Newark and $100 million

Education circles are buzzing this week with news of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's decision to donate $100 million to the Newark schools. Newark mayor Cory Booker is raising matching funds from other donors, including Bill Gates, with the goal of trying to turbo-charge education in this city.

It's an interesting question: can a massive infusion of cash change a dysfunctional system? No one is denying that Newark has big problems. Only about half its students graduate from high school. One thing it does lead the nation on? The number of sick days the teachers take. According to this Wall Street Journal article, about 7% of Newark teachers are absent on any given day, vs. 4% in the average urban district.

The issue, though, is that Newark does not suffer from a lack of funding. The district spends well over $20,000 per student. Los Angeles, with its dysfunctions, does not spend nearly as much per pupil. If the $200 million disappears into the same pit as the rest of Newark's funding, then it's unclear why anything would change.

Over at the Core Knowledge blog, Robert Pondiscio argues that Zuckerberg should have given his millions in X-Prize fashion. That is, set a goal such as an urban district graduating 80% of its 9th graders four years later, or hitting a certain NAEP target. Any district that hits such a goal gets a massive infusion of (well-deserved) cash.

It's an interesting idea with merit. But what's done is done - I do hope Zuckerberg's gift helps turn Newark around. In recent years, I've seen some great stuff going on there, from the private Christ the King Prep school to events in the Prudential Center. Only 30 minutes from New York, the city has great potential. But it's unclear what will become of it.

Why Grade-Skipping Should Be Back in Fashion

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews tackles the issue of acceleration in his Class Matters post today, called "Why Grade Skipping Should Be Back in Fashion."

Noting research from Belin-Blank (and also citing Gifted Exchange!) Mathews argues what we long have: that acceleration is a budget-friendly and effective way to challenge gifted kids. It is often better than the short pull-out sessions that pass for gifted education these days, and also avoids most of the political issues around gifted education: namely, that gifted kids get "special" stuff like trips to science museums, more fun classes, etc. With acceleration, they get the same education as everyone else. Just earlier.

Yet few schools have embraced acceleration. We have this notion that children do best when they are around kids of the same age, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. For most of the history of education, classrooms were multi-age. Kids learn at home too, and play with their brothers and sisters of different ages. A mere glance around a 6th grade classroom will find that 12-year-olds can be at vastly different stages of development anyway. Furthermore, few adults have such restrictions on our working and social relationships. I am glad to have friends who are both older and younger than me, and I'm not sure why schools are so averse to similar things.

Online Learning Gains Acceptance

I was amused to see re-surface, via Twitter, an article I wrote 6 years ago called Online learning: A smart way to nurture gifted kids. I was making the case that since every community doesn't have a great school for gifted kids, online learning can fill in the gaps.

I suppose, writing that piece in 2004, I would have thought that this would be old news by 2010. But online learning is still in its infancy, even in postsecondary education, where colleges have discovered a real need. For adults with jobs and kids, it is hard to get to a classroom at a certain time. Online learning lets people study at night and on weekends. And with available technology, interaction is certainly no worse than in a lecture hall.

On the plus side for online learning, a new survey done by the Society for Human Resource Management finds that HR folks are getting their heads around degrees earned online. A full 79 percent had hired someone in the last 12 months who earned his/her degree online. Most disagreed with the statement that people with traditional degrees had more self-discipline, or better time management skills. There were some reservations, of course. A large minority thought that online degrees were less credible, and in some cases, there may be reasons for that. All degree programs should concern themselves with metrics like persistence to graduation, job placement, etc.

Why do I find this growing acceptance encouraging? Mostly because online degree programs are a great way for gifted students to start college courses early. If you are 12, sitting in a college classroom can feel intimidating, even if you understand everything that's going on (and your parents may worry about sending you). But distance/virtual learning allows us to do away with these barriers, in the same way that social networks and online communities bring us together with people who are different ages, ethnicities, who have differing physical abilities, etc. There are places for both, and I'm glad I earned my college degree in person. But if there is growing acceptance, then more students who start such coursework early can transfer their credits and finish college earlier should they decide to attend in person later. And more acceptance means more supply -- which is good for giving gifted students more options.

IQ Fun Park

I have lots of opinions. Too many, some might say! But sometimes, Gifted Exchange readers, I come across things that I really just have no idea what to think about.

That's where I am right now with the IQ Fun Park, a board game for the CandyLand set (hat tip to Executive Moms, which covered the game in the group's newsletter). Billed as "Test prep that feels like a game!" the IQ Fun Park helps prepare 4-year-olds for elementary school testing with 1,500 practice items based on the WPPSI-III, the Stanford-Binet 5, the OLSAT and BBCS tests. You can choose just questions from one test (I guess the idea is why bother with the others if your kid only has to take one?) or all four. The idea is to "prepare your child without pressure, expensive tutors, or workbooks," though billing IQ Fun Park as cheap only works if you're comparing it to 20 hours with a $100/hour tutor. At $297, it's not in the same ball park as Life or Monopoly.

I am curious what you all think of this. I have two initial observations. One is that something like this is inevitable in markets where the supply of spots in "good" kindergartens exceeds demand. There is also the corollary of gifted programs being life rafts (the only good spot in a failing school system), as opposed to interventions for kids who need them, and no better or worse than other classes.

The other observation, though, is that I am always skeptical of what test prep can do. People talk that the SAT can be prepped for and all that, but the vast, vast majority of kids who go through test prep programs do not get 2400s on the SAT. High scores still mean something, and I suspect that even a fun game won't totally change how a child will do on the Stanford Binet.

1-on-1 Time When You've Got a Brood

(cross-posted at My168Hours.com)

In a webinar I ran on Wednesday (co-sponsored with CurrentMom), one participant spoke of wanting to find solo time for each child, given that she had children. This is a good question, and one I've been pondering myself lately.

On one hand, I know that one-on-one parenting (past the nursing baby stage) has not been the historical norm. As I write in Chapter 6 of 168 Hours (my new book, for those just tuning in!), Mrs. Meyer (of the cleaning products fame) rarely got time alone with any of her nine kids.

On the other, these individual interactions are among the most pleasant of parenting. When you have multiple kids doing something together, there are always group dynamics, there is always competition for your attention, and there is always the desire to keep things from descending into chaos. Even if, in general, your kids do very well together.

So how do you carve out time for each kid? Here are a few ideas:

1. Evening book groups. If your kids are clustered together in age, they might enjoy the same books. But if they're more spread out, you can read with the little one while the older one(s) is getting ready for bed, then go do another story reading appropriate for the older set. If you and your spouse are both doing this, you can read at the same time, or if you have four book groups, split them. Mark where you are in the book so your spouse can pick up where you left off. Then let the kids fill you in next time (a bonus reading comprehension exercise!).

2. Use older kids' activities. This is a good time for hanging out with littler kids. Rather than chasing your 4-year-old all over the piano teacher's waiting room while the 8-year-old has her lesson, think through what you'd like to do together. A walk? Put the Big Wheel in the car trunk so she can ride it? An art project you can both do? A nearby pond where you can go feed the ducks? Ask her what she'd like to do during this mommy or daddy time, too.

3. Commute together (if you can). Some parents I profiled in 168 Hours coordinated their work schedules so they could commute with the kid whose school was closest to the office. Yes, this is just another way of saying "drop the kid off at school," and may not sound exciting if you're the parent normally doing that, but if you're not doing primary parent duties during the week, it's a nice way to put solo kid time into the day.

4. Find an activity you can do with each child. Maybe you and your 12-year-old train for a 5K together. Or if you're training for a longer race, the child can bike along. You can volunteer at a food bank together with a 16-year-old, or in a church nursery with a 14-year-old. You can take a multi-age art class with a younger child.

5. Chore teams. If they have to get done (and you're not outsourcing them), you may as well get some one-on-one time out of it. Mom and one child can always be responsible for changing the sheets together. Dad and another child can do the dishes together (or you can rotate which kid does this with which parent). Car washing and garden weeding are chores even a young kid can do with you; if you're comfortable with it, a teen can help with bill paying (that's one way to introduce them to the idea of personal finance!) A middle-schooler can maintain a grocery list and then serve as Dad's Special Assistant during all grocery store trips.

I'm curious how other people with larger families have created special time with each child.

Waiting for Superman

On Sept. 24, Davis Guggenheim's new film, Waiting for 'Superman,' will be released in theaters. Guggenheim (who directed An Inconvenient Truth) is turning his attention to the question of reforming American schools. I was recently sent the companion book to the film (which is published by PublicAffairs), and have been enjoying reading it.

The film was inspired partly by guilt. Guggenheim, a good liberal, has spent years grappling with the fact that he drives past public schools in order to drop his own kids off at a private one. He did not think the local public schools were good enough for his own kids, though of course this raised the obvious question: why were they good enough for other people's children?

Waiting for "Superman" attempts to answer the question of why schools fail, and looks at the individual consequences for children who do not receive a great education. I'm sure the film will be quite moving, but here's why I like the book: it brings together some of the best thinkers about education from many angles. There are essays by Michelle Rhee (chancellor of the Washington DC schools), Bill and Melinda Gates, Eric Hanushek (my favorite education-focused economist!) and Jay Mathews (The Washington Post's education writer, and possibly the most linked-to person in Gifted Exchange history).

Over the next few weeks I'll look at different essays, but today I want to focus on an essay by Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. I greatly respect that the film's creators gave Weingarten a platform in their book because (spoiler alert!) teachers unions emerge as the bad guys in Waiting for "Superman." Weingarten, herself a former history teacher at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, notes (correctly) that "Many of those who weigh in on the state of our public schools do so from an ivory tower, a think tank, the opinion pages, or from in front of a television camera. Teachers have no such remove. They are in the classrooms every day, seeing what their students need, and doing the hard work to help them succeed."

She notes that most talk of reform has focused on "two kinds of outliers: bad teachers and difficult-to-replicate schools, the implication being that if you get rid of a few bad teachers and create a few boutique schools, you can solve all the problems of education. You can't."

For starters, "speaking from my own experience, there are very few teachers who are great teachers on their first day in a classroom. There has been a lot of talk about teacher quality, and about who is a 'good' teacher and who is a 'bad' teacher. Much of this talk seems to fall back on the assumption that teachers enter the profession as either one or the other -- good or bad -- and stay that way. The truth is that while wanting to teach may be innate, becoming a great teacher is a learned skill."

To this end, much of teacher assessment is not particularly useful. "Today, this is how teachers still are commonly evaluated: by an administrator sitting in the back of the classroom for a few minutes, a few times, in the first few years of teaching. The teacher then receives feedback at the end of the semester or the end of the year. It's like a football team watching game tape only when the season is over."

She goes on to say that "No teacher -- myself included -- wants ineffective teachers in the classroom." As she points out, "When a teacher is disengaged or floundering, there are repercussions not only for the students, but also for the teachers down the hall, who take responsibility for those students the next year." This is a point that has not been raised too much in the education debate: how much time good teachers spend cleaning up the messes that bad teachers create.

Weingarten suggests that because of this, teachers themselves have a great incentive to either work with under-performing colleagues to improve their skills, or to counsel them out of the profession. She describes the Peer Assistance and Review system in Toledo, Ohio, where teachers are assigned to work with and evaluate each other. Based on the consulting teachers' assessments, she reports, between 8-10 percent of new teachers opt to resign or don't have their contracts renewed.

She also raises some critiques of other standard school reform stories. The key lesson from the Harlem Children's Zone, she notes, should not be that charter schools work. It should be that when you surround families with cradle-to-college services, you can address the barriers that keep children from learning.

She does not come out against performance pay, but rather advocates performance pay on a school-wide basis, rather than just focusing on individual teachers. "This will allow them to do more than create pockets of excellence, class by class, but rather to develop schools of excellence, where everyone works together to make sure everyone improves," she writes. Certainly, research has found that teachers often don't want to be pitted against their colleagues, competing for a small number of bonuses. Like salesmen competing against each other for one trip to Hawaii, it can undermine the collegial relationships necessary for long-term improvement.

Anyway, it's an interesting read, though there are problems with Weingarten's take, too. She plays down the "rubber room" issue in New York (where teachers who were removed from the classroom continued to be paid for not working, often for years). She notes that the rubber rooms have been permanently shuttered, and so we should just all move on, but of course, shutting the rubber rooms doesn't remove the real issue, which is that teachers enjoy more job protections than the vast majority of other people these days. When you can't stop paying a teacher who's been accused of passing out drunk in the classroom, it sets a very low bar for everyone else.

It is true that there are problems with placing all the burden of student performance on teachers (especially since disadvantaged students often move frequently, in the middle of the school year, meaning that it's unclear which teacher is responsible for them in the first place). But given that there are schools which overcome barriers such as kids coming to school hungry (and isn't this what school breakfast is for, anyway?) this is a bit of a cop-out. As Hanushek's research has found, having a good teacher matters, and having several in a row can make up for one's socioeconomic status. The problem is that very few kids from lower income families get 3-4 great teachers in a row.

Is college worth less because students study less?

(cross-posted at www.my168hours.com)

A generation ago, a college degree was the ticket to a comfortable, upper-middle class existence. We believe, as a society, that more education means more income, and in general this is still true. The unemployment rate for college educated people is much lower than for people with less education.

But the returns on a college education have been declining for some time, even as costs have skyrocketed. A college degree is no longer a guarantee of a comfortable existence. Why is this?

Perhaps it is because more people are going to college -- and we cannot all, alas, earn more than average.

But the American Enterprise Institute released an interesting report this month claiming that part of the problem may be how college students spend their time. According to various time diary studies analyzed by researchers Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, in 1961, students at 4-year colleges spent 24 hours per week studying. By 2003, this had fallen to 14 hours per week.

There could be many plausible explanations for this besides laziness. Perhaps students are working more to pay for school. Perhaps they have more family responsibilities. Perhaps, as the first in their families to go to college, they are facing other obstacles. Perhaps, as more Americans go to college, more people are attending schools that don't require as much study. Perhaps we are majoring in topics that require less study, or perhaps technology has made learning more efficient.

The authors look at each of these explanations, and find that most don't hold up. Students are working more, but even among students who are not employed, study hours have fallen. They have fallen among students whose fathers also went to college, and they have fallen within majors. They have fallen among students who attend the most selective colleges. While it is true that the Internet and word processing make writing papers easier, the bulk of the decline in study hours came prior to the 10 years before the 2003-2005 numbers. It really just appears that students are studying less.

Why? Given that students are paying so much more for college these days (in many cases shouldering staggering debts) you'd think they'd have more skin in the game. The authors posit that perhaps college has become a signaling device for employers -- the fact that you got a degree is more important in the job market than your actual grades. You can work hard in high school to get in, and then coast after that. Perhaps grade inflation contributes to this as well. If you know you'll get an A or a B in most classes, why put in more work, particularly if employers don't care about your grades?

These explanations make sense, but there's a problem with this trend because when you study less, you learn less. And the authors note that there's evidence that when you study less, you earn less too. Which would explain why the returns on a college education are declining.

Is this gifted education, or just good teaching?

According to a recent article at NorthJersey.com, elementary schools in Wayne, NJ will soon be participating in a new kind of gifted education.

"Students of varying abilities will be engaged via lessons while in the same classroom using their creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and logical reasoning skills," the article notes. "Faster learners may be given the task of calculating off the tops of their heads what could be bought with $20 from a list of items without using pen and paper. However a student who requires a little more help would be allowed to check their work with a designated "shopkeeper." And students needing more help would be given objects to count during their assessment."

To be fair, the program calls for a once-a-week pull-out as well, but on the whole, this is basic differentiation in the classroom. People like to claim that this "new" way of doing gifted education allows them to reach more students. But shouldn't good teachers be able to differentiate for different students, anyway, without calling it gifted education?

Of course, the problem is that differentiation is difficult to get right. The easier approach is to teach to the middle, which leaves gifted students bored and plenty of other students perplexed. So teaching teachers how to do differentiation well has plenty of merits. But if the goal is to enhance learning for gifted students, it would be easier to do ability grouping instead.

Which leads me to suspect that this is not the goal...

10 Ways to Embrace the Evening Hours

(cross-posted at My168Hours.com)

My kids are night owls. While I console myself that needing less sleep is often a sign of giftedness, it's hard on a parent to have a 3-year-old who really will not go to sleep until 10PM (the baby often doesn't go down until 9PM or later, either).

The net result is that we have some long evenings in our house. While there are some perks to this as a working parent -- even working 50 hour weeks I can usually spend 5-6 hours per workday with my kids -- there are also some downsides. What do we do with that time? Dinner and baths certainly don't take 3-4 hours. In summer we can go to the park, but it gets dark here by 8, and in winter it's dark at 4:45PM. New York has many wonderful activities for children on weekends and during the weekdays, but there are not a whole lot of activities for 3- and 1-year-olds that start at, say, 7PM.

So, over the last 3 years, I have slowly been building a list of evening activities that will distract the kids from whining for Dora for at least a little while. Some of them:

1. Borders! Last night we camped out in the kids' section for 45 minutes playing with the plastic dinosaurs. While this is not really a free activity (I usually wind up buying sticker books), a library with evening hours would serve the same purpose.

2. The grocery store. But not necessarily with the purpose of buying groceries. I try to order the workhorse staples of my grocery list online, since the kids get cranky after a short while of shopping, and hauling groceries (I don't have a car) while hauling the kids is tough. So if I go with both kids, we cruise the produce aisle and name things and then buy, like, one bunch of bananas.

3. A run with the double stroller. Lock the front wheel, cruise 1.5 miles to a playground, play briefly (or not, depending on how dark it's getting), run home. A bonus way to get more exercise.

4. Visit the play room or pool. My apartment building has a kids' playroom and an indoor pool, both of which are technically open until 9:45PM on weeknights. Yes, people think you're crazy when they see your small children up at 8PM, but so it goes.

5. Museums with evening hours. I have to plan ahead for this, as often they close by 6PM. But some stay open late one night per week.

6. Evening playdates. This hasn't worked out quite as often as I would have liked (since other people's children seem not to keep my kids' hours) but is a great option if you can pull it off.

7. Invite people who don't have kids over for dinner. This has several benefits. First, you get to see them without the whole babysitter song and dance. Second, the kids enjoy hanging out with other adults who may be a bit less burned out than the parents. Order take-out so no one has to cook.

8. Backyard "camping." OK, living in the heart of New York City, this one isn't an option for me, but I look forward to someday doing evening campfires and s'mores, even if the fire is inside the grill on the patio.

9. Really easy arts and crafts. You know the Crate & Barrel and Harry & David catalogs that show up, oh, every other day? Make collages.

10. Random sporting events. Jasper and I have been known to go take in a kickball game in Central Park. Interesting to watch for a bit, but if you don't really care about the team or the sport, than you won't mind leaving in the middle (key with kids).

Of course, many of these things require at least a bit of planning. As I've been pondering how I spend my hours, I realize that I don't plan for the evenings as often as I should. I'm tired after working all day, and I'm tempted to play it safe, staying home rather than risking a subway diaper explosion or a meltdown. But given how long our evenings can be, staying home the whole time without something on the agenda is a recipe for frayed nerves, or for constant begging to play "stegasaurus," which involves crawling around on the floor and hurts my knees. Or for a Dora the Explorer marathon. And while Dora is fine for half an hour, 3-4 hours is a bit much.

I'd really welcome other suggestions on things to do during the evening hours with kids who don't sleep.

Multipotentiality

I hope I haven't yet reached the limit of how many times I can link to Tamara Fisher's Unwrapping the Gifted blog over at EdWeek, but I really enjoyed her recent post on Multipotentiality.

Blogger's software doesn't recognize that as a real word, but it's a real phenomenon. Just try asking many gifted kids what they want to be when they grow up and you'll get an earful. As Fisher quotes a list from Maggie, a 6th grader: "famous singer, veterinarian, marine biologist, material scientist, archeologist, doctor, nurse, dancer, artist, Navy Seal, charity founder, fashion designer, spy, professional horse rider, dog agility trainer and competitor, firefighter, EMT, animal shelter owner, magician, professional photographer, TV star, cop, INVENTOR, professional instrumental musician, weather woman, chemist, engineer, physical therapist, game designer."

Phew!

Of course, the problem is that while some of these could certainly happen together in a lifetime (plenty of fashion designers found charities, and some these days moonlight as TV stars as well), being a doctor and an archeologist both require many years of specific training. Since gifted children have a tendency to think about the future, this can introduce plenty of stress, particularly as they hit college and need to start actually specializing. Fisher quotes Jane, a young woman, as saying "It seems almost impossible to pick just "one" [subject] and as a result I am looking into possibly getting multiple degrees so that if I get bored with one career I can move on to another." This is an option, though my husband (who works at a consulting company) can tell plenty of tales of people who've gotten PhDs and medical degrees and MBAs, and finally wind up working with him, which they could have done with any one of those degrees. About a decade earlier. As a net result, they're a decade behind the hierarchy of people who made up their minds. That state of affairs also doesn't sit well with many gifted folks.

There is no good solution to this, though I can tell you mine. One big reason I chose writing as a career is that I get to study many subjects briefly. I have stubbornly resisted specializing (this month I wrote about the anti-lawn movement, people who create jobs, the Ramona books, and a forthcoming piece on Korean green grocers, among other topics). 168 Hours profiles everyone from scientists to novelists, with a mix of economics and sociology thrown in. As a result, I rarely get bored.

But part of growing up is realizing that not all doors will be permanently open. Eventually, you'll need to pick a career (even if you won't stay in it forever). Perhaps one of the best ways we can help gifted children is help them sample different careers that sound appealing, figure out ways that certain careers can combine other interests, and help them figure out ways to have other loves become hobbies. I'm curious what other parents have done or observed with their children.

The 2010 Davidson Fellows

I am on vacation this week at the beach, but wanted to make sure Gifted Exchange readers got to see the list of the 2010 Davidson Fellows. You can read the list here.

What might be particularly interesting to people is that this is the 10-year anniversary of the fellowship program, and the Davidson Institute asked former fellows to report back about what they were up to. The answer? Most are still in school -- which makes sense for people who won when they were 14-18 years old. You can read their stories here. A few have, however, entered the working world (check out Anders Kaseorg, who co-founded a company called K-Splice, and won an MIT entrepreneur-of-the-year award). I expect this will become a very interesting feature in the years to come.

Take a test, skip a grade?

It seems like a fairly straightforward proposition: each grade represents a certain quantity of knowledge. If you already have mastered that knowledge, shouldn't you be able to show this on a test, and then move on to the next level? In other words, take a test, skip a grade?

Yet very few school districts offer that option. As I learned in the exchange with the Montgomery, MD schools, even some gifted programs seem to be structured around the belief that it is far better to receive in-grade enrichment than to skip a grade. Which is why I was quite interested to see this little notice about the Taylor Independent School District in Texas. According to the Taylor Daily Press:

Taylor ISD will offer examinations for acceleration in grades Kindergarten through twelfth grade on Aug. 18, 19 and 20.

Students must score at least a 90 on such a test to be advanced to a grade level in grades first through fifth or to receive credit in grades sixth through twelfth. Criteria for Kindergarten acceleration may be obtained from the Naomi Pasemann Elementary principal. No fee is required for the examination. Any students who wish to take an examination for acceleration must register with the principal of their school no later than Aug. 9.

How straightforward! I like the idea of an "acceleration exam." I know there is already an Iowa Acceleration Scale; a standardized acceleration exam in any state would make the whole process much easier. And hopefully, more common.

Time: The Case Against Summer Vacation?

(cross-posted at My168hours.com)

This week's Time magazine cover story deals with a thorny issue: summer vacation. Why is it thorny? Because most of us romanticize it, and yet it does serious academic damage to people who can least afford it.

We all have grand summer memories. Certainly by middle school, this was my favorite time of year, a nearly 3-month break from a plodding school routine. Before I was old enough for a full-time job, I did summer theater and went to academic camps at Northwestern, both of which were far more stimulating than most things that happened during the academic year. (Now, my two full-time summer jobs at age 17 and 18, working at Fazoli's Italian Restaurant, and Osco Drugs, were a different story, but all nostalgia requires a bit of finessing).

We all like to picture Tom Sawyer-esque romps, but viewed more critically, there are many problems with this break now that most of us are no longer farmers. For starters, it leaves working parents scrambling for childcare. I've been amazed how many work-from-home parents seem to be trying to stumble through it, with Facebook posts complaining about the situation. School is not supposed to be childcare, but that is the reality for many people, and most jobs don't only run September-June.

More importantly, though, there's reasonable evidence that taking 2-3 months off from school really harms vulnerable students. This makes perfect sense; artists and musicians need daily practice to stay on top of their game, and students do too. While my summers featured plenty of reading and enrichment opportunities which could be deemed academic "practice" (again, until the Fazoli's/Osco's fun), many kids wind up in what is charmingly referred to as "self-care." That is, they are home alone while their parent or parents work, with watching TV considered the least bad of all possible options. This is not doing anyone any favors.

I thought the Time article made a good case that the solution is not merely to extend the school year (since much of what happens in American schools is sclerotic and ineffective anyway). The solution is to make a better net of summer camps and programs that make learning fun. Frankly, this should happen during the whole school year, but we have to play the cards we are dealt. The link, above, gives an intro to the piece, and the article in the print magazine highlights several great programs from Indianapolis to Corbin, KY where programs provide as much as 10 weeks of 10-hour days which sound like a lot of fun. Think arithmetic and fishing, balancing each other out. Or a fire-fighting themed camp.

For readers here, what are you doing with your kids during summer break? Is it a scramble, or do you have something you always do?

Mathematics and Lockhart's Lament

Presumably some of you have already read this, but my mother and little brother forwarded me an interesting essay by Paul Lockhart, a math teacher, which was written in 2002. You can read a PDF of the essay here. (It's 25 pages long - so I'll forgive you for skimming it instead...). Called "A Mathematician's Lament," the essay makes the case that the way math is taught is usually boring and irrelevant, turning children off to the beauty of mathematics. Or to use his words:

"If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done -- I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education."

He writes that instead of learning formulas, students should play games, play around with shapes, pose their own word problems based on questions that are actually interesting in real life, etc.

It's an interesting read, though I'm of mixed mind about it. I took a geometry class during the summer after 7th grade that used this conjecture method, and while it was fine, I can't say that it made me enjoy math more than the traditional geometry class I took the next year. I also think that creativity and discipline have to be closely linked. One of the most frustrating things, looking back on my own writing education, is how often teachers just encouraged me to be creative. It turns out that there are actually rules of grammar and best practices of argument and story plotting and other such things which can be enormously helpful in getting your point across!

But anyway, I'm quite curious what Gifted Exchange readers think -- does the usual method of math instruction kill all the joy of the subject?

USA Today: Some Schools Grouping Students by Skill, Not Grade Level

Here's a silver lining if I ever saw one. Kansas City, MO, is having to make such deep cuts and changes as part of its reorganization that the school district is willing to try something a little radical: ending the widespread educational obsession with grades. According to an article called "Some schools grouping students by skill, not grade level" in USA Today, the plan calls for students to move forward based on mastering certain skills, not based on 9-year-olds generally being in 4th grade. If you get through the K-12 material in less than 13 years, great. You can start on college. And as KC Superintendent John Covington told USA Today, "This system precludes us from labeling children failures...It's not that you've failed, it's just that at this point you haven't mastered the competencies yet and when you do, you will move to the next level."

In other words, readiness grouping!

As readers of this blog know, the age-grade lockstep is one of the most pernicious ideas in education. Though mounds of research (see A Nation Deceived) has determined that grade skipping is perfectly fine for most advanced kids, schools hate to do it. But organizing children by age for academics doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Kids learn at vastly different paces. Better to have a certain body of knowledge and learning methods that we want educated citizens to know, then let kids take what time they need. Maybe it's 6 years. Maybe it's 15.

I know there are logistical issues with this, but I wish the Kansas City schools the best of luck in this endeavor, and I applaud them for being willing to try something new. Hopefully, when kids are able to learn at a challenging but doable pace, they'll be more excited about learning generally.

The Disease-IQ Link

We know that infectious disease inflicts many burdens on developing countries -- high infant mortality rates, for instance, and shortened lifespans. But new research highlighted in the Economist this past week indicates that perhaps too many pathogens can result in lower intelligence among the populace, too. You can read the article here.

While controversial, here is the explanation. In young children, a developing brain demands the majority of a body's metabolic energy. Any competition for this energy will result in less energy for the brain at a crucial juncture. Infectious diseases require quite a bit of energy to fight (or result in diarrhea, which prevents the body from absorbing nutrients which would feed the brain). Some practical evidence seems to support this; many children who manage to recover from cerebral malaria suffer cognitive disabilities afterward.

Of course, one has to be careful with all this. For some time, "experts" cautioned that teen girls shouldn't be educated because tending their brains would divert energy from their developing reproductive systems -- a sort of reverse of this hypothesis. But it does appear that the countries with the highest measured average intelligences (like Singapore and South Korea) have the lowest disease burdens. And, of course, this explanation does offer hope for future development. If you eradicate disease, you get a human capital boost apart from the fact that people will be healthier. They may be smarter too.

And as readers of this blog know, intelligence matters. A 150 IQ kid whose intelligence is lost due to disease is an asset a developing country will sorely miss.

My interview with My Gifted Girl

If you're not already a fan of My Gifted Girl on Facebook, I suggest you become one! This community looks at nurturing the gifts of girls and women of all ages. And, as a side benefit, is currently running a Q&A with me about 168 Hours, and gifted girls/women generally. Here's a taste of the interview:

Q:What advice do you have for gifted young women who are just beginning careers?

A: Many gifted young women flounder as they transition from college to career because work is not like school – and gifted girls are often good at school! In school, if you do a project according to the teacher’s specifications, you’ll get an A. If you finish all your assignments and pass your tests, you’ll move to the next grade. The real world isn’t like that. You can definitely move backwards. You can do everything exactly right, and still lose your job because your company is in the middle of a slump. There are no right answers in the back of the textbook. Sometimes, no one even knows which questions are important! You have to be comfortable with a lot more uncertainty. But once you embrace that uncertainty – and realize that most people don’t have any better clue what’s going on than you do – you can soar.

Q: What are your thoughts about how impostor syndrome can impact our time?

A: When you lack confidence in your abilities, it’s easy to waste time on things that you think may “prove” to the world (or yourself) that you deserve space on this planet. This leads to the SuperMom problem. If you’ve decided to take time out of the workforce to raise children, you may spend a lot of time showing people that you’re still a high achiever by volunteering for school projects only a martyr would take on or enrolling your kids in every activity available. If you’re working, you may try to over-deliver on the job on things that don’t matter (writing a dissertation when your boss wanted a memo) or constructing hand-made Valentines for everyone in your second grader’s class (to show that you’re still a good mom).

In general, you should spend most of your time on three things: nurturing your career (which includes keeping a hand in your profession if you’ve stepped back for a bit), nurturing your family, and nurturing yourself. If something doesn’t fit into these categories – for instance, a volunteer project you’re not passionate about – then it’s probably not a good use of your time. Somebody else can do it better. It will take your attention away from the things you do best. Unfortunately, imposter syndrome has us doing a lot of things that aren’t good uses of our time.

How do you talk about your gifted kid?

Parents like to talk about their kids. Sometimes (when we are around friends without kids, for instance) we realize that we barely talk about anything else! And part of being a parent is being proud of your kid and wanting to share good news, and share concerns as well.

If you've got highly gifted offspring, though, this can be a problem.

I was thinking of this while reading the "Unwrapping the Gifted" blog over at EdWeek. Tamara Fisher describes a parent weekend in Montana, and the awkwardness of discussing your kid in mixed company, as it were:

"Parenting a gifted child is not usually the cakewalk others assume it to be," she writes. "These kids are intense, they crave (and seek out) challenge and mental stimulation, and their learning needs are typically not well-met by a regular classroom pace and content. These factors can lead to parenting struggles that a parent's friends just don't understand. It's not easy to say, 'My child is four grade levels ahead in his reading abilities and I'm worried he's not getting what he needs in the classroom' when the societal response to that worry is cynicism and sarcasm."

It is also very hard to talk in public about your kid's accomplishments. As the Davidsons and I wrote in Genius Denied, "Bragging about one's child is a birthright of being a parent -- when she took her first step, said her first word, learned how to read. But friendly bragging in the neighborhood and at work involves a quid pro quo. You talk about your kid for a bit, then I'll talk about mine. If you can't talk about the same thing, the bragging stops. Parents who are proud of an A on a test resent hearing about another kid who has just skipped three grades, published an academic paper, and still complains that the work is too easy."

As one parent told us about her daughter, "I feel like it is seen as inappropriate for me to say too much 'good' about her. I worry about this because I want her to hear me say good things about her, but it is so uncomfortable."

So here's the question: how do you talk about your gifted child? How do you participate in those friendly parenting conversations at work or at the park? Or do you just keep quiet and save most of the conversation for parenting gatherings where everyone is dealing with similar issues? I'd love to hear how Gifted Exchange readers handled these situations.

Itinerant teachers: expanding access or scaling back?

The Davidson Institute graciously sends me a round-up of gifted headlines from around the world every week. This past week, two articles caught my eye because they seem to show an interesting trend in gifted programs. This trend is to do away with a full-time stand-alone gifted classroom, and to substitute a roving teacher.

This is largely budget neutral. Kids still have to be transported, whether to a gifted classroom/school or another school. Teachers still have to be paid whatever the wage is for their tenure and expertise, whether they are in one classroom 5 days a week, or in one 3 days a week and roving for two, or roving for the whole time. But both a Johnson County, NC school district, and a district in British Columbia, have elected to do this sort switch in order to, as an NC official said, be "using these teachers better, more efficiently." A roving teacher can bring gifted services to more students.

It is hard to know what to think about this. If a district has 100 gifted students, but only 20 are in a stand alone classroom available at one school, then this doesn't seem like a good set-up. On the other hand, serving 100 students 1 day a week is not equivalent to serving 20 students 5 days a week. Ideally, there would be full-time services for all 100 kids. That could also be budget neutral, as long as the class size for gifted students is no smaller than for other classes. But for a variety of reasons, this full-scale readiness grouping does not seem to happen many places (possibly because of the attitudes discussed in our previous post on the "stupid class").

I'm curious about Gifted Exchange readers' experiences with roving teachers. Is it better than nothing? Quite good? Or not really worth it? Is it a stealth way to get rid of gifted education?

The End of the "Stupid Class"

Sometimes it's good to be reminded that not everyone views the world the way I do. I am saying that, because that is the only positive point I see coming out of the tone of a story called The End Of The Stupid Class, which ran at Voice of San Diego recently.

The piece documents a detracking effort by Correia Middle School in Point Loma, CA. The author, Emily Alpert, starts from the assumption that this is a good thing because ability grouping (or as I like to call it, readiness grouping) "tends to help kids at the top and hurt those at the bottom." (That's the summary of the article in "The Big Picture" section on the left side of the page). So clearly, we wouldn't want to help kids at the top. And she quotes kids talking about things slowing down, and mentions that fewer kids are scoring in the top levels on the 7th grade math exams. But she quickly rushes past that and quotes other people talking about how gifted kids thought there should only be white kids in their classes and hence now this is better.

In other words, anyone who believes in readiness grouping is racist. Get it?

After your head stops spinning when you read the article, it's time to take a more sober look at the concept. In general, detracking is very hard to make work. If you have a school of extremely gifted teachers (that is, you've managed to ability group to get your staff to all be much better than average), sometimes it can go all right. But if you have a school of extremely gifted teachers, anything you do will be fine. In general, teachers have an easier time of instructing kids who are relatively close in terms of their preparation.

I don't want to completely smack Correia, as it sounds like there is still some tracking for extremely gifted learners, as well as students with special needs. In general, it's better to have a smaller, more targeted gifted program than a huge one that ropes in students who just happen to score in the top 25%. And if students were ever calling classes the "stupid class" then it sounds like many of the folks involved in the school needed an attitude adjustment. But the way this article is written just totally misses the point. Gifted education is not a reward for white children and a way of punishing kids by putting them in the "stupid class." It's an educational intervention for children who need it. Maybe if we keep saying that often enough, the message will get through.