If Not Gifted, What?

There's an interesting discussion going on in the Title Nine post that I thought deserved its own thread. Namely, what word or words should we use to describe giftedness? Many people (including people who advocate for gifted education) don't like the word "gifted" though it's short and, at this point, pretty universally recognized for what it is. The word does invite criticism -- aren't we all gifted in some fashion? Other kinds of giftedness are sometimes qualified, like "athletically gifted" or "musically gifted" or perhaps for the models among us, "aesthetically gifted." Some folks use "intellectually gifted" to qualify it, or "academically gifted" which is probably the least offensive, though it raises questions too. After all, some gifted children aren't actually that good in school.

I've long blogged about using the words "readiness grouping" instead of "ability grouping" to talk about organizing classes into people who are prepared to handle certain material. It has nothing to do with age or innate talents. We all work at different paces and should be challenged to the extent possible. But I'm not sure what word is better than gifted, which is why I use it, and I'm sure many others do, too. I'm curious if people have great suggestions for other phrases that convey the same point.

Title Nine and Gifted Kids

I get lots of catalogs in the mail, one of which happens to be Title Nine, a maker of women's athletic clothing. I opened the current edition to see founder Missy Park listing "My definition of insanity." It was an 8 part list, with such things as "Any diet with one ingredient," and "our tax code" and... "'Gifted' children...How do they know??"

It's a bit puzzling, really. I mean, there are several ways they know. Some children really do exhibit exceptional intellectual abilities, at a very young age. And if that's not enough, there are multiple tests that have been rigorously prepared and studied that can ascertain when someone's IQ is outside the norm and there is a high probability he/she will need accommodations to meet her academic needs.

But of course, I think Park was coming at this from the perspective that it is patently absurd. Who could fathom such a thing as "gifted" children? I am quite curious what she thinks of the comments that several Davidson Institute bulletin board readers left on the online version of the list. I can sympathize to a degree. When I worked for Reader's Digest, writing the "Only in America" section, I once made a mocking list of "Museums Not To Build Your Vacation Around." I included a mustard museum, with the snarky line "thousands of mustards, not a hot dog in sight." Suddenly, there was a letter writing campaign to Reader's Digest from fans of this particular mustard museum. Dozens upon dozens. I kid you not. I was surprised, and I imagine Park is surprised that what she considered a throwaway line drew such ire.

On the other hand, I think giftedness is well enough established in educational research and pedagogy that it doesn't need quote marks around it. I do wonder why a catalog going after women who think it's OK to bust the norm (on the athletic side of things) would insult children who are busting the norm on another side of things. It's as if someone scoffed "Athletic children... how do they know??" Well... look at someone like Tiger Woods. That's how they know.

For AP Students, a New Classroom is Online

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article on the rise in online AP classes. The number of students taking Advanced Placement classes has soared -- with just shy of 2 million expected to sit for exams this spring, up more than 100% from 2000. However, not all schools can offer a full slate of such classes, and in an era of budget cuts, AP classes (which are often smaller than others even as the number of interested students has risen) are ripe targets. But given how standardized these classes are, there's no real reason that you have to be in a physical classroom with a teacher. A few states have charter schools that offer online versions of the classes, and there are national companies, the WSJ reports, that also allow students to enroll for a fee: Advanced Academics ($425 for a one-semester AP class), Apex Learning, Aventa Learning, Florida Virtual School, etc.

Online learning is tricky to get right. As reporter Sue Shellenbarger notes, "One potential drawback for socially connected teens: taking an advanced placement course online seems to require advanced placement time-management skills." It's hard to focus when Facebook and Twitter are one click away! Nonetheless, preliminary comparisons find that students who take online classes do just as well as students who take in-person ones.

I think this is a great trend, as the rise in online learning allows students to break through traditional barriers to taking advanced classes. A school system might balk at shuttling a 7th grader over to a high school for AP US History or AP Calculus, but no one can see how young you look online. Virtual learning is a great way for kids in rural areas to take classes that would otherwise be unaffordable for a small high school. And on the margins, it starts to change the notion that school is something you do in a certain building, with people of a certain age, during certain hours. That's a win for gifted students. I'm curious if any readers of this blog have incorporated online AP courses into their children's individualized learning plans.

Should Science Be Part of NCLB?

I know that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is not particularly popular within the gifted education community. The law definitely provides a convenient excuse for districts to divert resources from programs for advanced students -- something many seem to want to do anyway. But given that it's unlikely to be gutted, here's a different question: should science be part of NCLB?

Science teachers claim that, particularly at the elementary school level, schools have decided to spend much less time on science instruction since NCLB focuses on math and reading. On one hand, math and reading are pretty foundational, and lay the groundwork for all other subjects. Schools may be spending less time on science, but there are probably other neglected, important subjects too (like foreign languages, history, civics, etc.) that are losing time because of NCLB. Why just science?

On the other hand, broadening the standards movement to include other important subjects has upsides too, and science is certainly an important one. What is measured gets taught. The only way that some schools will start doing lab experiments with young kids is if they know it matters to their bottom lines and reputations. But will standardized tests actually cover scientific knowledge? Hard to know! I'm curious what readers of this blog think.

Google Enters The Science Fair Scene

Young scientists wishing to compete on a national (or international) stage have lots of options these days: The Davidson Fellows program, the Intel Science Talent Search, the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology, and ... Google.

Yes, Google has created a Google Global Science Fair (accepting applications until midnight eastern tonight!) for young scientists to demonstrate their experiments. Google hopes to differentiate its program by being strongly virtual: students upload information about their projects, and lots of people will be able to see what's been entered and judged. The vast majority of humanity will never attend a science fair in a conference center or school gymnasium, but people might check out a cool uploaded video on YouTube (hopefully demonstrating something more profound than the whole baking soda and vinegar volcano bit, but hey, the Diet Coke and Mentos video was pretty popular, so you never know...) The prizes also sound like fun, including a trip to Switzerland and a visit to the Galapagos islands.

The New York Times had a somewhat skeptical article about the contest a few days ago, asking if this was a bit of a marketing ploy to get young people hooked on Google's office products, but I figure hey, the more options the better! Anything that makes science more lucrative and interesting for young people is probably a good thing.

Differentiation, Tracking and Challenge

A recent feature story in the Quad City Times discusses a new "integration" program at North Scott High School that did away with honors classes for freshmen. In their place, students at varying levels of preparation take classes together. Teachers are charged with differentiating within the class. As one teacher puts it, her kids can choose "straightforward" or "hilly" or "mountainous" work. You can read the article (worthwhile, by the way) by following this link.

As long-time readers of this blog may guess, the results have been...mixed. Teachers who have done a lot of training in differentiation, and who are teaching subjects where it's more possible (like social studies) do OK with it. Others struggle quite a bit. As the language arts teacher points out, the most obvious way to differentiate would be to have everyone read the same novel then do different projects with it. But she has such varying reading levels within her class that this is hard to pull off. And some students, as she notes, aren't that into class. Dealing with those discipline issues holds everyone back.

What I find fascinating is the rationale for this de-tracking experiment. According to the article, "Administrators are hoping the end result will be more students signing up for Advanced Placement, or AP, classes." In the past, apparently, only the kids in the honors classes would take AP classes. But why is the solution to this to do away with such classes? An equally obvious solution, to me, would have been to offer more rigorous preparation within the other tracks. It doesn't seem clear why the presence of honors students in general classes would suddenly inspire others to sign up for AP classes later on in their high school careers. More, this seems to me like another excuse to get rid of the readiness grouping which many educators dislike anyway. By framing it in terms of increasing enrollment in AP it gives the movement a little push. But I'd be fascinated to see if rates of students scoring above a 4 or 5 on the AP tests they take go up significantly.

"Treating Students As Gifted," Giftedness and Assumptions

It has become fashionable, of late, to claim that giftedness is purely a construct. Children learn at different paces, and some kids who enter school ahead of others will later regress toward the mean and others will catch up. IQ has nothing to do with success, etc. We have heard all these arguments.

So I'm not surprised to see the spin on recent research out of Duke University, which finds that, "Schools that seek to help students who are underrepresented in advanced programs should treat them as gifted young scholars, an approach that can result in many of them actually performing at a gifted level within a few years." Project Bright Idea put thousands of young students through what the researchers deemed as "techniques usually reserved for gifted classrooms." Net result? 15-20% of students (and in many cases more) later reached the bar for academic giftedness, compared with 10% of a similar group.

So is gifted education a fraud? Not at all. These "techniques usually reserved for gifted classrooms" turn out to look a lot like...good teaching. According to the press release, "The project requires teachers to undergo regular and intensive training, energizing their profession and their classrooms by weaving together teaching strategies based on the work of national education experts... 'We are literally changing the knowledge, skills and dispositions of teachers so they believe children can learn. It is a lot about teacher expectation and belief,' said Mary N. Watson, the director of the exceptional children division of the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, who helped develop the project. In workshops and week-long summer institutes, teachers in the project are taught by national and state-level experts on how to develop students’ thinking and skills such as controlling impulsivity, posing questions and taking responsible risks."

I am not surprised that energized teachers who focus on developing students' thinking skills and controlling impulsivity get good results. I wish all teachers did this, and there's really no reason they shouldn't. If people think this is unique to gifted education, I think they misunderstand the whole idea.

But beyond that, the press release wasn't clear on how students were later identified as gifted, but the fact that 10% of students were identified as such even in the control suggests it may learn toward one of those very broad definitions that get gifted education in trouble. And I worry that the definition may be even broader. This research was funded by the Jacob Javits grant, which, as I wrote back in 2008, had been re-steered to fund programs that solved this problem, per literature from the Department of Education: "In 2007, 32 percent of all 4th grade public school students scored at or above the proficient level in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared to only 17 percent of students who are eligible for free or reduced price lunch under the National School Lunch program (i.e., students who are economically disadvantaged), 13 percent of students with disabilities, and 7 percent of students with limited English proficiency. Students from these three groups are significantly underrepresented at or above proficient levels on the 8th grade reading and 4th and 8th grade mathematics assessments." The idea was to find programs that can bring at-risk students up to the top third on standardized tests.

Which is great -- and definitely a worthy endeavor. But not necessarily what gifted education is about. To my mind, gifted education is about meeting the needs of children who are so far outside the norm that they can't be readily accommodated in good classes. All children should be treated as bright, capable scholars. All children should be challenged and their teachers should demand their best. But that has little to do with giftedness.

Early Enrollment: On The Rise?

The Davidson Institute graciously sends me a round-up of headlines from gifted and education news every week or so. These stories are usually all over the map -- a profile of a contest winner here, a closure of a gifted program there, often a Jay Mathews column -- but this week there seemed to be a ton of pieces on early or dual enrollment.

The basic idea is that sometimes course work is offered at the high school level or college level that isn't offered at the level below it, and sometimes students are ready for more advanced work in certain subjects, while still desiring a similar-aged peer group. Especially if educational institutions are near each other (a middle school is across the street from a high school; a community college is around the corner from both), why not allow students to take classes at any institution they want?

In Colorado, students can enroll simultaneously in community college and high school classes. The number of students taking college classes, according to this article in the Denver Post, has risen to 6,473 in 2010 from 1,750 five years ago.

Meanwhile in Chicago, according to a brief write-up in the Chicago Tribune, officials are moving toward a gifted middle school program that would enroll 7th graders, and allow them early admission to Lane Tech High School, one of the city's top public schools.

Over in Michigan, another article from ABC local news talks about a Carrollton program which partners with Delta College to allow students to enroll simultaneously in both. Students can graduate in four years with both a high school diploma and an associate's degree. If that's where you want to stop, you already have a credential for job hunting. If you wish to go on to a 4-year college, you can save lots of cash by having the first two years paid for.

Indeed, there are now so many dual enrollment programs in operation that the National Consortium of Early College Programs, which takes a slightly different tack, met last fall to "provide clarity of the traditional mission and purpose of early college." These programs, like Mary Baldwin's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted and Simon's Rock College, have students leave or skip high school completely to enroll in a 4-year college program.

I think all these programs have their places. The community college dual enrollment programs are sometimes aimed at helping at-risk students develop career interests but they can work perfectly fine for gifted high school or middle school students who want more enrichment and advanced course work too. And then some students are prepared to sail over high school, and so traditional early college programs are a great option for them. All of these are great options. And broadly, they help the public and the educational establishment see that just because you are 13-14 years old doesn't mean you have to be in 8th grade, learning a set group of things that only 8th graders are supposed to learn. Better to use all a community's resources.

Standards vs. Personalized Education

I apologize for the lapse of time between my last post and now. I'm deep in the weeds on book writing at the moment, which is always fun. It is the experience that feels most like "flow" for me -- the word that references being completely engrossed in one's work and unaware of time. I start in the morning, look at the clock and it is 4pm. Good stuff.

But anyway, I am emerging a bit tonight! I just read an interesting essay by Ronald Wolk in Education Week arguing that the pursuit of common, high standards is a waste of time. You can read the essay by following this link. Instead, education needs to be more personalized. On one level this is a very appealing idea, especially as we completely leave the factory era. Once, standardization was a virtue, everyone focused on the same thing. Now, every major employer seems to be searching for people who "think outside the box." Personalized education also recognizes that all children learn differently, and at different paces. In the context of this blog, personalized education recognizes that some children learn a lot faster than others, and that age has no more to do with what work you're ready for than height.

On the other hand... after reading Wendy Kopp's A Chance To Make History, I'm a little wary (as she is) of silver bullets in education in general. Personalized education is good, and so is some amount of testing. It's really hard to solve a problem if you can't even diagnose it, and Wolk's complete aversion to testing is a good way to create a world of no standards. Also, does he think that top-down teaching is even the norm anymore? Education schools everywhere are gripped by a "child-centered" approach to learning where we all discover the Pythagorean theorem on our own. That's one idea, or you can recognize that children don't know much, and need information crammed into their little brains. That's a big reason I read books -- to learn things I don't know. It's also why I attend speeches, which is roughly the equivalent of teacher lectures.

So my general thought is... all things in moderation. Yes, we need more personalization. We also need high standards, and probably some assessments too. All of this can work together to create a better education system than we have now.

The Write Start and Rip the Page

Long time Gifted Exchange readers know that nurturing the talents of writers is one of my biggest interests within gifted education. Often, we focus on talented young mathematicians as the obvious geniuses among us, and schools in general are more prepared to do acceleration in math than in other subjects. But good writing also requires training, discipline and challenge.

So I thought I'd share two books that crossed my desk over the past year (after their publisher, Trumpeter, sent them to me). The Write Start, by Jennifer Hallissy, features a series of activities designed to make young children comfortable expressing themselves in words. These include everything from writing love notes and press releases to making scrapbooks. Each activity can be adapted for four levels of young children: scribblers (very little ones), spellers (those who can write their letters), storytellers (those who can express ideas in writing), and scholars ("writers who have also become readers"). Hallissy is a pediatric occupational therapist, and believes that pen/pencil/crayon writing is a very important brain development step for young children. Since I learned writing and reading back in 1984 with an early computer program called Writing to Read, I tend to think that learning to write on computers is fine too. But either way, the more children come to believe that writing is fun, the better.

What happens once they get older? That's where Rip the Page! by Karen Benke comes in. This book for 8-12 year olds is billed as "adventures in creative writing." Children do various activities such as re-writing cliches, writing fortunes for Chinese fortune cookies, composing acrostic poems, writing a biography for a color, and writing in the same style as different poets. All can spark the imagination, and hopefully will start young writers in creating their own longer stories.

How have you nurtured your young writers?

Disability, Asperger's and software coding

I read a fascinating piece over at ZDNET asking this question: Does Asperger's make you a better software coder?

Adults with Asperger's, like adults with many kinds of disabilities, face discrimination in the job market. An interviewer may be turned off by a lack of eye contact or an inability to read social cues. And in office situations that call for a lot of group interaction, these may be real problems.

But what if you're interviewing for a job that requires profound attention to detail, and a methodical ability to follow exact guidelines? Then the personality traits associated with Asperger's might actually be a benefit. I don't know how this winds up working in real companies, but it's a good reminder that what is perceived as a disability is sometimes just a difference. None of us are normal, when you think about it.

California gifted programs on the block

Flexibility sounds like a good thing. In tight times, local school districts need to be able to use their stretched funds to cover their most pressing needs. But as anyone who's followed the issue of gifted education will suspect, educating highly intelligent children is rarely deemed a pressing need.

According to a recent New York Times piece (done in conjunction with The Bay Citizen), in California, a quick glance would make someone think that California funding for gifted education had only fallen a bit in recent years: from $46.8 million in 2008-2009 to $44.2 million in 2009-2010. But, as the article notes, "those numbers obscure a more important change: in February 2009, the California Legislature adopted a plan that allowed public schools to divert state money for gifted children to “any educational purpose,” including closing budget deficits."

And the diversion happened like a stampede. According to the article, "A study by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, released last May, found that 68 percent of the 231 school districts surveyed had shifted resources away from education for gifted students since lawmakers approved the measure."

So there we go. Left to their own devices, only 32% of districts actually think that money appropriated for gifted education should go to gifted education. I know statistics like this are why many gifted education advocates believe that the only thing that will make gifted education a priority is a national mandate with teeth, similar to the one that exists for students with disabilities. As a generally fiscally conservative person, I'm always wary of mandates, and arguments that the things that I think the government should spend money on are somehow more worthy than things other people think the government should spend money on. Still, statistics like this are incredibly frustrating. It is hard to envision a more shortsighted policy than cutting gifted programs because, hey, that seems like the easiest way to solve the problem of paying this month's electricity bill.

Long term, this mindset will need to be attacked on a few fronts. First, gifted education advocates need to work with teachers colleges to expose more teachers to the needs and diversities of gifted students, and ways of meeting their needs. Right now, too many educators see gifted education as something for, as Mara Sapon-Shevin once wrote, "the kids with disposable income."

Second, gifted education itself needs to be yanked away from a reliance on short pull-out programs -- the worst of which involve doing something like taking the gifted kids to a science museum on a Friday when no one else gets to go. Everyone can benefit from enrichment and field trips, and 45 minutes of pull-out twice a week do little to truly challenge a gifted child. Acceleration is a great idea. So is broad based grouping by ability (or readiness, as we like to say here). Gifted education should not be seen as a reward. It needs to be seen as an educational intervention for kids who need it.

And finally, we need some high profile champions. Surely, some folks in the California legislature, in politics generally, in industry, in the arts, in journalism, were in gifted programs as young people and saw benefits from them. If this sounds like you, please step up and let the world know!

Grouping ... by distance

I studied abroad for a semester in Australia back in college, so I can attest that it is a rather vast country. A bus trip from Alice Springs to Darwin took several days, much of it through a vast and strange landscape filled with rocks, some desert scrub, and not much else. Of course, as in America, people live in the craziest outposts, and they have kids. And the kids need to be educated. And some children in small towns around Australia are gifted. How can the education system meet their needs?

One approach is distance learning. An article in the Central Western Daily called "Distance no barrier for gifted scholars" discusses the growth of the xsel Virtual Selective High School. Drawing students from an area the size of Germany, they can listen to lectures, and interact with teachers and classmates.

I think this is a great development, though I know that distance learning is often hard to get right. There is something very human about feeling closer to people when we see them face to face. I would imagine it is hard, as a teacher, not to feel more attuned to the children in front of you, rather than those elsewhere. On the other hand, as virtual conferencing software gets better, it can actually be done to a point where it looks like the people really are in front of you. It remains to be seen whether better technology will trick our brains into believing we are really there, but gifted education is a great thing to start with. After all, if the children aren't served virtually, they probably won't be served at all, unless they're willing to leave home for boarding school.

Is there a difference between smart and gifted?

As part of writing about different families for Gifted Exchange, I got an interesting email from Suzanne a few weeks ago. She wrote that she had "the unique perspective of raising gifted children and being married to a gifted adult but not being gifted myself." As she said, "Don't get me wrong, I am perfectly intelligent. I am able to recognize that my mind does not absorb information or make the same kind of leaps theirs do."

I found this curious and asked for more details. What did she think the difference was? "In my house, the difference between being perfectly intelligent and gifted comes out in things like processing speed," she said. "I tend to look at a problem and think about it and think about it some more. Maybe pull out some paper and a calculator or a ruler or some other tool. Whereas my husband will walk up and jiggle something or move two things around and BAM! It's solved. I'll get the job done just not as quickly or elegantly."

As for her 5-year-old, "I've noticed that my daughter is more like my husband in problem solving and processing speed," she wrote. "While I've been typing this email, my children have been in the next room watching 'The Cat in the Hat' on PBS. There is some theme music that pops up every time the Cat in the Hat does, it's maybe two measures of music. I heard my daughter say 'Hmm' and come into the room where I am and within 10 notes on the piano she was playing the theme music."

What do you think, GE readers? What is the difference between "perfectly intelligent" and gifted? Do you have a mixed family?

Narrowing the Range

Over in Batavia, Illinois, the school board is considering a curious gifted education proposal. The idea, according to this article, is to get rid of the pull-out program (basically, 50 minutes of advanced math per day) and instead, have one gifted class per grade level.

So far, so good -- here at Gifted Exchange, we definitely prefer homogeneous grouping to enrichment pull-outs, and expanding the gifted concept to mean more than just math.

But then things get interesting. Because these gifted classes aren't actually going to be homogeneous. According to the article, "Each 'gifted' classroom would include all the gifted children in that school at that grade level, plus a mixture of high-achieving and average students. Low-achieving students would not be assigned to those classrooms." The purpose of this, according to Associate Superintendent Jan Wright is to "narrow the range of abilities in those classrooms." But, I guess, not be too narrow.

My first thought is that this was odd, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a relatively reasonable compromise. In this era of fiscal tightening, no gifted education proposal will be accepted if it costs more money. All must be budget neutral. If there aren't enough gifted kids in any grade to fill a full class, in order to be budget neutral, other kids would have to be assigned in. But by aiming the median slightly higher, you'd avoid some of the challenges of meeting a more diverse range of abilities. A full-time gifted class, even if the median isn't in the gifted range, is still better than pull-out.

That said, there are other options for a school district that could be budget neutral too. If there are only enough gifted kids for half a class, you can combine grade levels (so a 3-4th grade gifted class -- and maybe a 3-4th "regular" class too if that makes the numbers come out right... ) Or you could combine 3-4-5th grades, even if it meant a slightly bigger class size. I'm curious what Gifted Exchange readers think.

"He wished he could be in pullout all the time"

(Laura's note: I'm continuing with posts from parents of gifted children. Today's post comes from Monica, a mom of a 10-year-old boy who is in the local public school's GATE program, and a 4-year-old preschooler. She discusses the difficulty of advocating for early kindergarten, especially for an oldest child. You're new to schooling, and you know that the educators you are meeting have much more experience with schools and grade placement than you do. But you also know your child better than they do. Below are excerpts from two emails).

To: Laura
From: Monica

I think that parents really need to feel more empowered in making decisions for their children’s education.  I was not and relied on the assistant superintendent for my local school district to say that yes they did have other children who started kindergarten early, but they weren’t emotionally ready.  She didn’t mention anything about a law that was just passed to allow for early entrance to kindergarten, and I didn’t dig up this fact until later. 
 
Her comment made me start to question my own gut feeling that my son was ready for kindergarten at 4. My son could read before starting preschool at 3 and knew basic math facts and got along with other children- even to the point of going up to complete strangers and asking them questions or inviting kids over to play.  So with a December birthday, my son entered kindergarten at 5 years, 8 months and without going into too much detail, he wasn’t in the right educational environment.  His kindergarten teacher knew my son could read and so she had the reading specialist use the DIBELS assessment on him (they had to go up to the 6th grade level…at least that was as far as they could go with the materials they had). 
 
The principal at the school (who did the kindergarten assessment and knew my son could read since he read part of the assessment to him), was very cooperative and wanted to help the following year.  Grade acceleration for reading/language arts was decided on (he went to a 2nd grade teacher in the morning for those subjects and went back to 1st for math, science, and social studies).  This wasn’t an ideal situation as both of the teachers were new and were out quite a bit for in-service/mentoring and he was still unhappy.  He would go to the nurse to get out of class and then just not want to go into school at all. 
 
I pressed the principal the spring of that year to get my son evaluated for the ALPHA program (the district’s self-contained gifted classroom for 3rd/4th grades combined).  The school psychologist did an IQ and achievement test and then there was a meeting with teachers, and the district's gifted consultant.  As a result of that meeting it was decided that my son was to skip 2nd grade and stay in a regular 3rd grade classroom with a gifted pullout once a week for a few hours.  The request for going into ALPHA was shot down, because of my son’s writing ability (didn’t expand on his thoughts, using the RARE method was torture for him).  The gifted consultant said that there was lots more writing involved in the ALPHA class and that he would feel overwhelmed.  She also had me work with him over the summer on 2nd grade math and science to fill in the “gaps”. 
 
Third grade was fine, but still my son wasn’t challenged in math or reading as far as I could tell.  The GT pullout was mainly nice enrichment activities, which he loved doing and he said to me often that he wished he could be in the pullout all the time.  At the end of 3rd grade the principal and GT pullout teacher (who was also the librarian) recommended that he go to the ALPHA program for 4th grade.  That is where he finally met some kids who were more like him. 
 
The teacher for that program had some knowledge (took coursework) in gifted kids and I felt confident that he would enjoy the class.  This year he is in 5th grade in the GATE program and has one teacher with a Masters in gifted education and another who is very gifted herself and has gifted children.  They are differentiating a bit more (mostly in math) and he seems to enjoy his classes.

To: Laura
From: Monica

After writing that lengthy e-mail yesterday about my son’s educational story, I got to thinking more about advice to other parents.  I know I gave you one piece of advice about parents feeling empowered to make decisions and with that I should have mentioned being informed enough about what the school provides in the way of programs (my son’s school did a poor job of communicating what was available in the beginning).  They should also investigate other online resources to get ideas of what other options there are even if their school doesn’t provide them.  This knowledge is important when going into meetings with teachers and educational professionals. 
 
Go into school meetings being informed and realize that most teachers do not have extensive knowledge about gifted education.  I myself who studied to be a high school biology teacher only took one class called Exceptional Children and there was only one mention, I think, of the characteristics of gifted children, and perhaps education options that were available to gifted learners.  Granted this was back in 1994, but from what I’ve read in other recent gifted blog posts, not much has changed. 
 
I know that most parents don’t want to seem pushy, but you can go into a meeting with confidence and work on an educational plan with a team mentality.  I also found that e-mailing right after to say thank you to the principal, teachers, and others who attended the meeting  was helpful in getting things accomplished. 

Family stories: Private school guilt...and acceptance

(Laura's note: From time to time I'll be running posts telling stories from families of gifted kids. We can all learn from each other -- about parenting, schooling, and doing what's right for our children. Some of these will be told by the parents, and some will feature me interviewing the parents or children. Today's post is the former, and comes courtesy of "Ginger," mom of SJ. She talks about her feelings on choosing the right school. Thanks to folks who have already emailed me about being part of this. I'm at lvanderkam@yahoo.com).

Private School Guilt... And Acceptance

By Ginger

SJ is now 7 and in second grade. From the time he was 2.25 until 4.5, he went to preschool full-time at a local private school while my husband and I both worked. He loved it there, and we liked it too -- great teachers, approachable director, happy kid. A few months after he started in the 2-year-old class, one of his teachers told us she suspected he could read already. We already knew he was pretty bright and had a great memory -- he knew all his letters and could count to 10 at about 18 months. But, sure enough, he was decoding words, and even started spontaneously spelling them with magnetic letters on the fridge. As he got older, we also discovered that he was an extremely quick learner in math, and able to grasp complicated concepts almost intuitively. The school did lots to encourage his abilities and gave him plenty of opportunities to work ahead.

After our second son was born, when SJ was 4.5, I decided to leave the corporate world so I could spend more time with the kids. Instead of having SJ continue at the full-time private school, I could now send him to public school because I would be available to pick him up when he finished at 1:15 or 2:15 in the afternoon.

I should mention also that my husband and I REALLY wanted to believe in the state education system. We did not want to be one of "those" couples who talk out of one side of our mouths about equal opportunity and fixing our public schools while we send our own kids to a private school. So, we wanted to give the local school a chance, and enrolled SJ in kindergarten there.

The first indication I had that something was wrong was when I started volunteering in SJ's class one morning per week. SJ's behavior was not good, and it was so unlike how he was at home. He would not join in at circle time, preferring to horse around under a desk or go read a book or otherwise do his own thing. I chalked it up to him playing up because his mother was there, but when I discussed it with his teacher, she confirmed that he was like that much of the time -- distracted and not wanting to be part of the group. He had a hard time completing simple tasks -- things we knew he could do in his sleep. He loathed his homework, and complained about having to do things over and over and over again when he already knew how to do them. His teacher, to her credit, realized his behavior problems were due to boredom, but firmly told us he would not do well in school if he could not act more maturely and conform to the group.

Then he moved to first grade. His teacher was young, and well-educated but not very experienced. After a couple of months, we had a parent-teacher conference with her, which went poorly. We were expecting that she would have something to say about SJ's abilities and achievements (by this time he was reading at 4th-grade level and learning about fractions at home) but instead she focused on his behavior -- distracted, chatty, unable to get his class work finished on time. She told us he had tested at first grade level for reading and had mastered first grade math concepts. There was such a mismatch from the boy we saw at home and the boy we read about in the report card; either she wasn't testing him as far as he could go, or he wasn't showing her what he could do at all. We told her we thought that he could do more, and that his distractedness in class was due to boredom. We told her the kinds of books he was reading at home, and gave her examples of the kinds of math problems he was doing at home. We asked her if she could try pushing him a little, and see if he responded. She agreed and said that later in the year she would give him some extra science projects and harder math. All she ever did was to give him a second grade math workbook, which he could do ON TOP OF all the boring first grade homework he had to do. Just what a bored, unmotivated kid needs -- more homework.

After getting nowhere with the teacher, we approached the school psychologist for some help. We told her we thought our son was gifted and asked if he could be tested through the school. She said they only tested children who were doing poorly and/or showed signs of a learning disability or psychological problem, not kids who were doing fine as our son was. She did recommend an outside educational psychologist if we wanted to do it on our own, but it was going to cost a lot and although we now only had one income, we didn't qualify for assistance.

Then the school board in our district announced that, due to budget problems, the following school year it would be firing hundreds of teachers and increasing class sizes to 30+ for K-2 classes. Teachers who were having problems educating 20 students of vastly differing abilities were now going to be asked to cope with 30 or more. We were really disappointed with the public school experience so far, and this was the last straw.

We're not pushy parents, but we do want our kids to fulfill their potential, and most of all we want them to love learning! Our son was so bored, so resistant to homework, so underachieving. We couldn't bear to see him so disillusioned at such a young age. So, about halfway through the year we decided to go back to talk with the director of the private school where he had gone to preschool, to see what she could do for us. She was very accommodating and told us many parents of bright children had come to them hoping for some flexibility and a chance to advance faster. She assured us that SJ would be challenged at her school. We applied to enroll him on the spot.

The director had him shadow with a second grade class, and we talked about the possibility of a grade skip. In the end, we decided against the skip, because we thought he might have a lot to cope with in moving to a new school, and because he was already one of the youngest in his class. Also, the director said they often worked faster than the standard grade level because they found the kids could handle it.

SJ started second grade at his new school at the beginning of this school year, and he is doing so much better! He is no longer so distracted in class (although he is still a bit chatty -- he's a friendly guy. :) ) He is getting his class work done and participating in the group, and his grades are excellent in all subjects. He takes responsibility for completing and handing in his own homework, with no pushing/cajoling/bribing from me -- a MAJOR accomplishment for him. His teacher started an after-school Math Club for him and a few other kids to learn more advanced concepts, which he LOVES and is so proud of. There are one or two other highly gifted children in his class, and suddenly he has a little competition, which is also spurring him to work harder. He has made some good friends. And, most importantly, he has his enthusiasm for learning back.

When we first discussed it with him, SJ liked the idea of switching back to the private school. He kept telling us he was bored and already knew everything they were making him repeat over and over again in first grade. We told him this would help, but warned him it would be challenging and that he would need to work harder and really show them what he could do. He replied that he wanted to do harder work. He was sad to leave his friends of two years at the old school, but seemed excited to be going to a place where they would expect more from him. And I am so pleased at how he has responded, truly living up to his potential.

We hope to be able to keep SJ here through middle school, and his younger brother too. We love that it's small (<200 kids, K-8) and that we can talk to the teachers and director any time about making changes to our son's schooling. We love the extra activities they offer as part of the regular curriculum such as drama, Spanish and music, and the extra-extras like chess club and all kinds of sporting activities. We love that there are only 20 kids per teacher, and that the classrooms are well-stocked. They also provide healthy snacks and lunches as part of the tuition. Even though it's expensive, we are so glad we made the switch. I do feel a little pang of guilt that we opted out of the public system, but hey, my kids come first.

The Indiana Academy, budget cuts and what we do with an education

It's no secret that state budgets are strapped these days. While Indiana is doing better than its neighbors (see Illinois's recent tax hike), the state is exploring areas to cut, and education budgets should probably be no more sacrosanct than anything else.

So I was not surprised to see this recent article from the Star-Press that my high school, the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities, a 2-year residential school for gifted high school juniors and seniors, is facing a 15% budget cut. As a generally fiscally conservative person, I'm always wary of making arguments that programs I care about are somehow more deserving than others. But I want to talk a little bit about the value of specialized secondary schools, and why the questions some of the lawmakers asked about the Academy are probing the wrong vein.

First, gifted education, as we often talk about here, is not a reward for hard-working kids. Hard work should certainly be rewarded, but gifted education is something different. It is an educational intervention for people who require it.

Regular high schools -- even good ones -- find it very difficult to serve highly gifted young people. I attended Clay High School in South Bend, Indiana for my freshman and sophomore years, and it was certainly not a failing institution. One or two kids went to Ivy League schools most years. There were a handful of AP classes. They were also reasonably accommodating to me. I was allowed to accelerate 2 years in math, and would have worked out an arrangement for studying at Notre Dame or IUSB had I stayed there. After I had a showdown with my sophomore English teacher about various things, the department head used his planning period to do an independent study with me. He taught me grammar, introduced me to the classics of American literature, and definitely honed my writing craft. But I was still miserable. I actually made hash marks on the back of one of my notebooks to count through the 180 days of my sophomore year. I felt like being smart wasn't particularly valued, and "smart" was my only identity. I was still not challenged enough.

So that was my position when I started at the Indiana Academy in the fall of 1995. It was not perfect either. There were various controversies over administration, over rules that were more of the CYA variety than about rationality. Some classes were better than others. Some students were not emotionally prepared to live away from home, and in the early years of a school sometimes people enroll who are not prepared. But I learned to work. Hard. I would scribble lines in my journal about my brain stretching. I failed at things and had to learn to try harder. Because my peers were mostly academically inclined as well, we did not all have to fit into the "smart kid" role, and we learned new things about our identities. Thanks to the crucible of the Academy, not only was I admitted to every college where I applied, when I showed up at Princeton I felt prepared.

Note: Princeton is not in Indiana. I mention this because the article quotes Rep. Peggy Welch of Bloomington as asking "Do most of these students, after they graduate from the academy, do they go to Indiana colleges?" She asked a representative from the school, "Are you tracking them? Do they stay in Indiana for their jobs or are we losing them?"

Welch continued that "Obviously we should be supporting it (the academy)...But I think it would be helpful to build the case, or, if we find they are kind of leaving the state or not returning to the state after they go to an Ivy League school, track that to see what we can do differently to have them land in Indiana."

I understand that politically, it is easier to sell education as an investment than as an expenditure. But staying in state for college is a silly metric on which to judge a high school. By this definition, the Academy "failed" by sending me to Princeton, and would have succeeded if I'd stayed right there and gone to any college in Indiana.

Returning to the state to work is a trickier matter. I know that this is the same mindset that has gifted education coordinators selling their programs by saying "these kids will save us in the future! These are our future medical researchers, presidents, inventors..." Maybe. I think it's the wrong argument though. Some gifted kids do amazing things. Others don't -- or at least not the kinds of things you'd send a press release about. But as noted above, gifted education is best understood not as an investment in our future, but as an educational intervention in the here and now. Many students with disabilities will not go on to win Nobel prizes, yet this doesn't stop us from spending the money necessary to meet their needs so they can receive an appropriate education. Likewise with intellectual giftedness. It is simply humane to give all children an education that challenges them to the extent of their abilities, in an environment with their intellectual peers.

I would bet that the majority of Indiana Academy alums do go to Indiana colleges and stay in Indiana -- and these stats are worth tracking -- but even if no Academy alum goes to an Indiana college or returns to Indiana to work, the Academy gives gifted children the education they deserve.

No more than anyone else. But no less either.

Chinese mothers, intelligence, and parenting

Probably many of you have by now read Amy Chua's essay in the Wall Street Journal, adapted from her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, on "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." She claims that western parents are squishy, and that one of the reason "Chinese" mothers (a certain archetype, and certainly not encompassing all or only Chinese parents) get high achievement from their children is that they demand it.

There's a lot to like about "Chinese" mothering. Namely, you assume that your children are strong. They are smart and capable kids. While I don't agree that motivational insults are a good idea (the world is not going to be a supportive place -- why shouldn't parents be kind?) accepting failure as the best the kid can do isn't a good idea either. Chua also has a great point that nothing is fun until you're good at it. You get good at things by working. But kids often don't want to work. This is where a parent steps in to force the early stages (though again, it's hard to know why only piano and violin are considered worthy things to be good at).

Chua's essay has sparked a lot of controversy, and I'm really curious what Gifted Exchange readers think. But one of the most interesting commentaries (of course) is from that gadfly Charles Murray. He blogs that "large numbers of talented children everywhere would profit from Chua’s approach, and instead are frittering away their gifts—they’re nice kids, not brats, but they are also self-indulgent and inclined to make excuses for themselves. There are also large numbers of children who are not especially talented, but would do a lot better in school if their parents applied the same intense home supplements to their classroom work."

That said, Murray notes, here's a point that Chua doesn't necessarily raise. Her kids were going to do pretty well regardless (indeed, Chua's more indulgent husband seems to have been raised in a different fashion, and yet he's incredibly successful too). As Murray calculates Chua's children's genes:

"Mother: able to get into Harvard (a much better indicator of her IQ than the magna cum laude in economics that she got there); Executive Editor of the Law Review at Harvard Law School.

Father: Summa cum laude from Princeton and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, now a chaired professor at Yale Law School.

Guess what. Amy Chua has really smart kids. They would be really smart if she had put them up for adoption at birth with the squishiest postmodern parents. They would not have turned out exactly the same under their softer tutelage, but they would probably be getting into Harvard and Princeton as well. Similarly, if Amy Chua had adopted two children at birth who turned out to have measured childhood IQs at the 20th percentile, she would have struggled to get them through high school, no matter how fiercely she battled for them."

There is probably something to this as well. Parenting and genes both play a role, though since they often come in a package, it's hard to tease out what matters.

Gifted Exchange in 2011

Happy New Year to everyone! Gifted Exchange is now entering its 7th calendar year, having started in fall 2005. We've covered a lot of topics and grown steadily in readership. We had a rather exciting milestone of being mentioned in the Washington Post this past year, and hopefully that's the start of great things to come.

When I started blogging here, I was a young newlywed who was interested in gifted education more because of my own experiences growing up, and the opportunities I had to write about education in the mainstream media. I am increasingly less young (happens to the best of us) and now I am interested in gifted education in part because my family has grown in the past seven calendar years. I am now raising two very bright and curious young boys, and as I start to think about what their educations will entail, I am even more interested in these issues.

As such, one of my goals for 2011 is to profile more families. I want to talk with parents and find out: What works? What doesn't? What challenges have you overcome, and which ones are you still facing? What conversations and negotiations with teachers and principals have proved most fruitful? How have you incorporated other resources in your community? How do you deal with discipline issues? Sibling issues? Disabilities? How do you talk about college and careers? How do you nurture creativity or deal with the child who's into everything? Or just one thing, passionately?

Anyway, let's start the conversation. If you'd like to share some of your wisdom with the Gifted Exchange audience, please let me know. My email is lvanderkam@yahoo.com. I'd prefer to use real names but I can be flexible about that. We'll set up a time to talk, or do an email Q&A or whatever we decide works best. Thanks for considering it.