A Question of Geography
I promised a few weeks ago that I'd write more about the Davidson Fellows, the decorated group of 17 young men and women who will be awarded $10,000-$50,000 scholarships in Washington DC in late September. I still hope to connect individually with some of them in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, hunting through the $50,000 winners' bios, I noticed an interesting theme.
Raw talent can happen anywhere. But geography plays an important role in turning that talent into achievement.
I noted, for instance, that Davidson Fellow Laureate Katherine Orazem, a young writer, comes from Ames, Iowa. This is a small Iowa town, but not just any small Iowa town. It's also the home of Iowa State University. University communities have certain features that make them more welcoming for gifted young people than other places. For starters, professors at major research universities are smart people who often have smart kids. Having a concentration of smart kids increases the chances that the school district will choose to cluster and challenge them. That doesn't happen everywhere, as I've often written about my home of South Bend, IN (home to the University of Notre Dame and some awful secondary schools). But the odds are on your side.
In addition, the universities themselves offer resources that curious kids can take advantage of. You can audit classes (or enroll for credit). You can find mentors in the form of graduate students and professors. If your talents lie in scientific pursuits, you can possibly gain access to lab equipment that no secondary school will ever be able to purchase.
You don't have to live in a university town to succeed, of course. There are tales of previous Davidson Fellows traveling multiple hours several times per week to do lab work at far away universities. This requires parents who are particularly motivated to commute, or who have the time to do so. This is extremely tough to pull off in a two-income family, which is why it's easier to live in a university town in the first place.
So Yale Fan, winner of a $50,000 prize for technology, lives in Beaverton, Oregon (close enough to Portland State University to do research there). Alexandra Courtis, another young scientist, is from Davis, California. Madhavi Gavini, whose work combines medicine and science, is from Starkville, Mississippi, home of Mississippi State University. The lone musician of the group, Todd Kramer, lives in Port Jefferson, NY, which is on Long Island. While Port Jefferson is not a university town, it is the final stop on a branch line of the Long Island Railroad. I don't know if Kramer took the train or his parents drove him into Manhattan, but Penn Station is just a 5-10 minute subway ride south of the Juilliard school, where he studied.
In other words, geography matters. A child with much musical potential born in rural West Virginia will have a difficult time finding teachers and mentors to nurture that talent. While we all love the story of a diamond in the rough, even these gems must be cut and polished in order to shine. Some locations do a much better job of cutting and polishing than others.
I'm not sure what is to be done about this. If all teachers were trained in identifying gifted children, and all schools had partnerships with the nearest major universities, and all states had residential schools for gifted high schoolers, maybe geography wouldn't be so crucial. But for now, it is.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
Failing Our Geniuses
Time magazine covers the Davidson Academy, and the issue of gifted education, in depth this week. You can read the article here.
Reporter John Cloud spent a week at the Academy meeting the kids (and apparently gawking at Bob's Ferrari, but anyway...) He reached many apt conclusions. Namely, that our schools are just not set up to handle highly gifted children. It's not because they don't know what to do. Acceleration, dual-enrollment, and other such accommodations are well-studied and known to be effective. It's just that we don't like doing them. Such accommodations hint at the idea that some children are -- and will always be -- smarter than others. And in the egalitarian world of education, that is simply not acceptable.
"At the academy, the battered concept of IQ--complicated in recent years by the idea of multiple intelligences, including artistic and emotional acuity--is accepted there without the encumbrances of politics," he writes. "The school is a rejection of the thoroughly American notion that if most just try hard enough, we could all be talented. Many school administrators oppose ability grouping on the theory that it can perpetuate social inequalities, but at the Davidson Academy, even the 45 élite students are grouped by ability into easier and harder English, math and science classes. The school poses blunt questions about American education: Has the drive to ensure equity over excellence gone too far? If so, is the answer to segregate the brightest kids?"
That's certainly one answer -- to congregate such students in a place like the Davidson Academy -- since schools have been so unwilling to do simple things like acceleration. Of course, as Cloud points out, it's a harsh choice for these students to have to move to Reno in order to find kindred spirits. It would be nicer if their home schools could figure out a way to challenge them. But instead, gifted programs wind up being about enrichment. Kids get 90 minutes a week of pull-out on topics such as bugs, or ancient Egypt, or forensics, or what have you, and these programs wind up being open to kids who may not be gifted, but who work hard and get good grades. Why not? Enrichment seems like a reward, not an intervention for kids who desperately need it. So why not reward kids with gumption and determination, regardless of IQ? We cling to egalitarianism and the hard work concept in intelligence even as we recognize that it's only part of the equation elsewhere. I run many hours and miles a week. If I ran more, and had a professional coach, I'd probably be able to run faster. But I would never run as fast as Paula Radcliffe. I simply don't have the physical ability.
Likewise, a child with an IQ of 155 is simply wired differently than a child of average intelligence. We can quibble over how meaningful individual IQ points are, and how high the scale can go, and whether our tests can actually test such a concept accurately, but no one who's been around children of average and extreme intelligence can deny a difference. Cloud talks about listening to the Davidson Academy children speak and realizing how different they sound than others their age (even as he notes that modesty is not a virtue of some).
He uses the standard line that these children will be the ones most likely to solve great problems in the future. Perhaps. That's a difficult argument to make, because plenty of gifted kids turn out to be very normal adults who don't move the world. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be given an education that meets their needs. That's a right we deserve simply for being human. I'm glad to see Time magazine feels the same way.
Time magazine covers the Davidson Academy, and the issue of gifted education, in depth this week. You can read the article here.
Reporter John Cloud spent a week at the Academy meeting the kids (and apparently gawking at Bob's Ferrari, but anyway...) He reached many apt conclusions. Namely, that our schools are just not set up to handle highly gifted children. It's not because they don't know what to do. Acceleration, dual-enrollment, and other such accommodations are well-studied and known to be effective. It's just that we don't like doing them. Such accommodations hint at the idea that some children are -- and will always be -- smarter than others. And in the egalitarian world of education, that is simply not acceptable.
"At the academy, the battered concept of IQ--complicated in recent years by the idea of multiple intelligences, including artistic and emotional acuity--is accepted there without the encumbrances of politics," he writes. "The school is a rejection of the thoroughly American notion that if most just try hard enough, we could all be talented. Many school administrators oppose ability grouping on the theory that it can perpetuate social inequalities, but at the Davidson Academy, even the 45 élite students are grouped by ability into easier and harder English, math and science classes. The school poses blunt questions about American education: Has the drive to ensure equity over excellence gone too far? If so, is the answer to segregate the brightest kids?"
That's certainly one answer -- to congregate such students in a place like the Davidson Academy -- since schools have been so unwilling to do simple things like acceleration. Of course, as Cloud points out, it's a harsh choice for these students to have to move to Reno in order to find kindred spirits. It would be nicer if their home schools could figure out a way to challenge them. But instead, gifted programs wind up being about enrichment. Kids get 90 minutes a week of pull-out on topics such as bugs, or ancient Egypt, or forensics, or what have you, and these programs wind up being open to kids who may not be gifted, but who work hard and get good grades. Why not? Enrichment seems like a reward, not an intervention for kids who desperately need it. So why not reward kids with gumption and determination, regardless of IQ? We cling to egalitarianism and the hard work concept in intelligence even as we recognize that it's only part of the equation elsewhere. I run many hours and miles a week. If I ran more, and had a professional coach, I'd probably be able to run faster. But I would never run as fast as Paula Radcliffe. I simply don't have the physical ability.
Likewise, a child with an IQ of 155 is simply wired differently than a child of average intelligence. We can quibble over how meaningful individual IQ points are, and how high the scale can go, and whether our tests can actually test such a concept accurately, but no one who's been around children of average and extreme intelligence can deny a difference. Cloud talks about listening to the Davidson Academy children speak and realizing how different they sound than others their age (even as he notes that modesty is not a virtue of some).
He uses the standard line that these children will be the ones most likely to solve great problems in the future. Perhaps. That's a difficult argument to make, because plenty of gifted kids turn out to be very normal adults who don't move the world. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be given an education that meets their needs. That's a right we deserve simply for being human. I'm glad to see Time magazine feels the same way.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Is Brainy Baby not so brainy?
It is, of course, the perfect story for snarky journalists: A recent study by researchers associated with the University of Washingon in Seattle concluded that for every hour per day 8-16 month old infants spend watching Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein type videos, they know 6-8 fewer vocabulary words than other children their age. You can read one story (of hundreds) on the topic here.
Everyone loves to make fun of the Baby-Industrial Complex (yes, I bought a Bugaboo stroller... and an Ouef crib...) The explosion of Baby Einstein videos purporting to make one's child smarter is certainly a data point in this trend, and no one can accuse the University of Washington researchers of not knowing how to generate PR. Imagine -- a video designed to make your kid smarter makes your kid dumber! You can hear the snickering seeping out of the newsprint.
But of course, it is almost impossible to prove causal relationships with anything involving childhood intelligence or achievement. The researchers asked about Baby Einstein because these are the videos that babies watch. My guess is that every hour per day that babies spend parked in front of "Days of Our Lives" or "What Not to Wear" likewise corresponds to fewer vocabulary words... as does the number of hours per day they spend parked in front of a blank wall. It's interaction with other people that sparks vocabulary development. If children are watching TV instead of interacting with adults, then they probably will have learned fewer vocabulary words at some arbitrary age.
But TV-v-pleasant-and-educational-adult-interaction is probably not the exact choice many people are making. Small children can be exasperating. If the choice is Baby Einstein v. mommy losing it and teaching the child some very interesting words, I'd say Baby Einstein is the way to go. The videos don't make your child smarter. But I doubt they, specifically, make your child less articulate either.
It is, of course, the perfect story for snarky journalists: A recent study by researchers associated with the University of Washingon in Seattle concluded that for every hour per day 8-16 month old infants spend watching Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein type videos, they know 6-8 fewer vocabulary words than other children their age. You can read one story (of hundreds) on the topic here.
Everyone loves to make fun of the Baby-Industrial Complex (yes, I bought a Bugaboo stroller... and an Ouef crib...) The explosion of Baby Einstein videos purporting to make one's child smarter is certainly a data point in this trend, and no one can accuse the University of Washington researchers of not knowing how to generate PR. Imagine -- a video designed to make your kid smarter makes your kid dumber! You can hear the snickering seeping out of the newsprint.
But of course, it is almost impossible to prove causal relationships with anything involving childhood intelligence or achievement. The researchers asked about Baby Einstein because these are the videos that babies watch. My guess is that every hour per day that babies spend parked in front of "Days of Our Lives" or "What Not to Wear" likewise corresponds to fewer vocabulary words... as does the number of hours per day they spend parked in front of a blank wall. It's interaction with other people that sparks vocabulary development. If children are watching TV instead of interacting with adults, then they probably will have learned fewer vocabulary words at some arbitrary age.
But TV-v-pleasant-and-educational-adult-interaction is probably not the exact choice many people are making. Small children can be exasperating. If the choice is Baby Einstein v. mommy losing it and teaching the child some very interesting words, I'd say Baby Einstein is the way to go. The videos don't make your child smarter. But I doubt they, specifically, make your child less articulate either.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Congratulations to the new Davidson Fellows!
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development just released its list of the 2007 Fellows. These amazingly gifted young people will win $10,000-$50,000 scholarships for their projects, which range from new scientific breakthroughs to musical compositions to short stories.
You can read about these young people and their projects here.
I'll be highlighting a few of their projects in coming weeks, but it will be hard to know where to start!
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development just released its list of the 2007 Fellows. These amazingly gifted young people will win $10,000-$50,000 scholarships for their projects, which range from new scientific breakthroughs to musical compositions to short stories.
You can read about these young people and their projects here.
I'll be highlighting a few of their projects in coming weeks, but it will be hard to know where to start!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Class Size and Gifted Education
It's one of the sacred doctrines of education that smaller class sizes equal better classes. School improvement efforts often focus on lowering teacher-to-pupil ratios, and teachers unions, which have their own economic reasons for supporting such efforts, constantly lobby for smaller classes as well. There's some evidence to support smaller classes; a long-term Tennessee study (discussed on this NEA page) found that students enrolled in smaller classes from an early age are more likely to finish high school on time than those in larger classes (72% vs. 66%). However, the results aren't overwhelming, and achieving the NEA's target of 15 students to 1 teacher would require massive new expenditures (since current rates are often in the 20's or higher). While it makes intuitive sense that when students receive more attention they do better, there's much to be said for teacher quality as well. Some of my most informative classes in college were held in 200-person lecture halls. And some top-performing Asian countries maintain class sizes in the 40's. You can read more about issues with the Tennessee study and the class size argument on the Ed Reform website here.
Anyway, that's the background story on class size, which is what came to mind when I read about a controversy in San Diego about class sizes in gifted education. Apparently the so-called "Seminar" classes in the San Diego Unified School District, which are aimed at students in the 99.6-99.9th percentile on achievement tests, once had a pupil-teacher ratio of 20-1. Due to some funding issues, and a desire to expand the program to cover all students who qualify, the schools now want to expand this to 25-1.
I never like to see gifted education subject to reduced funding levels, but my first thought, reading this story, is that there's no point identifying students as gifted if you're not going to serve them. If the ratio needs to go up in order to serve the gifted population with the available resources, then that's what needs to happen. Those worried about the ratio could better spend their time evaluating teacher quality, as a top notch teacher with 25 students will beat a mediocre one with 20 any day.
That said, the range of readiness levels between gifted kids can be as large as the range in a general classroom, and gifted kids do have special needs. Special education classes usually have lower pupil to teacher ratios because these children require more one-on-one time. I'm curious if parents on this board have experienced larger and smaller gifted classes, and what the difference has been.
It's one of the sacred doctrines of education that smaller class sizes equal better classes. School improvement efforts often focus on lowering teacher-to-pupil ratios, and teachers unions, which have their own economic reasons for supporting such efforts, constantly lobby for smaller classes as well. There's some evidence to support smaller classes; a long-term Tennessee study (discussed on this NEA page) found that students enrolled in smaller classes from an early age are more likely to finish high school on time than those in larger classes (72% vs. 66%). However, the results aren't overwhelming, and achieving the NEA's target of 15 students to 1 teacher would require massive new expenditures (since current rates are often in the 20's or higher). While it makes intuitive sense that when students receive more attention they do better, there's much to be said for teacher quality as well. Some of my most informative classes in college were held in 200-person lecture halls. And some top-performing Asian countries maintain class sizes in the 40's. You can read more about issues with the Tennessee study and the class size argument on the Ed Reform website here.
Anyway, that's the background story on class size, which is what came to mind when I read about a controversy in San Diego about class sizes in gifted education. Apparently the so-called "Seminar" classes in the San Diego Unified School District, which are aimed at students in the 99.6-99.9th percentile on achievement tests, once had a pupil-teacher ratio of 20-1. Due to some funding issues, and a desire to expand the program to cover all students who qualify, the schools now want to expand this to 25-1.
I never like to see gifted education subject to reduced funding levels, but my first thought, reading this story, is that there's no point identifying students as gifted if you're not going to serve them. If the ratio needs to go up in order to serve the gifted population with the available resources, then that's what needs to happen. Those worried about the ratio could better spend their time evaluating teacher quality, as a top notch teacher with 25 students will beat a mediocre one with 20 any day.
That said, the range of readiness levels between gifted kids can be as large as the range in a general classroom, and gifted kids do have special needs. Special education classes usually have lower pupil to teacher ratios because these children require more one-on-one time. I'm curious if parents on this board have experienced larger and smaller gifted classes, and what the difference has been.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Mensa-Wannabe Moms
The Savannah Morning News ran a humorous column called "Mommy I don't want to be a child prodigy" a few weeks ago. Columnist and new mom Anne Hart made fun of the British family that had their 2-year-old child (Georgia Brown) take the Mensa test. She passed and got in, which in theory could set off a lot of dithering among other parents. After all, we all want to believe our children are brilliant.
But personally, I've never understood the appeal of Mensa. It's so easily mocked (the Washington Post once put a note in the paper asking people to send in stories of Mensa members doing something really dumb -- the phrase "the wise man knows himself to be a fool" comes to mind). There's obviously something to be said for being around smart people socially. That's one of the reasons ability grouping is so important for kids. But with some careful career planning as an adult, you can work in an office of very smart people. With some careful social planning, your group of friends will share your intelligence. Kids can't choose their lives and choose who they spend their time with. Adults can. Which makes Mensa seem less necessary.
But I could be wrong! I'm curious if any readers of this blog have joined Mensa, thought about it, joined and quit, or what have you. Have your children ever expressed interest? Is there a place for a social organization made up of intelligent people? Or in this era of "bowling alone" is this another group that will lose clout?
The Savannah Morning News ran a humorous column called "Mommy I don't want to be a child prodigy" a few weeks ago. Columnist and new mom Anne Hart made fun of the British family that had their 2-year-old child (Georgia Brown) take the Mensa test. She passed and got in, which in theory could set off a lot of dithering among other parents. After all, we all want to believe our children are brilliant.
But personally, I've never understood the appeal of Mensa. It's so easily mocked (the Washington Post once put a note in the paper asking people to send in stories of Mensa members doing something really dumb -- the phrase "the wise man knows himself to be a fool" comes to mind). There's obviously something to be said for being around smart people socially. That's one of the reasons ability grouping is so important for kids. But with some careful career planning as an adult, you can work in an office of very smart people. With some careful social planning, your group of friends will share your intelligence. Kids can't choose their lives and choose who they spend their time with. Adults can. Which makes Mensa seem less necessary.
But I could be wrong! I'm curious if any readers of this blog have joined Mensa, thought about it, joined and quit, or what have you. Have your children ever expressed interest? Is there a place for a social organization made up of intelligent people? Or in this era of "bowling alone" is this another group that will lose clout?
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Schools Move Toward Following Students' Yearly Progress
A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story on something we've talked about a lot here on Gifted Exchange: using yearly NCLB testing to track individual student results, not just school quality. As it is, schools are graded based on the scores of fourth graders this year compared with fourth graders last year. But while that tells you if a whole school is stepping up its game, it tells you nothing about individual children. And last time I checked, we learn individually.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is aware of this, and she addressed the topic briefly during her speech at the opening of the Davidson Academy in Reno last summer. A number of states including North Carolina, Ohio and Florida have started participating in a pilot program that tracks individual results on achievement tests, comparing a fourth grader this year with the same kid as a fifth grader next year.
The New York Times article, "Schools Move Toward Following Students' Yearly Progress on Tests," by Winnie Hu, ran on July 6th. That means it's been moved to Times Select and, alas, is not available for free anymore. But here's the rather interesting opener: "The Cohoes city school district, outside Albany, is considering a gifted program for elementary students and adding college-level courses after discovering that its top students improved less on standardized tests in the past two years than everyone else in the district."
Yes, it seems that tracking individual test results shows what gifted education advocates have been saying for a while. Gifted kids are often being left behind. While they may continue to pass grade-level achievement tests, they are not truly learning as much as they could. That the Cohoes district is using this new knowledge to create new gifted programs is reason to celebrate indeed.
There's much to love about individual test result tracking. Schools with large concentrations of disadvantaged children like the concept because it means that they get credit if these kids improve, year over year, even if the kids don't meet a certain set cut-off. Schools that shortchange their brightest students will also be more likely to have a fire lit beneath them. So who's against it? Well, according to Hu's article, it's the usual suspects.
"It's detrimental for education," Aimee Bolender, the president of Dallas's American Federation of Teachers chapter told Hu. "It is pulling apart teams of teachers and it doesn't look at why test scores are low. From the very beginning, we viewed it as a slippery slope that did not do anything valuable to improve the educational environment in the schools." Bolender is fighting a decision by Dallas to remove 30 teachers whose students failed to show adequate progress. Bolender said many teachers call this individual growth model "voodoo math" because "you have to be a Ph.D. in statistics to even comprehend it."
And then there's Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust (which advocates for disadvantaged children). She told Hu that the individual growth model might put too much (!) attention on kids at the top. "It risks so broadening the federal government's involvement that its historical role will be dissipated," she told Hu.
So there you have it. The people who are upset about this don't like it because it means removing bad teachers from classrooms and focusing on gifted kids. From my perspective, that means there's a lot to like.
A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story on something we've talked about a lot here on Gifted Exchange: using yearly NCLB testing to track individual student results, not just school quality. As it is, schools are graded based on the scores of fourth graders this year compared with fourth graders last year. But while that tells you if a whole school is stepping up its game, it tells you nothing about individual children. And last time I checked, we learn individually.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is aware of this, and she addressed the topic briefly during her speech at the opening of the Davidson Academy in Reno last summer. A number of states including North Carolina, Ohio and Florida have started participating in a pilot program that tracks individual results on achievement tests, comparing a fourth grader this year with the same kid as a fifth grader next year.
The New York Times article, "Schools Move Toward Following Students' Yearly Progress on Tests," by Winnie Hu, ran on July 6th. That means it's been moved to Times Select and, alas, is not available for free anymore. But here's the rather interesting opener: "The Cohoes city school district, outside Albany, is considering a gifted program for elementary students and adding college-level courses after discovering that its top students improved less on standardized tests in the past two years than everyone else in the district."
Yes, it seems that tracking individual test results shows what gifted education advocates have been saying for a while. Gifted kids are often being left behind. While they may continue to pass grade-level achievement tests, they are not truly learning as much as they could. That the Cohoes district is using this new knowledge to create new gifted programs is reason to celebrate indeed.
There's much to love about individual test result tracking. Schools with large concentrations of disadvantaged children like the concept because it means that they get credit if these kids improve, year over year, even if the kids don't meet a certain set cut-off. Schools that shortchange their brightest students will also be more likely to have a fire lit beneath them. So who's against it? Well, according to Hu's article, it's the usual suspects.
"It's detrimental for education," Aimee Bolender, the president of Dallas's American Federation of Teachers chapter told Hu. "It is pulling apart teams of teachers and it doesn't look at why test scores are low. From the very beginning, we viewed it as a slippery slope that did not do anything valuable to improve the educational environment in the schools." Bolender is fighting a decision by Dallas to remove 30 teachers whose students failed to show adequate progress. Bolender said many teachers call this individual growth model "voodoo math" because "you have to be a Ph.D. in statistics to even comprehend it."
And then there's Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust (which advocates for disadvantaged children). She told Hu that the individual growth model might put too much (!) attention on kids at the top. "It risks so broadening the federal government's involvement that its historical role will be dissipated," she told Hu.
So there you have it. The people who are upset about this don't like it because it means removing bad teachers from classrooms and focusing on gifted kids. From my perspective, that means there's a lot to like.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Anything but Acceleration!
It's been three years since the Templeton report on acceleration, A Nation Deceived, came out. The report established that all the available evidence supports acceleration (aka "grade skipping") as a cheap, effective educational option for gifted kids. Accelerated kids tend to thrive academically, and there are no negative social consequences that lead accelerated kids and their parents to see the acceleration as a mistake.
Too bad so few education "experts" are actually listening. The Orlando Sentinel's Family Project section ran a Q&A from a parent whose 5-year-old son needed more challenge. Should the child be accelerated? The Family Project panel members "prefer not to see a child moved ahead in school," though all agreed that the parent would have to advocate for her son so he'd get the enrichment he needed.
There's just one problem with that advice. Enrichment may or may not happen. Maybe the parent doesn't have the time or expertise to advocate. Maybe the kid's teachers don't know how to enrich the curriculum. The good thing about acceleration is that if you put the kid in a grade where he's actually challenged by the basic material, you don't have to advocate.
But the panel did not mention this. Instead, they repeated the usual odes to socialization:
"The most important part of kindergarten is peer relationships and that's why panelist Maryellen Blass says she doesn't advocate advancement. 'Enrichment can be very easily integrated into kindergarten,' she says.
"Even very bright children need socialization skills more than anything at this age, panelists say. 'It's important to consider the whole child,' agrees panelist Joanne Nigito-Raftas. 'He is in the process of growing socially. If he's placed where he is academically, you may see effects in middle school when he's not at same place as other kids. It's very hard when a child is developmentally not ready.'"
Last time I looked at a sixth grade class, everyone was in a different place developmentally already. And likewise, unless these panelists socialize only with people born within six months of their birthdays, I'm afraid they don't have much of a case. Humans are social creatures, but we grow socially when we hang out with people we enjoy, and with whom we can interact in meaningful ways. A 5-year-old who wants to discuss the themes of the literature he's reading will not grow socially if he must spend all his time with kids who are just learning their letters. You'd think that educational experts would get that. But apparently not.
It's been three years since the Templeton report on acceleration, A Nation Deceived, came out. The report established that all the available evidence supports acceleration (aka "grade skipping") as a cheap, effective educational option for gifted kids. Accelerated kids tend to thrive academically, and there are no negative social consequences that lead accelerated kids and their parents to see the acceleration as a mistake.
Too bad so few education "experts" are actually listening. The Orlando Sentinel's Family Project section ran a Q&A from a parent whose 5-year-old son needed more challenge. Should the child be accelerated? The Family Project panel members "prefer not to see a child moved ahead in school," though all agreed that the parent would have to advocate for her son so he'd get the enrichment he needed.
There's just one problem with that advice. Enrichment may or may not happen. Maybe the parent doesn't have the time or expertise to advocate. Maybe the kid's teachers don't know how to enrich the curriculum. The good thing about acceleration is that if you put the kid in a grade where he's actually challenged by the basic material, you don't have to advocate.
But the panel did not mention this. Instead, they repeated the usual odes to socialization:
"The most important part of kindergarten is peer relationships and that's why panelist Maryellen Blass says she doesn't advocate advancement. 'Enrichment can be very easily integrated into kindergarten,' she says.
"Even very bright children need socialization skills more than anything at this age, panelists say. 'It's important to consider the whole child,' agrees panelist Joanne Nigito-Raftas. 'He is in the process of growing socially. If he's placed where he is academically, you may see effects in middle school when he's not at same place as other kids. It's very hard when a child is developmentally not ready.'"
Last time I looked at a sixth grade class, everyone was in a different place developmentally already. And likewise, unless these panelists socialize only with people born within six months of their birthdays, I'm afraid they don't have much of a case. Humans are social creatures, but we grow socially when we hang out with people we enjoy, and with whom we can interact in meaningful ways. A 5-year-old who wants to discuss the themes of the literature he's reading will not grow socially if he must spend all his time with kids who are just learning their letters. You'd think that educational experts would get that. But apparently not.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Stephanie Pace Marshall and the creation of IMSA
The Illinois Math and Science Academy, a residential high school for gifted kids in Aurora, IL is now 20 years old. It appears to be well-established. The newly appointed school president is actually the former Illinois state superintendent of schools. But none of this could have been predicted when Stephanie Pace Marshall, IMSA's first president, helped establish the school. She recently decided to step down, and this article from the Chicago Tribune talks about her legacy. IMSA has become a leading light in the field of gifted education, training hundreds of kids each year to see math and science as cool (I wish the school name included the humanities, but the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities in Indiana does, and it's partially modeled after Marshall's creation in Illinois). The school has survived budget cuts and constant criticism about its elite nature. It was always a great idea, but great ideas need practical people in order to bring them to fruition. Marshall managed to be both visionary and builder. While about a dozen states now have residential high schools for gifted kids, hopefully Marshall will use some of her free time to push the rest to step up to the plate. I recommend reading the linked article from the Chicago Tribune to get a feel for the debate over these specialized secondary schools, and to learn more about one of the best education ideas to come along in the past 25 years.
The Illinois Math and Science Academy, a residential high school for gifted kids in Aurora, IL is now 20 years old. It appears to be well-established. The newly appointed school president is actually the former Illinois state superintendent of schools. But none of this could have been predicted when Stephanie Pace Marshall, IMSA's first president, helped establish the school. She recently decided to step down, and this article from the Chicago Tribune talks about her legacy. IMSA has become a leading light in the field of gifted education, training hundreds of kids each year to see math and science as cool (I wish the school name included the humanities, but the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities in Indiana does, and it's partially modeled after Marshall's creation in Illinois). The school has survived budget cuts and constant criticism about its elite nature. It was always a great idea, but great ideas need practical people in order to bring them to fruition. Marshall managed to be both visionary and builder. While about a dozen states now have residential high schools for gifted kids, hopefully Marshall will use some of her free time to push the rest to step up to the plate. I recommend reading the linked article from the Chicago Tribune to get a feel for the debate over these specialized secondary schools, and to learn more about one of the best education ideas to come along in the past 25 years.
Monday, July 09, 2007
A Class of Bright Sparks
Like the U.S., Australia has long been trying to figure out what to do with its gifted children. As in the U.S., with its egalitarian culture, Australians sometimes talk about cutting down the "tall poppies." That means that anything that makes someone stick out is viewed as bad. This recent article, A Class of Bright Sparks, from the Brisbane Times, examines the issue in light of the New South Wales system of selective secondary schools. I really recommend reading it.
The issues of achievement and intelligence are hard to separate out, and so admission into these schools is seen as an honor, and the schools are perceived as "better." But, of course, the issue is never entirely clear-cut. Students who obtain admission, but choose to go to "regular" schools do just fine, and plenty of students (some of whom have been coached like crazy) who do go to the elite schools flounder. The article notes that attending the selective schools does not necessarily raise self-esteem, which is obvious to anyone who's ever attended a rigorous, ability-grouped school. You learn the first day that while you were the brightest kid in your previous class, you aren't now!
The article brings up the usual note that educators are divided on whether ability grouping is good for students (though no one who seriously considers the needs of highly gifted kids is divided on this). As gifted expert Miraca Gross says in the article "Research shows that children are less likely to succeed if they are not accepted in their peer group... The earlier you put a gifted child - for some period of time at least - with other children of similar ability the more confident a child becomes. They have less time to dwell on the fact that others may think they are weird or strange which may make them feel confused and unlikeable and lead them not to develop skills of friendship and be socially isolated." Some people seem to believe that ability grouping hurts "socialization" but the truth is the exact opposite. A highly gifted child kept in a regular class becomes nothing but the "smart one." Only in a situation with her intellectual peers is she allowed to become other things.
Like the U.S., Australia has long been trying to figure out what to do with its gifted children. As in the U.S., with its egalitarian culture, Australians sometimes talk about cutting down the "tall poppies." That means that anything that makes someone stick out is viewed as bad. This recent article, A Class of Bright Sparks, from the Brisbane Times, examines the issue in light of the New South Wales system of selective secondary schools. I really recommend reading it.
The issues of achievement and intelligence are hard to separate out, and so admission into these schools is seen as an honor, and the schools are perceived as "better." But, of course, the issue is never entirely clear-cut. Students who obtain admission, but choose to go to "regular" schools do just fine, and plenty of students (some of whom have been coached like crazy) who do go to the elite schools flounder. The article notes that attending the selective schools does not necessarily raise self-esteem, which is obvious to anyone who's ever attended a rigorous, ability-grouped school. You learn the first day that while you were the brightest kid in your previous class, you aren't now!
The article brings up the usual note that educators are divided on whether ability grouping is good for students (though no one who seriously considers the needs of highly gifted kids is divided on this). As gifted expert Miraca Gross says in the article "Research shows that children are less likely to succeed if they are not accepted in their peer group... The earlier you put a gifted child - for some period of time at least - with other children of similar ability the more confident a child becomes. They have less time to dwell on the fact that others may think they are weird or strange which may make them feel confused and unlikeable and lead them not to develop skills of friendship and be socially isolated." Some people seem to believe that ability grouping hurts "socialization" but the truth is the exact opposite. A highly gifted child kept in a regular class becomes nothing but the "smart one." Only in a situation with her intellectual peers is she allowed to become other things.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Birth Order and IQ
There has been much discussion, the past few days, about a new Norwegian study showing that birth order affects IQ scores. Oldest sons tend to score higher on IQ tests than later sons, but the difference appears to be because of how children are raised, not biology. Later-born sons whose older brothers died in infancy show similar IQs to those who were first-born.
So what's to be made of this? Probably not much. The difference was 2-3 IQ points, which is pretty much meaningless. But that doesn't stop people from drawing whatever conclusions they like. I particularly laughed at the quote from the UC-Berkeley expert in the AP article I linked, above, stating that eldest children were probably smarter because they tutored their younger brothers and sisters. This idea that kids benefit from tutoring each other is often expressed in education circles, because it lets harried teachers use gifted kids as unpaid teaching assistants and claim it's good for them.
But anyway -- if I had to guess, I'd say the tiny difference is because parents have more time and energy to pay undivided attention to their first born children during the first 2 years of their lives. An acquaintance of mine recently confessed that with his first daughter, he was reading stories to her in the womb and, presumably, with even greater frequency after birth. The second daughter got no in-the-womb story sessions. Likewise, with my baby, I spend a reasonable amount of time showing him different patterns and objects, exposing him to different sounds, etc. I can't imagine doing as much of this if I had a 2-year-old shrieking around the house. But if that's the reason for the difference, the study's conclusion is heartening to me. If all that difference in time and energy only adds up to 2-3 IQ points, it would take a lot for good intentioned parents to really mess their children up.
There has been much discussion, the past few days, about a new Norwegian study showing that birth order affects IQ scores. Oldest sons tend to score higher on IQ tests than later sons, but the difference appears to be because of how children are raised, not biology. Later-born sons whose older brothers died in infancy show similar IQs to those who were first-born.
So what's to be made of this? Probably not much. The difference was 2-3 IQ points, which is pretty much meaningless. But that doesn't stop people from drawing whatever conclusions they like. I particularly laughed at the quote from the UC-Berkeley expert in the AP article I linked, above, stating that eldest children were probably smarter because they tutored their younger brothers and sisters. This idea that kids benefit from tutoring each other is often expressed in education circles, because it lets harried teachers use gifted kids as unpaid teaching assistants and claim it's good for them.
But anyway -- if I had to guess, I'd say the tiny difference is because parents have more time and energy to pay undivided attention to their first born children during the first 2 years of their lives. An acquaintance of mine recently confessed that with his first daughter, he was reading stories to her in the womb and, presumably, with even greater frequency after birth. The second daughter got no in-the-womb story sessions. Likewise, with my baby, I spend a reasonable amount of time showing him different patterns and objects, exposing him to different sounds, etc. I can't imagine doing as much of this if I had a 2-year-old shrieking around the house. But if that's the reason for the difference, the study's conclusion is heartening to me. If all that difference in time and energy only adds up to 2-3 IQ points, it would take a lot for good intentioned parents to really mess their children up.
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Sorry State of Education Research
One of the biggest movements in education these days is to choose research-backed programs and reforms. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Education involves a ton of variables, which confound many attempts to figure out "what works."
For instance, the Gates Foundation's small schools initiative works great when you take a lousy, huge, failing high school and substitute smaller ones with high quality principals who have a lot of flexibility. Some early experiments in this concept featured schools with these qualities. But was the success because the schools were small or because of the principals and the flexibility? Other small schools experiments didn't turn out so well, particularly for gifted kids (because schools were split, and many educators didn't like the idea of ability grouping these small schools, gifted kids couldn't be concentrated, so the brightest kids became incredibly bored). Yet, across the country, school districts have seized on the small school concept... sometimes because of the availability of Gates money.
Likewise, every teachers union will tell you that "smaller class sizes" are the key to better school outcomes, and that this is proven by research. But this perceived truth is based on fewer studies than anyone will admit. And some countries with larger average class sizes than in the US do much better on international comparisons in math and science. So it's not clear that class sizes, by themselves, are the magic variable either.
So what is? And for the purposes of this blog, what works in gifted education? There's some research on ability grouping that shows better outcomes for both rapid learners and those who need a little more help. But this is certainly an area that could use more research. If large, rigorous studies showed that ability grouping helped both gifted kids and others learn better, more educators might change their views of such arrangements. Maybe. Then again, plenty of studies have shown that acceleration works (see "A Nation Deceived") but the prejudice against grade skipping remains alive and kicking.
The Davidson Institute has published a list of 12 Cost Effective Educational Options for gifted kids. More research backing up these 12 options with data would certainly be nice to see. I wonder if there are any other burning questions people would like to see answered? I hear, on occasion, from researchers looking into different educational topics, so I'd love to know if there are particular statistics that would make lobbying for gifted education programs easier. It's funny how putting a number to a problem or a solution changes the conversation.
One of the biggest movements in education these days is to choose research-backed programs and reforms. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Education involves a ton of variables, which confound many attempts to figure out "what works."
For instance, the Gates Foundation's small schools initiative works great when you take a lousy, huge, failing high school and substitute smaller ones with high quality principals who have a lot of flexibility. Some early experiments in this concept featured schools with these qualities. But was the success because the schools were small or because of the principals and the flexibility? Other small schools experiments didn't turn out so well, particularly for gifted kids (because schools were split, and many educators didn't like the idea of ability grouping these small schools, gifted kids couldn't be concentrated, so the brightest kids became incredibly bored). Yet, across the country, school districts have seized on the small school concept... sometimes because of the availability of Gates money.
Likewise, every teachers union will tell you that "smaller class sizes" are the key to better school outcomes, and that this is proven by research. But this perceived truth is based on fewer studies than anyone will admit. And some countries with larger average class sizes than in the US do much better on international comparisons in math and science. So it's not clear that class sizes, by themselves, are the magic variable either.
So what is? And for the purposes of this blog, what works in gifted education? There's some research on ability grouping that shows better outcomes for both rapid learners and those who need a little more help. But this is certainly an area that could use more research. If large, rigorous studies showed that ability grouping helped both gifted kids and others learn better, more educators might change their views of such arrangements. Maybe. Then again, plenty of studies have shown that acceleration works (see "A Nation Deceived") but the prejudice against grade skipping remains alive and kicking.
The Davidson Institute has published a list of 12 Cost Effective Educational Options for gifted kids. More research backing up these 12 options with data would certainly be nice to see. I wonder if there are any other burning questions people would like to see answered? I hear, on occasion, from researchers looking into different educational topics, so I'd love to know if there are particular statistics that would make lobbying for gifted education programs easier. It's funny how putting a number to a problem or a solution changes the conversation.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Should Gifted Education be Mandatory?
Colorado's governor signed a law recently that tightened the requirements on school district gifted programs. As an educator explains in this linked article from the Greeley Tribune, the law turns a lot of "mays" into "wills."
It raises the question: Should gifted education be mandatory? And if so, on what level should that mandate be sent down?
Over the years, a number of gifted education advocates have pushed for a national mandate similar to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This law requires that disabled children be given a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. It mandates individual education plans, and courts have sometimes interpreted the law as requiring vast services from districts, even if it means other priorities can't be funded (there are stories of art or music services being trimmed for everyone because one child needs profound intervention... though of course, these are not the only options -- trimming overhead or raising school taxes are always on the table too, even if people don't like to admit it). Since gifted kids have special needs, too, some gifted advocates want IDEA interpreted to include gifted, or else they want a similar national law to be passed for gifted kids.
Others have focused on the state level, and indeed some states do mandate gifted education. States vary in their enforcement, though. Sometimes, a requirement that all gifted kids receive IEPs winds up meaning that everyone's IEP says the same thing: 90 minutes of pull-out a week. Or districts may hire one or two gifted teachers who do "whole class enrichment" -- ie, word puzzles and games with whole, non-ability-grouped classes. None of this does much to challenge gifted kids to the extent of their abilities.
Colorado is attempting to address these issues. The new law allows the state to use its gifted dollars to push for more rigorous gifted programs. In theory this is a good idea. There's no point in spending money if it's not spent right.
But I'd like to hear from parents who read this blog about whether a move to make gifted education mandatory in your state or district has had any practical effect. Sometimes laws can change people's minds by showing that something is a priority. But sometimes, when things aren't a priority, culturally, people follow the letter of the law and not the spirit. In too many schools, gifted kids aren't a priority, whether gifted education is mandated or not.
Colorado's governor signed a law recently that tightened the requirements on school district gifted programs. As an educator explains in this linked article from the Greeley Tribune, the law turns a lot of "mays" into "wills."
It raises the question: Should gifted education be mandatory? And if so, on what level should that mandate be sent down?
Over the years, a number of gifted education advocates have pushed for a national mandate similar to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This law requires that disabled children be given a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. It mandates individual education plans, and courts have sometimes interpreted the law as requiring vast services from districts, even if it means other priorities can't be funded (there are stories of art or music services being trimmed for everyone because one child needs profound intervention... though of course, these are not the only options -- trimming overhead or raising school taxes are always on the table too, even if people don't like to admit it). Since gifted kids have special needs, too, some gifted advocates want IDEA interpreted to include gifted, or else they want a similar national law to be passed for gifted kids.
Others have focused on the state level, and indeed some states do mandate gifted education. States vary in their enforcement, though. Sometimes, a requirement that all gifted kids receive IEPs winds up meaning that everyone's IEP says the same thing: 90 minutes of pull-out a week. Or districts may hire one or two gifted teachers who do "whole class enrichment" -- ie, word puzzles and games with whole, non-ability-grouped classes. None of this does much to challenge gifted kids to the extent of their abilities.
Colorado is attempting to address these issues. The new law allows the state to use its gifted dollars to push for more rigorous gifted programs. In theory this is a good idea. There's no point in spending money if it's not spent right.
But I'd like to hear from parents who read this blog about whether a move to make gifted education mandatory in your state or district has had any practical effect. Sometimes laws can change people's minds by showing that something is a priority. But sometimes, when things aren't a priority, culturally, people follow the letter of the law and not the spirit. In too many schools, gifted kids aren't a priority, whether gifted education is mandated or not.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Thinking About Careers
I'm doing a number of radio interviews in the coming weeks in correlation with my book on the rise in self-employment among young people, Grindhopping. We're talking about the graduation theme of "You Don't Have to Hate Your First Job" (based on a USA Today column I wrote with the same name).
While it's fun to spin the topic this way, career choice is a source of considerable angst for most young people, and for gifted young people -- who have so many options -- in particular. My advice to graduates is to, first, realize that all that education is leading somewhere, so they should spend as much time thinking about what they want to do after school as they do studying for any given exam. And second, ask yourself some key questions, namely 1) what do I love to do so much I'd do it for free and 2) how can I get someone to pay me to do that.
There's no reason this process has to start in college. In fact, I think there's a good case to be made for asking gifted teens to really start thinking about the real world as soon as possible, even though they won't really be living in it, fully, for a long time (See the "Trashing Teens" post, below).
This was driven home to me this weekend, when I had the good fortune to make my Lincoln Center choral debut on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall. I was singing as a ringer with a few high school choruses who were performing Beethoven's Ninth. During rehearsal on Saturday, I was singing next to a young lady from a Long Island high school who asked me how old I was. I told her. "Wow," she says. "You're 28?" "Is that old?" I asked, defensive. "No, she said. It's just crazy. I'm singing next to a 28 year old!" That's when it struck me that this girl had probably never engaged in collaborative projects with adults. At school, she's working with other 16 year olds. If she goes to church, she's in a youth group and Sunday School with other people her age. My guess is she doesn't have a job during the school year, so she doesn't have exposure through the workplace to non-parent and teacher adults (who are authority figures, and have their own ways of interacting with teens). What a strange universe. The real world features peer relationships across age groups.
One of the reasons the Cristo Rey school model (see the When School Works post) works so well is that it brings teens into adult workplaces, gives them responsibilities, and lets them see that there is something beyond lockers and homeroom. I don't think many schools will adopt that model soon, but parents can use summer vacation to get kids thinking about these same things. One option is to have the kids start a business. The other is to have them work at a corporation or at a university. Volunteer projects that involve people of all ages can also expose them to different ideas about what people "do" with their lives. The point is to get the kids thinking about what they would like to do once their formal education is mostly completed. Because eventually they will have to answer this question. If you just start thinking about the question when your college's career counseling center holds a job fair, you will wind up at one of those companies that sponsors booths at such things. While those may be fine jobs, I don't think many people grew up dreaming about working for Avis or Georgia Pacific. It's hard to land a dream job if you don't think about what that dream job might be.
I'm doing a number of radio interviews in the coming weeks in correlation with my book on the rise in self-employment among young people, Grindhopping. We're talking about the graduation theme of "You Don't Have to Hate Your First Job" (based on a USA Today column I wrote with the same name).
While it's fun to spin the topic this way, career choice is a source of considerable angst for most young people, and for gifted young people -- who have so many options -- in particular. My advice to graduates is to, first, realize that all that education is leading somewhere, so they should spend as much time thinking about what they want to do after school as they do studying for any given exam. And second, ask yourself some key questions, namely 1) what do I love to do so much I'd do it for free and 2) how can I get someone to pay me to do that.
There's no reason this process has to start in college. In fact, I think there's a good case to be made for asking gifted teens to really start thinking about the real world as soon as possible, even though they won't really be living in it, fully, for a long time (See the "Trashing Teens" post, below).
This was driven home to me this weekend, when I had the good fortune to make my Lincoln Center choral debut on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall. I was singing as a ringer with a few high school choruses who were performing Beethoven's Ninth. During rehearsal on Saturday, I was singing next to a young lady from a Long Island high school who asked me how old I was. I told her. "Wow," she says. "You're 28?" "Is that old?" I asked, defensive. "No, she said. It's just crazy. I'm singing next to a 28 year old!" That's when it struck me that this girl had probably never engaged in collaborative projects with adults. At school, she's working with other 16 year olds. If she goes to church, she's in a youth group and Sunday School with other people her age. My guess is she doesn't have a job during the school year, so she doesn't have exposure through the workplace to non-parent and teacher adults (who are authority figures, and have their own ways of interacting with teens). What a strange universe. The real world features peer relationships across age groups.
One of the reasons the Cristo Rey school model (see the When School Works post) works so well is that it brings teens into adult workplaces, gives them responsibilities, and lets them see that there is something beyond lockers and homeroom. I don't think many schools will adopt that model soon, but parents can use summer vacation to get kids thinking about these same things. One option is to have the kids start a business. The other is to have them work at a corporation or at a university. Volunteer projects that involve people of all ages can also expose them to different ideas about what people "do" with their lives. The point is to get the kids thinking about what they would like to do once their formal education is mostly completed. Because eventually they will have to answer this question. If you just start thinking about the question when your college's career counseling center holds a job fair, you will wind up at one of those companies that sponsors booths at such things. While those may be fine jobs, I don't think many people grew up dreaming about working for Avis or Georgia Pacific. It's hard to land a dream job if you don't think about what that dream job might be.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Profoundly Bright and Profoundly Bored
ABC's Nightline featured the Davidson Academy of Reno, NV on Monday night. For those of you who didn't get a chance to see the show live, there's a written version available here.
I've been following the progress of this school since I attended the ribbon cutting last August. Setting up a school is never easy, and the teachers and administrators at the Davidson Academy had to do some quick thinking and reshuffling in order to make sure the kids were getting the education they deserved and the challenges they were able to handle. But as the Nightline story pointed out, they did it. That's the difference between a school that caters to profoundly gifted young people and one that simply does not. Often, kids are told to simply wait for the others to catch up, or that this is the solution that's been decreed for this year, so just deal with it. But as one parent who was homeschooling her gifted kid once told me, what works now is guaranteed not to work in six months.
That's a tricky proposition to create a school around. Schools by their nature are institutions that resist change. So the Davidson Academy's flexibility on this count is encouraging news, even if it has made the first year more of a challenge than many schools deal with.
ABC's Nightline featured the Davidson Academy of Reno, NV on Monday night. For those of you who didn't get a chance to see the show live, there's a written version available here.
I've been following the progress of this school since I attended the ribbon cutting last August. Setting up a school is never easy, and the teachers and administrators at the Davidson Academy had to do some quick thinking and reshuffling in order to make sure the kids were getting the education they deserved and the challenges they were able to handle. But as the Nightline story pointed out, they did it. That's the difference between a school that caters to profoundly gifted young people and one that simply does not. Often, kids are told to simply wait for the others to catch up, or that this is the solution that's been decreed for this year, so just deal with it. But as one parent who was homeschooling her gifted kid once told me, what works now is guaranteed not to work in six months.
That's a tricky proposition to create a school around. Schools by their nature are institutions that resist change. So the Davidson Academy's flexibility on this count is encouraging news, even if it has made the first year more of a challenge than many schools deal with.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Trashing Teens
A recent issue of Psychology Today has a fascinating interview with psychologist Robert Epstein about "the problem with teens." It's not what you think, and it has far-reaching implications for gifted education.
Over the past 100 years, modern societies have succeeded in extending adolescence for years (one survey found Americans don't consider people to be "grown up" until age 26!). As a result, teens are not allowed the responsiblities and freedoms of the adult world until years after they are physically mature enough to be adults. Many of these restrictions are codified into law. Teens have few property rights, for instance, and can't participate in the responsibilities of citizenship. They can't usually set up businesses or borrow money without an adult's supervision. They also can't determine what they'll spend their time doing -- most are warehoused with their age peers into schools for 7 hours a day where they learn what someone else has deemed important (and that someone is often wrong). As a result, a whole teen culture has sprung up which celebrates angst and stupidity, and encourages teens to spend time and money on trivial things. This is true even though in a study Epstein did, which measured 14 areas of adult competence (such as interpersonal skills, and handling responsibility), teens did as well as adults.
I think Epstein is onto something (though I'm not sure he's correct about teens being able to make good marriage choices -- perhaps if all the other restrictions are changed first! Then again, many adults don't make good choices in this area either.) He's speaking about average teens; the situation is much more pronounced for gifted teenagers.
Part of being gifted is the fact that your brain is older than your body. You develop the ability to think abstractly, to analyze and draw new conclusions before your peers. Many gifted children prefer the company of older kids and adults because they speak the same language. When your thoughts are grown up, but you have no responsibilities, no rights, and no say over your life, no wonder it's easy for intelligent teens to become depressed or to act out.
One solution -- for gifted teens, at least -- is to compress basic education into fewer years, so they can start higher education earlier. I've also recommended encouraging kids (all kids, not just gifted ones) to start their own businesses. Figuring out market niches, advertising, profits and all that encourages synthesis across many areas, and gives kids a stake in the adult world. So do opportunities to interact with adults through church or community groups, particularly if these groups undertake real projects like concerts or volunteer work. None of these make adolescence easy, but if Epstein is right, they could certainly make it easier.
A recent issue of Psychology Today has a fascinating interview with psychologist Robert Epstein about "the problem with teens." It's not what you think, and it has far-reaching implications for gifted education.
Over the past 100 years, modern societies have succeeded in extending adolescence for years (one survey found Americans don't consider people to be "grown up" until age 26!). As a result, teens are not allowed the responsiblities and freedoms of the adult world until years after they are physically mature enough to be adults. Many of these restrictions are codified into law. Teens have few property rights, for instance, and can't participate in the responsibilities of citizenship. They can't usually set up businesses or borrow money without an adult's supervision. They also can't determine what they'll spend their time doing -- most are warehoused with their age peers into schools for 7 hours a day where they learn what someone else has deemed important (and that someone is often wrong). As a result, a whole teen culture has sprung up which celebrates angst and stupidity, and encourages teens to spend time and money on trivial things. This is true even though in a study Epstein did, which measured 14 areas of adult competence (such as interpersonal skills, and handling responsibility), teens did as well as adults.
I think Epstein is onto something (though I'm not sure he's correct about teens being able to make good marriage choices -- perhaps if all the other restrictions are changed first! Then again, many adults don't make good choices in this area either.) He's speaking about average teens; the situation is much more pronounced for gifted teenagers.
Part of being gifted is the fact that your brain is older than your body. You develop the ability to think abstractly, to analyze and draw new conclusions before your peers. Many gifted children prefer the company of older kids and adults because they speak the same language. When your thoughts are grown up, but you have no responsibilities, no rights, and no say over your life, no wonder it's easy for intelligent teens to become depressed or to act out.
One solution -- for gifted teens, at least -- is to compress basic education into fewer years, so they can start higher education earlier. I've also recommended encouraging kids (all kids, not just gifted ones) to start their own businesses. Figuring out market niches, advertising, profits and all that encourages synthesis across many areas, and gives kids a stake in the adult world. So do opportunities to interact with adults through church or community groups, particularly if these groups undertake real projects like concerts or volunteer work. None of these make adolescence easy, but if Epstein is right, they could certainly make it easier.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Choosing Secondary Schools
One of the most common questions I get from readers of this blog is "which school is best for my gifted child?" It's a question that's hard to answer, even if money and location don't matter (and they do tend to matter for most of us). Different children have different learning styles. A Montessori education might delight a free-spirited child, but frustrate one who needs more structure.
That said, I've come across two lists of "good" schools for gifted kids recently that can serve as good starting points. The first is the broad Newsweek list of the 1200 best high schools in the US. (Follow the links from this page for the list and related articles). Dallas's School for the Talented and Gifted came out in the top spot, with Dallas's School of Science and Engineering coming in at number two. So if location is truly negotiable, Dallas might be worth checking out. It's also worth noting that Newsweek purposefully excluded selective schools like the Illinois Math and Science Academy and Bronx Science from consideration for reasons that aren't entirely clear; the magazine published a list of these excluded schools (link from the same main page). These are all good options.
The second list comes from the Malone Family Foundation, a non-profit that makes grants to support gifted education. The Foundation adds three independent secondary schools to its list of "good schools" each year, and bequeaths a large enough chunk of change to these schools to endow scholarships for gifted kids. Since the schools have to undergo a certain vetting to get on the list, most of these are pretty good options for secondary school kids as well.
If anyone reading this is going through the school selection process right now, I'd love to hear how you're making your decision.
One of the most common questions I get from readers of this blog is "which school is best for my gifted child?" It's a question that's hard to answer, even if money and location don't matter (and they do tend to matter for most of us). Different children have different learning styles. A Montessori education might delight a free-spirited child, but frustrate one who needs more structure.
That said, I've come across two lists of "good" schools for gifted kids recently that can serve as good starting points. The first is the broad Newsweek list of the 1200 best high schools in the US. (Follow the links from this page for the list and related articles). Dallas's School for the Talented and Gifted came out in the top spot, with Dallas's School of Science and Engineering coming in at number two. So if location is truly negotiable, Dallas might be worth checking out. It's also worth noting that Newsweek purposefully excluded selective schools like the Illinois Math and Science Academy and Bronx Science from consideration for reasons that aren't entirely clear; the magazine published a list of these excluded schools (link from the same main page). These are all good options.
The second list comes from the Malone Family Foundation, a non-profit that makes grants to support gifted education. The Foundation adds three independent secondary schools to its list of "good schools" each year, and bequeaths a large enough chunk of change to these schools to endow scholarships for gifted kids. Since the schools have to undergo a certain vetting to get on the list, most of these are pretty good options for secondary school kids as well.
If anyone reading this is going through the school selection process right now, I'd love to hear how you're making your decision.
Friday, May 25, 2007
How to Fix No Child Left Behind
Time magazine has a cover story this coming week on the problems and promise of NCLB five years in. First the good news. A number of high-poverty, low-performing schools are indeed doing better on reading and math tests. When it becomes public knowledge that only 10% of kids at a school score at grade level on these tests, most people find that fairly embarassing -- and they do something about it.
The bad news is that sometimes the things they do are not exactly going to help America's competitiveness in the global economy. As Time points out, states can choose their own standards test, and some, such as Mississippi, have chosen to make the tests so easy that they're meaningless. A surprising number of schools simply cheat. Others adopt drill and kill approaches and get rid of all curriculum that doesn't appear on the tests (science, history, art, music, etc.)
And then, of interest to readers of this blog, there's the perception of neglect of kids who will definitely pass the standards tests. The opening anecdote of the Time article describes a school focusing on a batch of kids with borderline scores. Maybe they'll pass, maybe they won't, so the school throws time and resources at pushing them over the bar. But what about the kids who are already over the bar? I haven't been able to find a lot of stories of schools actually getting rid of gifted education because of NCLB, but certainly many people feel it's no longer a priority. The same criticism of NCLB, incidentally, can be made on the other end of the spectrum. A child who is reading four grades below his age level can improve to one grade below, but still may not pass the test. In the NCLB world, this improvement is meaningless.
One of the best proposed reforms is to put the focus on individual student growth. As Sec. of Education Margaret Spellings points out, the data bases necessary to achieve that would be complex. But the idea is that schools would need to show adequate yearly progress for individual students. A gifted child who wasn't learning would suddenly be a problem for the school (well, provided the test was hard enough-- a national set of standards might improve the picture).
It's anyone's guess how much NCLB will be reformed. I don't think it's a big priority in Congress right now, and given the small percentage of education funding the federal government provides, states may rebel over too much meddling. In general, acountability is a good thing, so I'm hoping NCLB can be done right. I'm not too optimistic it will be, though.
Time magazine has a cover story this coming week on the problems and promise of NCLB five years in. First the good news. A number of high-poverty, low-performing schools are indeed doing better on reading and math tests. When it becomes public knowledge that only 10% of kids at a school score at grade level on these tests, most people find that fairly embarassing -- and they do something about it.
The bad news is that sometimes the things they do are not exactly going to help America's competitiveness in the global economy. As Time points out, states can choose their own standards test, and some, such as Mississippi, have chosen to make the tests so easy that they're meaningless. A surprising number of schools simply cheat. Others adopt drill and kill approaches and get rid of all curriculum that doesn't appear on the tests (science, history, art, music, etc.)
And then, of interest to readers of this blog, there's the perception of neglect of kids who will definitely pass the standards tests. The opening anecdote of the Time article describes a school focusing on a batch of kids with borderline scores. Maybe they'll pass, maybe they won't, so the school throws time and resources at pushing them over the bar. But what about the kids who are already over the bar? I haven't been able to find a lot of stories of schools actually getting rid of gifted education because of NCLB, but certainly many people feel it's no longer a priority. The same criticism of NCLB, incidentally, can be made on the other end of the spectrum. A child who is reading four grades below his age level can improve to one grade below, but still may not pass the test. In the NCLB world, this improvement is meaningless.
One of the best proposed reforms is to put the focus on individual student growth. As Sec. of Education Margaret Spellings points out, the data bases necessary to achieve that would be complex. But the idea is that schools would need to show adequate yearly progress for individual students. A gifted child who wasn't learning would suddenly be a problem for the school (well, provided the test was hard enough-- a national set of standards might improve the picture).
It's anyone's guess how much NCLB will be reformed. I don't think it's a big priority in Congress right now, and given the small percentage of education funding the federal government provides, states may rebel over too much meddling. In general, acountability is a good thing, so I'm hoping NCLB can be done right. I'm not too optimistic it will be, though.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Research Partnership on Gifted Education
The Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, and the Davidson Institute for Talent Development just announced that they would be working together to research highly gifted children. Some of the proposed projects actually look at the questions we've been talking about on this blog, namely, the problem of measuring potential.
As Nicholas Colangelo of the University of Iowa points out in the press release, there is very little research in this area. Decades ago, Louis Terman started a longitudinal study of children who'd scored very high on IQ tests. Like many researchers in this field, Terman assumed he was tracking the future movers and shakers of this country. Certainly, most of his subjects did very well in life. But his study missed some of the highest achievers from that age group (i.e., people you would have heard of, Nobel Prize winners, etc.). Similarly, the Glamour Top Ten College Women contest has missed almost every high-achieving woman you would have heard of who's lived in the United States over the past five decades. You can look at high-achievers and try to trace back to things that made them great. But it is very, very difficult to look at a group of kids and figure out who has the most potential to advance the culture, science, the economy, or what have you.
I liken this to magazine diet stories (stay with me here). You can read dozens of success stories in any given publication. But last year, Redbook tried an interesting experiment of following three women as they attempted to lose weight over a 12 month period. The women had access to nutritionists, trainers, etc. Only one of the three lost more than a few pounds. Why did she succeed where the others failed? Similar columns in Shape and other magazines have encountered this exact same problem. You can screen hundreds of applicants, but it is very difficult to measure motivation, gumption, discipline, drive -- whatever you want to call it. Some people simply will not let themselves fail, be it at becoming healthier or doing scientific research. It's hard to move the needle in any field. People who do tend to have that certain moxie.
Hopefully this research will, long-term, help supply the answers. Colangelo states that he thinks the Davidson Fellows in particular will show up more on the radar screen in future years than Terman's kids, because their awards are based on actual accomplishments, not just a test score. I think there's something to that. Hopefully this blog will be able to report on lots of research updates over the next few years.
By the way, thanks for all your kind wishes on the baby! We're all doing great.
The Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, and the Davidson Institute for Talent Development just announced that they would be working together to research highly gifted children. Some of the proposed projects actually look at the questions we've been talking about on this blog, namely, the problem of measuring potential.
As Nicholas Colangelo of the University of Iowa points out in the press release, there is very little research in this area. Decades ago, Louis Terman started a longitudinal study of children who'd scored very high on IQ tests. Like many researchers in this field, Terman assumed he was tracking the future movers and shakers of this country. Certainly, most of his subjects did very well in life. But his study missed some of the highest achievers from that age group (i.e., people you would have heard of, Nobel Prize winners, etc.). Similarly, the Glamour Top Ten College Women contest has missed almost every high-achieving woman you would have heard of who's lived in the United States over the past five decades. You can look at high-achievers and try to trace back to things that made them great. But it is very, very difficult to look at a group of kids and figure out who has the most potential to advance the culture, science, the economy, or what have you.
I liken this to magazine diet stories (stay with me here). You can read dozens of success stories in any given publication. But last year, Redbook tried an interesting experiment of following three women as they attempted to lose weight over a 12 month period. The women had access to nutritionists, trainers, etc. Only one of the three lost more than a few pounds. Why did she succeed where the others failed? Similar columns in Shape and other magazines have encountered this exact same problem. You can screen hundreds of applicants, but it is very difficult to measure motivation, gumption, discipline, drive -- whatever you want to call it. Some people simply will not let themselves fail, be it at becoming healthier or doing scientific research. It's hard to move the needle in any field. People who do tend to have that certain moxie.
Hopefully this research will, long-term, help supply the answers. Colangelo states that he thinks the Davidson Fellows in particular will show up more on the radar screen in future years than Terman's kids, because their awards are based on actual accomplishments, not just a test score. I think there's something to that. Hopefully this blog will be able to report on lots of research updates over the next few years.
By the way, thanks for all your kind wishes on the baby! We're all doing great.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Big News!
I'm happy to announce that my husband and I welcomed little Jasper Vanderkam Conway into the world at 2:15am on Wednesday morning. He was 7lbs 8oz, is very alert, and loves taking in the world around him. I'm attaching a photo of the little guy to this post. We are home from the hospital and enjoying getting to know each other. And sleeping on occasion!
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