan lifted whole passages from another young adult novel, then claimed she'd merely "internalized" them from reading the other author's books so many times. Disturbing to me -- though not to others -- is that she shares the book's copyright with a book packager. Apparently, even the idea of this book was not entirely Viswanathan's own. A company helped shape it to be more marketable, and took a chunk of the payment. Normally, an author's agent and publisher help with this, so the fact that her publisher enlisted a book packager implies that they were really pushing to get a young author out there when perhaps Viswanathan's career would have benefitted from waiting (Or not. Many authors would kill to get on the Today show, even if it was because they were accused of plaigerizing).

Anyway, I've been reading about Viswanathan/Opal Mehta at the same time that I saw an Oprah show yesterday on "Little Geniuses." Some of the kids really were. A 16-year-old girl was able to compose piano pieces based on a random series of notes chosen by Oprah. Now, there are rules to that game which makes it less mind-blowing than on first glance, but it's still very impressive.

Others just seemed, well, as well-packaged as Opal Mehta wound up being to get into Harvard. A young man named Noah McCullough was trotted out as a potential presidential candidate in 2032. He's actually written a book (published by Random House) of presidential trivia. He gave pretty vague answers to the political questions, which had Oprah saying she'd vote for him (in reality, he did a political tour last year that was arranged by a Social Security privatization group -- something I support, but which I'm fairly sure Oprah does not -- but hey, why grill a kid on his actual positions?).

Anyway, he reminded me a lot of a kid I went to high school with. This kid had also calculuated the date he intended to become president, and when exactly he could run for Congress. He wore blazers and campaigned in the halls, etc. I Googled my old classmate for the fun of it the other day. He's a corporate lawyer in Illinois. Nothing wrong with that at all. But we've passed the date when he could become a Congressman. Indeed, he could be getting on people's radar screens to run for president in 2012. He isn't.

Saying you want to do something as a kid, and having people humor you or trot you out as the "face" of saving Social Security is one thing. Actually doing it as an adult is another. Likewise, young McCullough may want to run in 2032 as a 37-year-old, but if there's a popular Republican incumbent then, his party won't allow him to. This is the nature of looking at the harsh moment when dreams have to become reality, when one no longer inhabits the when-I-grow-up world. I worry McCullough will hit puberty, get other interests, use his Social Security tour as a package to get into a good college, then encounter a dozen other kids who will campaign just as hard for freshman class president as he does. He'll lose to the kid from a school that sent the most kids to his particular university. And McCullough will say the heck with politics and wind up working for McKinsey.

I have mixed feelings about all this. I truly want bright young kids to have big opportunities. I also know that prodigies stuck in the limelight have a way of flaming out. The problem is that this winds up lending credence to the idea that prodigies flame out, and thus they shouldn't be given special opportunities when they are little.

But gifted kids need to be challenged regardless of what they'll accomplish later in life. That's a matter of simple fairness, not just investing in the future. I'm thrilled that McCullough has been able to indulge his love of presidential trivia. I wish more kids could dive so deeply into something they love. And I was thrilled that Viswanathan got a chance to write. But now any other 17-year-old coming to a publisher with a novel will be greeted with a cold stare. All because some packagers wanted to make a quick buck and pulled a novel out of this young woman quicker than she could actually write it herself, and because a publisher wanted to get a fresh new face out there so badly they didn't vet the manuscript.

I think we need less talk of prodigies, and more of meeting kids' needs. When all highly gifted kids have a chance to satisfy their passions and learn as quickly as they desire, then so-called "prodigies" will be less of media events. They'll just be kids doing what they love. Then, all talented 17-year-old writers will have access to grown-up writers who can help them improve their craft and perhaps try for publication if their pieces are good. The few whose schools or families figure out how to play the game won't be delivered to book publishers keen on making a splash. They won't be seen as newsworthy solely because of their age. And, as a result, we'll have fewer flame-outs.

Talent Searches

Gifted middle school students around the country took the SAT or ACT this winter as part of "talent searches" run by universities including Duke, Northwestern and Johns Hopkins. Most have gotten their results, and some are now signing up for summer programs offered through these universities (for instance, I read the tale of two Texas students who will be attending summer programs on scholarship, here.)

I'm glad these talent searches and summer programs exist. I participated in the Midwest Talent Search in 7th and 8th grade. My school system had a little ceremony called "Achievers All" (we wouldn't want to suggest that not all students achieve, would we?) that honored all talent search participants and others who had good middle school attendance records, etc. I went to academic summer camps at Northwestern because of my SAT scores. It's safe to say the three weeks I spent at Northwestern University each of those summers were the absolute highlight of those years. But then what? Most students who are "identified" as highly gifted through high scores on out-of-level tests go right back into their age-grade level classes. Indeed, I wrote a piece for USA Today three years ago called SAT Talent Searches Lead Nowhere for Many with stories from some of these kids. When information isn't used, it's pretty much useless. Even if you do get a small trophy from the school for your efforts.

So what should happen? Parents and the talent searches need to push schools to have a policy that a high score on an out-of-level test triggers an individual education plan meeting. In an ideal world, a representative from the talent search would also be part of that meeting, to offer ideas for accommodations (many schools and parents aren't aware of all the options).

Schools love talent searches -- you get to advertise about your high scorers -- so I'd love to see the searches play hard ball. If you do nothing with the scores, we cut your school from the program. Any kid, after all, can sign up for the SAT if he wants, on his own. Families can participate even if schools are blacklisted. But if searches made known a list of schools unwilling to accommodate children, that could shake things up a bit.

Spelling Bees

The new movie Akeelah and the Bee, about a girl from LA who wants to compete in the National Spelling Bee, is sparking some renewed interest in these contests. The National Spelling Bee has been a bit of a draw for curiosity-seekers since Rebecca Sealfon shouted out "euonym" to win it in 1997. Indeed, small children who can spell big words are always a TV draw, showing up on Jay Leno, Oprah, etc.

My one run at spelling bee glory was in 4th grade, when I was a runner-up in the 4th (or possibly 5th) grade Washington Elementary School Spelling Bee in Raleigh, NC. I lost when I spelled "attorney" wrong (little knowing that 15 years later I'd marry one). I blame my lapse on the fact that I studied the whole spelling list we'd been given, A-Z, not realizing that the bored teacher tasked with runnning the thing would only ask words from the A section. Turns out I should have concentrated my cramming there.

But I digress. My mixed feelings about spelling bees come not from my own lack of ability to spell, but because they're mostly about memorization. Rebecca Sealfon talks about the memorizing regimen she used in this article from the Nassau Weekly (a Princeton paper I used to write for, here. (Sealfon graduated in 2005 with a biology degree, and also studied creative writing). While Sealfon is very intelligent, broadly, the ability to memorize is not the same thing as intelligence. Intelligence involves piecing bits of information together, discerning patterns, and solving problems. There is some element of this in spelling bees ("eu" is Latin root for "true," "-onym" for name; so if you were told or knew the word meant a well-suited name, you could figure this out). But generally, students who do well in spelling bees have been drilling words from the dictionary into their heads. English is not a language well-suited to discerning patterns and piecing together spellings based on that information.

There is nothing wrong, per se, with a contest that rewards memorization. Nor is there anything wrong with kids devoting themselves to a goal and training hard for it. Kids do this all the time in rather useless sports; the fact that spelling is a rather useless skill these days shouldn't detract from the hard work winners like Sealfon put in to their victories.

The problem is that the population-at-large then thinks the ability to memorize is what being bright is about. Very bright toddlers often memorize things as they try to learn about their world. But being able to recite the long names of dinosaurs does a lot less for you as you get older. The kids on the Leno show may pursue that interest in paleontology when they grow up, but then being "good" at dinosaurs will mean discerning patterns from random bones, recalling links to other species found nearby, and using all the available research tools to learn more about the prehistoric world. I'd love to see a contest for kids that tapped all these skills. Then I'd love to see it get as much press as the National Spelling Bee. But "a-ha" moments don't necessarily make for good television. Or movies. So we get dramatic spelling moments, where the answer is clear-cut. Too bad learning in general doesn't work that way.

Izzy the Impatient

So I was in the children's section of Borders last night looking for a book I'm mentioning in Grindhopping (the picture book is "Big Sister, Little Sister," by LeUyen Pham, who's a great young illustrator if anyone's looking for kids' picture books). While there, I was reminded of something. It's quite difficult to find good kids' books for very bright young kids. This is particularly true for 6- or 7-year-olds who are reading at an adult level. Most adult books have more adult themes than 6- or 7-year-olds can handle. So what do you do? The Harry Potter books are wonderful in this regard, as are Madeleine L'Engle and others whose work can be enjoyed by young and old alike. But even Harry Potter and Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain can be a little dark at times for six-year-olds who have nightmares. I'm curious what books parents have found to be best for these adult-level readers who aren't quite adults.

The other thought I had while there is that the morality tales you see in children's literature are sometimes too cut and dried. Remembering the "Mr. Man" books from my own childhood, I had a brainstorm. I'd love to see a kids' picture book that stated that impatience is not always a bad thing. Gifted young kids are impatient to learn!

I'm thinking a little girl named Izzy could star in this role. She'd be 3. She'd do things like call out words on signs and spell words when people say them. Someone would say "how many is this?" holding up fingers in the supermarket line, and she'd tell them "nine fingers -- that's three threes." Some astonished people would tell her "Slow down little one!" Maybe even well-meaning people like the mailman, neighbors, etc. She's a little confused by this. What did she do wrong?

The plot thickens. She could also have a garden she works on with her parents in the back yard. She gets impatient waiting for the plants to come up and so digs them out. Her mom or dad will then say that sometimes it's not OK to be impatient. It certainly doesn't help the plants. But with learning, sometimes it is OK. There's a lot to learn in this world, and there's no reason to slow down if you don't want to.

Of course, the third thing I observed in Borders is that half the kids' books are now "written" by celebrities, as it's one of the few ways to be sure a book will stand out in the glut of picture books. So I guess I'd have to get Madonna to illustrate Izzy the Impatient if I was going to have any hopes of it going anywhere. :)

Another Early College Story

Following on the Mary Baldwin post, here's a story of a youngster going to an A-list college at an early age. Joe Fang, a senior at North Gwinnett High School in Georgia, is most likely on his way to MIT next fall. He's also 15 years old. You can read his profile in the Gwinnett Daily Post, here .

I found a few absolutely refreshing statements in this article. First, Joe's acceleration began when an elementary school teacher noticed he was very bright, and decided to test him to see if he could take more advanced classes. “She realized that I had a special talent in math,” Joe said. “I did really well, so they let me keep going.” Did I read that right? "They let me keep going..." He was simply allowed to work at his own pace. No one got particularly angst-ridden about it. What a contrast between this situation and the district in Kentucky I wrote about recently that sent a family a bill for having the audacity to put their 5-year-old daughter in first grade!

Second, what about the "problem" of being much younger than his classmates? Apparently Joe didn't get too stressed out about that either. “They knew I was younger, and a lot of them already knew me,” Joe said of his classmates. “I really was not scared at all because I was already used to taking classes with older kids.”

I'm glad Joe had an understanding school system that saw no reason to hold him back when he was capable of doing more advanced work. The article notes that mom and dad are a little worried about sending him so far away for college, but my guess is that he'll do OK. Hopefully there will be a follow up article letting us know, so we can add this story to the "Lives of Purpose" collection from Mary Baldwin.

A Gifted Group Reunites

Mary Baldwin College's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted (PEG) is the only all-women's residential college program for teenage girls in the US. Basically, students skip all of high school and enroll in PEG after (usually) their 8th grade year.

The program has now been around for about 20 years. The school staged a reunion recently, which was covered in the Staunton, VA News Leader in an article by Christina Murphy.

The first young women to attend PEG are now in their 30's. They have entered a variety of professions in addition to raising families. A book about them called "Lives of Purpose" is forthcoming (note to the researchers whose findings will be presented in the book: Are you still looking for a writer?)

Anyway, I find the subject fascinating. These young women, like the young people discussed in the Dropout Nation post, decided not to attend high school for whatever reason. Maybe they were ready for a new challenge. Maybe they were bored, or maybe they didn't fit in well at regular high schools. Skipping high school is almost sacrilege in this country that worships Friday night football games, proms and the like. In a fractured culture, high school is the closest thing to unity we've got. These girls sailed over it.

Like the USA Today All-Star academic teams, there's a word of caution. I'm sure we'll discover as we read "Lives of Purpose" that we haven't heard of any of the first cohorts of PEG women. That's the problem with justifying such programs by claiming they'll produce the leaders of the future who will cure cancer and write the Great American novel, or what have you. Very few people do these things. The chances that the "very few" segment overlaps with the PEG segment of individuals is low.

But, these women have had fairly happy, successful lives. That fact, in and of itself, indicates that high school is not always necessary. Something to think about.

Dropout Nation (Warning: this is a long post…)

Time magazine has a cover story this week called “Dropout Nation,” which talks about this national problem through the lens of one small town known as Shelbyville, Indiana. The magazine did a tie-in on the piece with the Oprah Winfrey show. That means I got a double dose of Dropout Nation and Shelbyville during my daily 4pm jog on the treadmill in front of the TV yesterday.

Anyway, all these photos and camera shots of the bleak Indiana landscape are giving me one main thought. I am so grateful that I am no longer in middle or high school. Time mentions a scene from the cafeteria where “like high schoolers everywhere, they have arranged themselves by type: jocks, preps, cheerleaders, dorks, punks and gamers, all with tables of their own.”

One young woman in the story, Susan, “an honors student her freshman year,” rebels against the scene. “The social cauldron of high school weighed on her. She didn’t get along with the cheerleaders on the yearbook staff. And her avid interest in Stephen King novels and TV shows about forensics earned her a false reputation, she says, as a glum goth girl. So she started ditching class, barreling through the Indiana countryside alone in her Dodge Neon, blasting her favorite song, The Ghost of You, by My Chemical Romance … For her, sitting in a classroom biting her tongue and waiting to graduate when college wasn’t necessarily in her future was a form of inaction. Working, saving money, starting her adult life – that was taking the initiative.”

Oh dear. Substitute Alanis Morissette for the band Susan likes and you could get a good snapshot of my feelings during early adolescence. Mavis Leno (wife of Jay) has a great quote I found once that goes something like “I could be happy my whole life knowing I will never have to live through middle school again.” Beautiful, brilliant Mavis! If she hated it, what hope is there for the rest of us? The one difference between Susan and me is that I was pretty sure college would be better. I also transferred for my last two years of high school to the Indiana Academy, a school for gifted students, that made me stretch my mind and discover that one’s teen years didn’t have to be a complete waste of time.

But back to Dropout Nation. The Time article and Oprah show treatment made it clear that the bleakness of the Indiana landscape is echoed in the bleakness of a lot of high school kids’ lives. The nation’s high drop-out rate (about 1 in 3 kids who start high school won’t finish in 4-5 years) is the result.

Let’s get one bad idea out of the way. The bulk of kids who drop out do not do so because high school is too tough. Time reports that 88% of dropouts received passing grades. “Asked to name the reasons they had left school, more respondents named boredom than struggles with course work.” Indeed, in Genius Denied, the Davidsons and I report that studies find about 20% of high school dropouts actually test in the gifted
range.

Kids drop out because they find that high school is neither challenging nor relevant. Time dances around a response to this, but I’d wager that for the bulk of American kids, these dropouts are absolutely right.

First, the lack-of-challenge part: Oprah did one heart-wrenching segment on a young woman who was the valedictorian of her Tennessee high school. She went to a state university, and floundered in her classes. She was bright but her school demanded little of her to earn those top grades. The cameras also followed a group of bright youngsters from a Chicago school as they toured well-to-do Naperville, Illinois’s high school. One young woman sat in on a trigonometry class and said she thought the teacher was speaking a different language.

The show didn’t dwell long on these issues. It’s easier to make a big deal about the fact that Naperville had a nicer weight room than the Chicago school. But physical facilities are one thing. The lack of challenge to these kids’ brains is the real rotting that’s going on. It wasn’t until I attended the Indiana Academy that I discovered what it was like to study for a test and work hard for my grades. About 40% of college kids require remedial classes to get up to standard. Clearly, a big chunk of young people aren’t pushing their brains – or having them pushed.

Second, high schools were designed for the industrial economy. That economy has almost disappeared. Few people move with a whistle now, but high school students still change classes with a bell. High school kids learn things in discrete units called subjects, just as factory workers do discrete tasks. But my work isn’t divided into subjects. The other day, I was writing a book chapter that delved into calculus (briefly). Combining language arts and math – is that even allowed?

Furthermore, one of the reasons employers have always valued a high school diploma over a GED is that a high school diploma shows you’ll stick with the system. You’ll get up every morning and go somewhere you’re supposed to, and work with the people you’re assigned to, whether you like it or not.

Even that work format is changing. I got up every morning and went somewhere I was supposed to for one year out of college. Then I decided to strike out on my own. This morning I got up at 6:30 am, but yesterday morning I didn’t haul myself out of bed until 9:30am. I just got out of my pajamas a few minutes ago (at 10:30 am EST). If I want to go watch TV, I can, or make myself a snack. All that matters is that the work gets done. True, most workers don’t have this kind of freedom, but there are 10.3 million independent contractors in the US, and there are about 18 million “non-employer businesses” (meaning firms owned, run and operated by one person). These numbers have skyrocketed in recent years. We live how we want for the most part. There is absolutely nothing in the high school curriculum or format that would prepare you for a free agent life, or even the corporate life of most knowledge workers.

I don’t know how to change that. As I’ve said in my other blog posts, attempts to make school more flexible tend to wind up lowering standards, because most people work hardest for external rewards. Homeschooling comes closest to the kind of work many knowledge workers will do with their lives, but it’s hardly a large scale solution. We need more brilliant teachers, more high standards, more links between the workplace and school. We need more rigorous independent projects, more chances to audit community college courses, and more individualized curriculum. I’ll explore some more ideas in upcoming blog posts.

But what’s saddest is that the kids who most realize the irrelevance and lack of challenge in high school are the ones who pay the highest price because of that realization. If you lack a high school diploma, you lose most meaningful job opportunities, and you have very little chance of ever going to college. Because of this, some states are raising the age at which you’re allowed to drop out of high school. It’s an easy solution – but changing the irrelevance and lack of challenge would go a lot farther to restoring America’s competitiveness.

NJ Governor's School Gone... For Lack of $1.92 Million

Unless something changes soon, six hundred bright New Jersey high school juniors will soon receive a rather ominous letter. It will inform them that, thanks for all the work you've done applying for Governor's School -- a prestigious, free summer program for the state's top students -- but the funds were cut retroactively from the 2006 budget. Governor's School no longer exists. Find other plans for the summer.

New Jersey, like many states, has been having budget trouble of late, and has been trying to figure out which programs to cut. Governor's School wound up landing on the chopping block. What's saddest, though, is that the $1.92 million this program cost was the only state funding for gifted education in New Jersey. Local school districts offer programs if they have the cash. Not surprisingly, well-to-do districts are more likely to have the cash than poor ones. Well-to-do students can also afford to attend summer programs for the gifted at various universities such as Johns Hopkins and Harvard. New Jersey just cut one of the only programs that reached gifted kids who weren't well-to-do.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jonathan Last has an op-ed about the cuts in Sunday's paper called "Gifted Students Shortchanged."

Based on some previous discussions on this blog, I don't like the idea of pitting children against children, but Last does point out that the education cuts were not shared equally. Some programs, such as special education, gained funding. New Jersey will spend $1.6 billion on special education next year. No doubt those funds will do a lot of good for special needs kids. But it is sad that the state could find $1.6 billion for special education and absolutely nothing for gifted education. Guess bright kids without extra income are on their own.