Gifted education and budget cuts

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

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

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

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

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

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

A National Curriculum -- Sort Of

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

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

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

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

Little Girls and Princesses

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

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

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

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

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

Gifted Siblings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summer Reading List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making all young Americans "STEM Capable"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Permanent Recession

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

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

Should Gifted Kids Know their IQ Scores?

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

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

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

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

Career advice for gifted young people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feel free to post more!

Why do gifted kids drop out of college?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LAPD High

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

Homeschooling on the rise

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

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

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

What should a principal do?

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

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

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

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

SAT Coaching Boosts Scores -- Barely

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gifted with ADHD

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

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

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

An Unfortunate Correlation

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

"Where Are They Now?" Turns One

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

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

The Secret of Self Control

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

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

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

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

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

Do High School Exit Exams Work?

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

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

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

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

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