Vacation Homework

Gifted Exchange readers with middle or high school children may be personally involved in one of the latest educational controversies: the idea of homework, especially over weekends and vacations. As schools close for the holidays today, many kids will come home with assignments to be completed before they return in January. Is that a good thing or bad thing?

Two books that hit shelves this year from respected education writers (Alfie Kohn's "The Homework Myth" and Sara Bennett's and Nancy Kalish's "The Case Against Homework") claim the latter. These books have gotten a lot of attention. Bennett and Kalish were on the Today Show, for instance. On national television, they told parents that the amount of time kids devote to homework has "skyrocketed," to the point where kids are losing out on quality time with family, educational play opportunities, etc.

I've long been suspicious of this claim, so I'm glad to see that Washington Post education columnist Jay Matthews has likewise poked some holes in this argument. In late November, his column, The Weak Case Against Homework, notes that the studies both sets of authors cite hardly show an oppressive load. In the past two decades or so, the time 6-8 year olds spend on homework has increased from 8 minutes a day to 22 minutes a day. As Matthews points out, that's less than the time it takes to watch one episode of SpongeBob Squarepants. For 15-17 year olds, the ones supposedly crushed by homework these days, the daily homework burn rate has increased from 33 minutes in 1981 to 50 minutes in 2003.

Maybe 22 minutes or 50 minutes is too much if such work takes time away from other edifying pursuits. But 15-17 year olds, by some estimates, spend about 2.5 hours each weekday on TV and other non-studying related screen time (ie, cruising MySpace and IM-ing friends). Matthews notes in amazement that Kalish and Bennett try to nuance this figure by claiming it's so cozy to cuddle up and watch Lost together as a family.

Matthews (and I) agree with the anti-homework crusaders that much of the homework kids get assigned is dumb. Worksheets may drill and kill. Far better to assign reading and ask kids to bring in comments to class for discussion. It amazes me how many teachers do not ask kids to read a chapter in a textbook, or a primary document, before the subject is first broached in class. Won't kids get more out of a lecture if they're not encountering the material for the first time? Extended research may also be best done at home, when kids can synthesize and delve into issues before being whipped over to the next subject by a bell 50 minutes later.

But... and here's the big "but." Spending two hours a day watching TV is pretty dumb, too. Why not devote more energy to calls for better homework and more academically rigorous schools instead of penning an ode to watching Lost together as a family? Bennett and Kalish got the idea to write their book because their own children were suffering under a high load of homework in a very upscale school. The average child, on the other hand, hardly suffers from this excess of expectations. I'm still reeling from a figure I cited on this blog last week (that only 18 of 100 high school freshmen graduate from a 2-year college within 7 years or a 4-year college within 10). Spending a few hours over Christmas vacation reading or studying hardly seems like a worse way to spend the time than playing video games.

Ages 6 and Up?

I spent my weekend doing some Christmas shopping. There are a few children on my list. Some of them are extremely gifted. This raises the question that I'm sure many parents on this blog have encountered. What on earth do the age guidelines on toys mean when it comes to developmentally advanced kids?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission regulates these little "Ages 9 through 12" messages found on toy boxes. If you want to read their reasoning on the different categories, you can find the PDF file here. The CPSC chooses the guidelines based on many different criteria. Some, such as motor control and choking hazards, apply to most kids. Others, such as complexity, role-playing, strategizing and other things, can lead to the same problems if you follow the guidelines as you get by putting a highly gifted 8-year-old in a regular 3rd grade classroom. Once, I was considering a toy labeled for 3-5 year olds that said it would help a kid learn her letters in a fun way. The 4-year-old in question, though, was already reading whole books and writing stories. If I'd chosen the alphabet game, she probably would have just made a castle out of the box (not that she wouldn't anyway... 5-7 year olds can really get into creative role-playing, and so do gifted 4-year-olds).

I'm curious how people get around this. How do you choose toys for bright toddlers that don't have small parts, but still involve a reasonable level of complexity? How do you choose toys for gifted preschoolers that don't involve high levels of motor control, but also won't bore the kid? Are there any particular toys you'd recommend for shoppers facing these dilemmas? We still have a few shopping days left...

Middle School Honors Classes Come to Grosse Pointe

Thanks to a Gifted Exchange reader for sending in this item. According to The Grosse Pointe News, the Grosse Pointe, Michigan school board recently approved a proposal to add honors science and social studies classes in middle schools. The board chose to do this in order to make the curriculum more rigorous. While many middle schools in Michigan and elsewhere have honors math or English classes, for some reason other subjects tend to not be viewed as needing such rigor. There's no real reason for this, but so it goes. Grosse Pointe decided to change this and do ability grouping (or "readiness grouping") for most subjects. For this they should be commended.

I also don't see why it's particularly controversial. Is math so different from science in a way that makes ability grouping OK for one and not the other? But true to form, some educators decided that they needed to protest. The Grosse Pointe News is subscription-only, but I thought I'd share a few choice quotes from recent articles.

For instance, Roger Hunwick, a social studies teacher, says that "separating diverse learners" is against teaching philosophy. Dissident board member Alice Kosinski says that "Tracking and segregating students is contradictory to our strategic plan." Strategic plan for what -- mediocrity?

And then there's the kicker from dissident board member Angela Kennedy. She notes, "I am concerned about the trend of high school academics demanding college level achievement. I cannot support the transformation of middle school into high school. I'm worried that we are raising a generation of uber children who can read early but never enjoy literature, who are challenged but not engaged (and) who burn out before graduate school."

Uber children? Graduate school? New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg mentioned a fascinating new study in a Wall Street Journal column the other day that found that only 18 of 100 high school freshmen will graduate from a 2-year-college within 7 years of starting high school, or a 4-year-college within 10 years. Kennedy's worries that rigorous classes will make children burn out before graduate school are a bit misplaced. Very few children even make it to the point where graduate school is an option under our current educational set-up.

On the other hand, some evidence does suggest that children who try accelerated classes, even if they don't do so well, are more likely to go to college than those who don't. So cheers to Grosse Pointe for taking the risk of adding honors classes for middle schoolers, despite the opposition.

Specialization

As a belated birthday present to myself, I went to a matinee performance of the Nutcracker today. New York City Ballet has been performing this Christmas masterpiece for over 50 years now, ever since George Balanchine stamped his vision on Tschaikovsky's music.

Starring several children, the Nutcracker is always a crowd pleaser. But it was watching the young adult principal dancers of the NYC Ballet company that really got me thinking. In fields like ballet, becoming a top-tier professional takes decades of practice. With dance, especially, you have to commit to training your body into the correct form and technique quite young -- often, younger than a child could rationally make a decision about wanting to be a professional dancer on her own (well, all of us probably did want to be professional ballerinas at some point -- but before a child could rationally size up the situation and decide it was feasible). Unless the child's parents make a decision that they will commit the child to that kind of intense training, the child will not become a principal ballet dancer years hence.

Other fields don't have quite the same unforgiving age elements as dance, but certainly it is easier to learn to play an instrument and read music when our brains are new enough to learn other languages easily. Early problem solving training also makes new mathematical leaps second nature. All of these issues raise the question for parents: When are you being a pushy parent when you allow or encourage a child to spend hours a day training in a subject, and when are you trying not to cut off a child's future career choice?

It's a tough question. Certainly if a child hates an activity, or is even indifferent, making big commitments of time, money or energy toward a future career is silly. Making a living as a musician or a dancer is almost impossible. If the child doesn't love it, he'll never survive. So following the child's interests is key. Asking for an evaluation from a trusted adult who's had a career in the field is important. Maybe 2 or 3 adults. Prodigies I've interviewed also recommend allowing "breaks" from time to time. If the child gets truly frustrated with her instrument or her arabesques (not just tempted by what's on TV), don't force it. If you force it, the kid will quit for good. Children who love what they're doing will eventually come back to their avocation, maybe with a different teacher or a different approach.

Beyond that, I guess it just has to be a gut decision -- and one with no guarantees. You can study ballet intensely for decades and still never wind up in the NYC Ballet program. But if you don't study intensely for decades, you definitely won't.

Gifted Adults (and Grindhopping)

This post will be both about a serious topic... and a shameless plug for my new book, which I just learned is now available at Amazon.com (not just for pre-order; they're actually shipping! You can order in time for Christmas, in case anyone on your list likes career books). It's called Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues, and is published by McGraw-Hill. The thesis is that if you're a young, ambitious person with out-of-the-box career aspirations, you don't have to pay your dues in the corporate grind to get anywhere. You can hop out of it, and build a micro-business or freelancing venture doing what you love, without much capital or experience. Indeed, thanks to technology, there's never been an easier time to do just that.

So what does this have to do with gifted education? Well, it turns out that Grindhoppers, as I call them, are often grown-up gifted children (gifted adults, in the official terminology.) Like gifted children, gifted adults tend to have certain characteristics that make them different from average. There's a list of some of the characteristics posted here.

Many of these characteristics make climbing up a typical corporate hierarchy difficult. For instance, gifted adults tend to be perfectionist, both toward themselves and others. There's little "go along to get along." They can also be very aware of slights and moral issues, all of which are part and parcel of group dynamics. They often feel out-of-sync with others, so they don't like to identify with groups. They question authority and rules. They have many interests and learn things rapidly -- far faster than a career track ("we promote people to senior account manager only after 3 years") says they can.

Of course, while all these characteristics make climbing a hierarchy unpleasant, they make gifted adults into great entrepreneurs. As anyone who's run a business knows, when you're in charge, and when it's your idea on the line, you have to learn to do everything. You have to learn to do it yesterday. And you have to be better than everyone else at what you do, which makes perfectionism a good thing. You can also run your business based on whatever morality you think is right. For instance, one of my Grindhoppers' new start-up ventures, GreenPrint, was profiled yesterday in Walter Mossberg's column in the Wall Street Journal. GreenPrint stops your printer from printing wasted pages, e.g., ones with just a line of text, like the copyright statement at the bottom of a webpage. This particular Grindhopper really values the environment, and so can run a company that exists both to make money and to save trees.

I certainly did not ask my subjects' IQs, nor did I ask if they'd been in gifted classes growing up. But I could certainly sense the same impatience that I'm sure many readers of this blog see in their children.

Anything but IQ

New York City's public schools, according to a news release from Florida State University, recently decided to switch from using IQ tests to identify gifted students, to using something called the Gifted Rating Scale. The GRS was developed by FSU prof Steven Pfeiffer, who was the head of Duke's TIP program for awhile, and has written about gifted educaion. You can read about it here.

According to the article, about 400 school districts use the rating scale (so I'd love to know if any of your children's districts are among them). The scale measures children in six areas: intellectual ability, academic ability, creativity, artistic talent, leadership and motivation. Teachers evaluate the children on these scales.

Since Pfeiffer has spent so much time around gifted kids, I'm sure his GRS is meant to make the concept of giftedness and gifted education more palatable to school systems, not to undermine gifted education.

However, I have to admit I'm wary of it. Given how few teachers have extensive training in gifted education, basing the criteria on teacher observations seems prone to problems. Also, a highly motivated child, or a child who motivates others (and hence, is gifted in the leadership category) will certainly be a successful child -- but that's not what giftedness has traditionally meant. The traditional thinking is that gifted children need more advanced work than even a good grade-level class can provide in order to stretch their brains. Motivated children who are good leaders may not. Also, the "academic" scale seems designed to mollify people who complain about students who get straight A's and yet are not labeled gifted. But giftedness and good grades are not the same thing. That's one of the reasons that just using teacher evaluations is a problem.

Of course, I have not seen the scale in practice. I'd love to be proven wrong if anyone has seen it used to great effect. Either way, I do have a question. What's so horrible about IQ anyway? IQ tests may try to put a precise number on something that's hard to measure precisely, but we don't know exactly how many calories the human body needs per day, either. Yet we know that a starving person should be fed. Quibbling about definitions of giftedness, and how to measure it and identify it, can keep us from meeting kids' needs if we're not careful.

College Admission "Madness"

It's college admissions season again (with deadlines approaching!) That means we're in for another round of stories on how the college admissions process has become ever more insane. I always roll my eyes a little at these stories, because they've been repeated every year for the past decade. I remember a New York Times magazine cover story back in spring 1996 that followed four high-achieving seniors at a large high school who applied to Harvard. Only one got in. Harvard had an especially low admission rate that year because the SAT had been recentered, which raised most students' scores. Suddenly, people who hadn't been in the top buckets for colleges were, and decided to give it a whirl. Now, in 2006, we're getting stories like $15k to Get into Harvard: How to Stop the Madness about a young lady who's pondering spending $4500 to go volunteer in Thailand because it will look good on her applications.

The net result of all this furor is not positive. When Money/CNN runs a story talking about how one family is spending $15,000 to help get their kid into college, families who can't spend that kind of money start thinking maybe their child isn't college material. In reality, the vast majority of college-bound students wind up at one of their top choice schools. Most colleges actually admit most of their applicants.

The stories also mask another reality. Guess what? A lot of highly gifted kids actually enjoy the college application process (even as they fret about the very public nature of the outcome). Here's why:

1. College admissions is a Big Project involving multiple components that aren't simply handed to you in school. Essays, extra-curricular activities... Too many school assignments are one-off little projects. It's fun and mind-stretching to labor toward a big goal, where you have to figure out how all the pieces work together.
2. It's a Big Project with an obvious purpose. Why did I get graded on the coloring skills I used to shade in a map of all the former Soviet Socialist Republics in school once? I have no idea. But I knew exactly why I was putting a lot of effort into getting into a good college.
3. I learned about platform building. College counselors often talk about kids finding a 'hook' -- something that makes them stand out. What makes me a compelling candidate? What's my "story"? This is 100% the same question you need to ask when you're trying to sell a book proposal. It's a question you need to ask for any award, for landing some jobs, etc. It's also a question you rarely ask in school before the college application process.
4. College applications pit you against the best kids in the whole country (and world, sometimes). Gifted kids get a little bored being pitted against the same 2 other kids they've been in programs with since 3rd grade. New competition helps you sharpen the saw.

Are any families who read this blog going through the process right now? I'm curious if you find it stressful... or fun.

On Raising Mr. Smartypants -- A Parent's Perspective

I really appreciate all the blog topic suggestions Gifted Exchange readers have been sending me. I will try to get to all of them in the next few weeks, and please keep them coming! I wanted to share one fun and thought-provoking article that came over the transom from Kim Moldofsky, a regular reader of this blog. She wrote an essay for the Chicago Parent about "Mr. Smartypants," her son. You can read the essay here.

As she writes, on one hand, it's thrilling to have a six year old who likes to talk about Big Ideas from his booster seat. On the other hand, it's almost impossible to find a good school situation for such a child. Kim writes about her sadness as her first grader's essays devolved from his theories of the universe to "I like cars." Too often, gifted kids learn in school that curiosity only makes you miserable.

The essay still has its light moments, though. A favorite line: "I thank goodness I didn't breastfeed because those extra IQ points he might have gained would have put me over the edge. He already has so many ideas that seem way too big for his little head and questions that are too hard to answer. Even my husband, a veritable walking encyclopedia, gets exasperated at times. 'I can handle questions about sex, but this stuff about quantum physics is really awkward to address,' he says as he again attempts to hide our copy of Einstein for Beginners." I'm sure many readers will be able to relate.

Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom

One of the critiques levied against this blog when I asked a few months ago was that I'm impractical. I tend to have as utopian a vision of what gifted education should be as many educators who don't like gifted education have about schooling in general. In my world, all highly gifted kids should be in self-contained classes -- or even schools! -- that challenge them to the extent of their abilities in an environment with their intellectual peers.

Obviously, few gifted kids experience this. Most people, alas, are still required to live in the real world. The vast majority of gifted kids still attend regular classes in regular schools. They may be in the top math or reading group, but most of the day still features grade 3 curriculum if you're 8 in September, grade 4 if you're 9, and so on. Many parents and schools, for whatever reasons, don't feel comfortable with whole grade acceleration. Many parents don't feel they can homeschool effectively. So how can schools maximize outcomes for gifted kids in the regular classroom?

I've been reading the "orange bible" on the subject, Susan Winebrinner's "Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom." A perpetual best-seller among teachers, this book describes multiple ways of differentiating heterogeneous classrooms. It would make a great holiday gift for any educator.

One of my favorite suggestions is to allow kids to "buy back time" from the various lesson plans. If kids can show they already know how to do the most difficult work in any given unit at an 80% competence, they can buy the time to work on their own projects. The teacher should help the child set goals for this individual project (such as writing a book -- one chapter this week, one the next, etc., or working on geometry, covering spheres this week, angles the next, etc.) Then the kid keeps track of progress toward the goal (a way of learning self-discipline, by the way). This option is available to any kid in the classroom, but tends to work best for gifted kids. This eliminates the kid sitting around waiting for everyone to finish up. She already has permission to go play to her strengths in her "choice time" (not "free time").

Of course, I can't help remembering, reading this book, that systems are only as good as how they work when the average person implements them. Any teacher who can implement all the suggestions in the book -- who designs individual plans for the kids in her class, encourages them to write books or do other big projects and tracks progress toward a goal, and is willing to squeeze the curriculum into an hour a day for a kid if that's all she needs -- is already an outstanding, energetic teacher. Any student would be lucky to land in that classroom, gifted or not!

It's easier to teach roughly the same thing to everyone in a class. The beauty of ability grouping (or "readiness grouping" as we called it in the last post) is that it fails better. I wish all teachers were energetic and excellent, but a self-contained gifted class will still meet these students' needs to some extent even if the teacher is not so energetic or excellent. Heterogeneous classrooms led by mediocre teachers will not.

But anyway, I'm curious what other methods your children's teachers have used to differentiate within a regular classroom.

Readiness v. Ability

Blog reader Robin, the mom of a highly gifted sixth grader, sent me this link to the Duke Gifted Letter the other day. This particular issue has a two expert back-and-forth about abilty grouping.

While the evidence from various studies shows that ability grouping is the best option for gifted kids (kids learn best when they're challenged in an environment with their intellectual peers) it remains somewhat controversial. Schools usually tolerate different math groups, for instance, but won't differentiate for most other subjects until high school.

Anyway, one of the experts interviewed for the Duke letter said that "readiness" was a much more potent word than "ability." Reading into her words, I think she means that ability implies something set and unchanging -- it's a value judgement. But readiness is a simple statement of the facts. Some kids are ready for more advanced reading, and some aren't ready yet. That doesn't mean they won't ever be ready. They just aren't right now. "Readiness grouping" implies a correct match, at a particular point in time, for a kid's needs.

So I think it's a great phrase, one gifted advocates should consider using instead of "ability grouping." I'm curious what everyone else thinks.

On Being "Well-Adjusted"

Please keep posting on the parenting books thread -- I really appreciate it! One of the comments, though, had me thinking about the concept of gifted kids being "well-adjusted," so I thought I'd do a separate post on the topic. All parents want this for their children -- for them to have a happy social life, be resilient, etc. Unfortunately, I think this is more possible for gifted children once they grow up than it is for them when they are children. That's because adults can set up their lives in ways that make them happy, fulfilled, etc. Children don't have this option -- mostly because that's part of being a kid.

For instance, I'm pretty happy with my life right now. What a reason to be grateful, right? I work from home, so my desk is as messy and disorganized as I wish. It's got bits and pieces of different projects scattered everywhere. No one let me get away with that in school! I work on projects when I want to work on them. And I choose my own projects. So naturally I gravitate towards ones I find fascinating. I always had a bit of trouble sitting still; fortunately, by running my own small business, I rarely get stuck in meetings that don't directly pertain to me. I have friends of all different ages, and I rarely spend too much time with people who aren't smart or inquisitive. Because the bulk of my social interactions are with such people, I can handle other interactions with a lot more patience than I had in 8th grade when the only conversation going on at the lunch table was about the mall. Nothing about my life looks much like the average kid's class in school, where you interact only with people your age, and only do assignments someone else tells you to do. So no wonder I'm much more relaxed and well-adjusted than I was as a kid!

I've been thinking about how some of these adult choices could have been put in place when I was a kid -- or if that's even possible. Some parts are. For starters, it's more possible for gifted kids to be well-adjusted in self-contained gifted classes than in mixed-ability classes. In mixed-ability classes, you are simply the "smart one," while in gifted classes, other sides of your personality can come out. Voila! You are magically more well-rounded and well-adjusted, just by changing classes. Gifted kids also magically become more well-adjusted when they're allowed to pursue their favorite topics in depth, and when they're challenged. Suddenly, your brain is more engaged. Smart people like it when their brains are engaged. Life is more fun!

But I do understand that it would be pretty hard to run a school where you come and go as you please, do all fascinating work and only interact with people you like. Maybe there are benefits that come with adulthood. I guess this is something to tell a gifted kid who's getting frustrated with school and the rules of being a kid. For all we romanticize childhood in our culture, if you've got an adult brain in a kid's body, it's often better to actually be an adult. So hang on... it'll get better as you get older.

Best Books on Parenting Gifted Kids?

Genius Denied was largely a policy book (about the sorry state of gifted education in this country). Occasionally, people ask me about good resources that focus more specifically on parenting gifted kids. I don't have a favorite book to recommend, so I'm curious if readers of this blog do. Have you found any handbook to be particularly handy? Have any specifically addressed the issue of talent development (helping your child navigate the transition from potential to accomplishment)? What would you like to see in a handbook on raising gifted kids? Thanks!

Specialized High Schools in the Humanities

About a dozen states across the country have created specialized residential high schools for gifted students (usually covering junior and senior years). Most focus on math and science. I've written about my own school, the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities, which also focuses on students with gifts for literature, history, religion and arts studies. At times I've wondered why none of the other schools made it clear that students with humanities gifts needed differentiation as well. I'm happy to report, however, that I was wrong. Texas has such a school as well.

The Texas Academy of Leadership in the Humanities, like the Texas Academy of Math and Science, offers students the opportunity to earn college credit as they also complete advanced high school course work during their junior and senior years. You can visit the school's website here.

I still think the Indiana Academy model is the best, since it combines top programs in math, science and the humanities on one campus. Where should a Texas young person with profound gifts in math and writing enroll? While I don't mind the idea of kids getting to specialize in high school, this seems like a rather arbitrary distinction.

But I'm glad that Texas recognizes that not all gifted kids express their gifts through being, say, math whizzes. I've always been amazed how little differentiation there is in humanities coursework in most schools. Granted, creative assignments (such as writing a paper) can differentiate themselves. But some students in a given grade may be able to focus on the deeper philosophical meanings behind a work, while some are still having trouble understanding the vocabulary words. Forcing all children to follow the exact same lesson plan bores the former and confuses the latter.

I've certainly experienced this in my own life. I know I'm a much better writer than I am a mathematician. Yet I had differentiated math curriculum since fourth grade. Only as a tenth grader did I wind up with an independent study in literature/writing (and that was because I'd enrolled in too "easy" a level of English to start with -- because that was the only course that kept my schedule open enough for me to take a math class with children two years older than me!). While I had a few quite good English teachers along the way -- interspersed with some rather wretched ones -- specialized, accelerated classes simply weren't as high a priority in this subject.

That's too bad, because children with gifts in the humanities, no less than those with gifts in math and science, need to have their creativity honed and trained. They need to be pushed to think deeper, to draw more insightful conclusions. While I wish Texas had combined its schools from the get-go, I'm happy that the Lone Star State recognizes that advances in our society may someday come from right brain types as well.

How "Equality" Hurt Bronx Kids

As many of you know, I live in New York City, which has the best and the worst in terms of public schools. High schools like Stuyvesant, a magnet school for gifted kids from all over New York, are as good as schools get in this country. On the other hand, many students come to Stuyvesant from the city's private elementary and middle schools, because the public options in the early grades are often wretched. That's not always the case. A city that created Stuyvesant certainly doesn't have a blanket hostility to gifted programs, and some isolated pockets of excellence exist. But unfortunately, all it takes is one bad district leader to plow these under in a misguided pursuit of "equality."

That's exactly what's happened in the Bronx. While the Bronx is one of the toughest boroughs in the city, it's got some rather middle-class sections up near the border with Westchester. Many parents of gifted kids in these neighborhoods -- and parents of bright kids in the grittier urban areas to the south -- kept their children in the public schools because of available gifted options. Then a few years ago, a superintendent for the district, Irma Zardoya, set about gutting them. You can read the tale and the aftermath in this article in the New York Sun. It's a rather chilling account of what ideology can do to schools.

As the Davidsons and I wrote in Genius Denied, destroying urban schools' gifted programs hurts all kids, and gifted kids especially -- but it does not hurt all gifted kids equally. The wealthier Bronx parents chose to move across the county line out of city limits. Or they paid for private school. Less well-off kids? They're stuck with the lousier schools they get as a result. Indeed, Bronx test scores have been so-so, and the number of applicants admitted to schools like Stuyvesant is way down. How did that help anyone?

Zooming Ahead Down Under

In response to the many international readers of Gifted Exchange who asked me to be a bit less U.S.-centric, I'm proud to bring you this story from Australia.

In the land down under, there's a saying about "cutting down the tall poppies." Namely, you don't want to stick out, and if you do, others will soon cut you down to size. That's certainly not a universal Ozzie sentiment, but unfortunately, it turned out to be school district policy for a gifted girl named Gracia Malaxetxebarria. You can read her story here.

Gracia, 12, was bored in school and wanted to move ahead a few grade levels. As the article points out, there's some precedent for this in Australia. Terence Tao, who just won the Fields medal in mathematics, was able to skip ahead and start college while he was still a pre-teen. But Gracia's Brisbane school didn't want to allow it. So her family sued and won the right for their daughter to skip grades as necessary.

As with many court cases, there are a few oddities and over reaches involved. I came across another article on the case, here, which says Gracia's mother pushed the court to give her a new home, a car and $500,000 compensation for age discrimination. The court declined to agree to that. But Gracia will be allowed to zoom ahead.

Of course, alert readers may be asking what's the difference between this case and the Levi Clancy case I wrote about last week. Don't both involve using the courts to advance gifted kids' interest?

From my reading, I believe that in the Australian case, the courts were being asked to address the case of an individual who was not given due process and indeed was treated differently than other children because of her age. Gracia had transferred to a private school and accelerated a few years; the public school completely ignored the evidence that she was earning As and Bs in her new grade. Normally, a child would be allowed to transfer to a public school from a private school at the same grade she was currently attending. Her public school was essentially changing its own policies to avoid accelerating the child. The court said that wasn't fair. No one was asking the courts to decree what the Brisbane authorities should spend their public monies on, as the voucher case does in California. I believe that's a question best answered democratically.

But hopefully the ruling in the Gracia case will encourage Australian schools to be more open to acceleration. Tall poppies deserve to grow no less than any other flowers.

The Levi Clancy story (and school vouchers)

Levi Clancy and his mom, Leila, are no strangers to political controversy. In 2002, they lobbied the California state legislature to pass a law allowing any student, of any age, to take the state's high school exit exam and be considered a graduate upon passing. The law authorized schools and districts to include community college classes in gifted kids' individual education plans (IEPs) and also to pay for these classes. The legislature passed the law unanimously, but then-Gov. Gray Davis vetoed it, saying it was too expensive (Levi was already attending community college classes by that time).

Four years later, the family is now taking a different approach to gifted advocacy. They are suing the state to create a mandate for vouchers to be offered to gifted students whose needs cannot be met in the normal K-12 schools. The case was argued before the California First District Court of Appeals in Sacramento yesterday. Leila's attorneys are arguing that she cannot afford to pay tuition at UCLA, and Levi Clancy needs the rigor of a 4-year college program. You can read a press release on the case here.

I have a lot of sympathy for the case. I'm in favor of school vouchers generally, not just for highly gifted kids. As a practical matter, even if California's taxpayers fully funded Levi Clancy's $9,000 UCLA education, they'd be saving money, as the per pupil attendance funding for the Los Angeles Unified School District is about $12,000. There's a good equal protection argument to be made that California residents are entitled to 13 years of education at public expense, wherever that education is obtained. Some California students with disabilities attend private schools at public expense because their local schools can't meet their needs. This case is also about a child with special needs.

On the other hand, I don't like the idea of using the courts to force issues that certainly can be decided democratically. Given how much support Leila Levi's lobbying efforts found in the California legislature a few years ago, going that route might be worth another try. California has a different governor these days, one who might be more amenable to a voucher plan for gifted kids. I understand the impulse to use the courts on both the left (witness the various cases about adequate school funding making their way through the courts) and the right (vouchers). It's clean and decisive (if not necessarily quick). But in my opinion -- and I realize a lot of blog readers will disagree -- solutions for gifted kids will enjoy broader support if they're obtained democratically than if they're forced on a state by the courts.

A Better Approach to Multiple Intelligences

A few weeks ago, I complained about the overuse of the theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) in schools. MI identifies 9 main prisms through which children might learn. Traditional schooling, MI proponents say, focuses too much on logical and linguistic intelligences. While there's nothing wrong with the theory that every child can learn, and many children learn in different ways, MI has often been used as a Trojan Horse to bash gifted programs. After all, if there are multiple intelligences, then every child can be gifted in something. And if all children are gifted, what's the point of gifted education?

Today I came across a story about the Madison Simis Elementary School in Arizona that's attempting to address the idea of different gifts in a more thoughtful way. You can read the Arizona Republic story on the school here.

Principal Joyce Flowers told the AZ Republic that "Every child has a talent... Sometimes it's just a matter of discovering it." But rather than use this theory as an excuse to keep heterogeneous classes in all subjects, the school has actually hired additional gifted instructors, and created advanced classes in multiple different topics. Kids are screened for giftedness in each area individually. If the child shows promise, she's put in the accelerated class for that subject. At the same time, she can attend the regular level classes in other subjects if the tests show that's where she should be.

This careful screening comes a lot closer to the idea of matching the education to the child than either the heterogeneous classes many people champion, or the "130-IQ and up" globally gifted screen many gifted programs use. At Madison Simis Elementary School, it appears that a child who needs more challenge in a particular subject area gets it. While I've not observed the school in person to know if this works in reality (as opposed to in theory) it sounds like a pretty good idea.

Do any of your children attend schools that screen by different subject areas for giftedness?

The Handwriting on the Wall

A recent Washington Post article chronicled the decline of cursive and penmanship instruction in schools.

Apparently, now that an essay is required on the SAT, only 15% of test takers wrote their samples in cursive. Everyone else used block print letters. Why? This is the first generation to grow up with computers available since birth. Most children now type even their early writing assignments. So while schools do a cursory look at cursive, they don't spend hours and hours on it the way they used to.

I have mixed feelings about this, particularly as it relates to gifted children. On one hand, typing requires a lot less fine motor coordination than cursive (and voice recognition software can type for people who can't master a keyboard -- an option not available with pen and paper). One of the things that holds many young gifted writers back is that their fine motor skills haven't developed as fast as their brains and their imaginations. You may have a great story in your head, but it's easy to get frustrated when your fingers make little chicken scratches on a piece of paper. Furthermore, as the Post article notes, studies show that people judge writing more harshly when the handwriting used is poor. Since this has absolutely nothing to do with the content, the widespread use of typing, even in the early grades, should level the playing field in a way that allows insight to triumph over coordination.

On the other hand... My family spent half a school year in California when I was in third grade. My elementary school class in North Carolina learned cursive while I was gone. My California class learned it right after I left. Consequently, I had to (mostly) teach myself the letters. I still am not sure why upper-case Qs look like 2s, but I did discover that I really like making those little squiggles. I write in my journal in cursive. The letters flow quickly in a way that they don't in printed block letters. Research backs this up. Free-flowing letters, the Post notes, correspond to simpler, shorter compositions (that's a good thing, as any teacher who's had to correct a windy, overwrought essay can tell you). Even if you ultimately intend to type, the quick nature of cursive writing has benefits for rough drafts. You can get your thoughts down quickly, then cross out and move sentences around with arrows as you wish.

I'm curious what other people think about the decline of cursive, and whether it's a good or bad thing for young writers. Are your children's schools teaching the topic?

What to do when your budget grows

Some districts in Arizona have recently been faced with the kind of problem educators love to have: The state legislature appropriated more money for gifted education, and all of their budgets are about to rise.

The districts and schools intend to do very different things with the money, however. Some will be more helpful for gifted kids than others. For instance, the Scottsdale Unified School District expects $81,000 for its budget this year, up from $37,000 last year. It plans to use the windfall on "supplemental material," according to this list which ran in the Arizona Republic. Perhaps these workbooks and curriculum packages will be helpful. But I'm inclined to give my thumbs up to the Paradise Valley Unified School District, which plans to spend its $105,000 (up from $44,000) on opening more separate classrooms for gifted students.

When James Kulik of the University of Michigan reviewed 23 major studies on ability grouping a few years ago, he found that gifted students placed in enriched classes gained 4-5 months academically on gifted students left in regular classrooms (over the course of a year). Gifted students placed in accelerated classes (which were trying to move ahead more quickly) gained as much as a whole year compared with comparable students left in regular classrooms.

In other words, we know that gifted kids benefit from self-contained classes. So creating them should be the first order of business for any school that doesn't have them and receives extra money. Hopefully the other Arizona districts will figure this out.

What to do when your budget grows

Some districts in Arizona have recently been faced with the kind of problem educators love to have: The state legislature appropriated more money for gifted education, and all of their budgets are about to rise.

The districts and schools intend to do very different things with the money, however. Some will be more helpful for gifted kids than others. For instance, the Scottsdale Unified School District expects $81,000 for its budget this year, up from $37,000 last year. It plans to use the windfall on "supplemental material," according to this list which ran in the Arizona Republic. Perhaps these workbooks and curriculum packages will be helpful. But I'm inclined to give my thumbs up to the Paradise Valley Unified School District, which plans to spend its $105,000 (up from $44,000) on opening more separate classrooms for gifted students.

When James Kulik of the University of Michigan reviewed 23 major studies on ability grouping a few years ago, he found that gifted students placed in enriched classes gained 4-5 months academically on gifted students left in regular classrooms (over the course of a year). Gifted students placed in accelerated classes (which were trying to move ahead more quickly) gained as much as a whole year compared with comparable students left in regular classrooms.

In other words, we know that gifted kids benefit from self-contained classes. So creating them should be the first order of business for any school that doesn't have them and receives extra money. Hopefully the other Arizona districts will figure this out.