How not to ruin a prodigy

Today's Wall Street Journal profiles Todd Schmitz, the coach of champion (and likely Olympics-bound) swimmer Missy Franklin. Franklin, 17, stepped into Schmitz's program at age 7. The curious thing about their relationship is that Schmitz's program isn't one of the elite Olympic feeder swimming programs. Indeed, the youth club Franklin swims with doesn't even have its own pool. Schmitz rents space in various Denver pools and lugs equipment like his digital clock around in his truck.

As the article notes, Franklin's parents know they could put their daughter in a different program. But as her father says, "Why would we?... We have a kid who is happy and who keeps swimming faster."

Schmitz's methods are a bit unconventional -- but the deeper one reads into the profile, the clearer it because that the bit about having "a kid who is happy" is very important. Franklin trains hard, but takes the weekends off. Schmitz monitors his swimmers for burn out, and if they're tired, he'll launch a game of water polo. Drills turn into play -- "A lot of this is about simply playing around in the water," Schmitz told the WSJ. He cross trains the kids on dry land which, among other things, helps avoid injury. All told, Franklin probably swims about half the yardage of elite college swimmers. But it seems to be enough. Franklin is the world champion in the 200-meter backstroke, and will be a swimmer to watch in London this summer.

Reading the article, I was reminded of the parallels -- and things that should be parallels -- between athletic prodigies and profoundly gifted young people whose main talents lie in other fields. In athletics, we naturally see the role of a coach. Practice tends to be supervised, with a coach offering immediate feedback. Ideally, for a young talent in other fields, much of practice time would feature coaching too. Here's what needs work. Here's how you improve. Proper practice is a skill that many people never learn -- it doesn't necessarily come naturally, as anyone who's listened to a kid bang out a song on the piano knows. Math can be practiced. Writing can be practiced -- with a good coach offering immediate feedback on drafts so one can learn how to improve.

But there's also the broader question of how to nurture talent without leading to a prodigy flaming out. Here, I think Schmitz is on to something. Getting to be world-class in any field takes a ton of work and practice. But if it isn't fun, then it's hard to stick with a rigorous practice schedule year after year after year. Kids often have lots of interests, even if they appear to have prodigious talent in one. While Missy Franklin clearly enjoyed swimming from an early age, the article notes that at age 7, she was a bit reluctant, sitting out some sprints. A coach who insisted on making her swim when she didn't want to might have squelched the joy that these days has her getting faster and faster. How to nurture that joy is a question that all adults who work with talented young people need to ask.

The class size kerfuffle

I like following politics in general, but seeing the "big stories" of the past few days has reminded me why I'm glad I'm not covering politics as a reporter full time. Yesterday's big campaign story was that Mitt Romney said that class size was not key to student success. The White House issued a statement asking what planet he lived on, as if this were a cut and dried issue.

The problem for both sides is that it's an incredibly nuanced issue. In our political debates, we tend to like story lines that focus on very few variables. From the left, perhaps: raise taxes and the debt will disappear! From the right: cutting defense spending makes America less safe! But with education and many other issues, there are so many more variables.

This is definitely true with class size. Some studies (most notably a long, longitudinal one from Tennessee) found that reduced class sizes correspond with higher student achievement. On the other hand, Mitt Romney could point to other studies finding that class size was not strongly correlated with student success. Both can be right. Studies can find all kinds of things when there's many variables! On this blog, we've looked at a study out of Kenya finding that cutting class size in half only helped if the students were then grouped by ability in the smaller classes. Teachers often prefer working in smaller groups, and find it better for discipline purposes, but what if you change the whole class structure? Some of the schools I visited in California for this blended learning project could have as many as 48 kids in a class, but they were all getting more instructional time, because they rotated through direct teacher instruction, small group projects, and adaptive learning programs on computers. KIPP Empower LA, an elementary school that's doing blended learning, has 28-30 kids per kindergarten class, and saw these children's test scores improve more over the year than any other KIPP school (which tend to be high-performing charters already). The kids got more small group time with the teacher because of the class set-up -- but that didn't require small classes.

Just think of all the variables involved. Small classes might be good, but if teacher quality were more important, then small classes might not help matters -- because it would force you to dip deeper into the applicant pool than you might want.

But all these matters are not easily discussed in sound bites -- so we tend not to get thoughtful discussions in campaigns.

Digital learning and acceleration

I spent the past week out in California, visiting several schools that are using digital/blended learning strategies. Done right, blended learning means that kids are getting practice on skills using technology that provides instant feedback: you got this math problem wrong, so let's work through to see what you don't understand. Or you got it right, so let's try a harder one. With computers doing the basics and the grading, teacher time can be re-deployed from large group instruction to small group projects or individual tutoring. Class sizes can be larger. Schools can be cheaper and, with teachers analyzing the data to see exactly what kids know and don't, schools can be better. Utopia!

But does it work in real life?

This is where a lot of educational ideas founder, and certainly, blended learning is going through some growing pains. At one school I visited, I was informed that they're switching software providers because they're getting data...but it's useless. At another, student reading passages were differentiated (the level of difficulty depended on your reading preparation) but if you finished early, you sort of waited for the next assignment from the teacher, instead of moving on. And in another, a big chunk of the computers didn't work because they were old. And the capital budgets for new computers in CA are not so generous at the moment.

On the other hand, many of the schools were getting positive results despite some challenges. At KIPP Empower LA, the kids who started kindergarten in 2010 came in with 64% scoring basic or below basic on the STEP literacy test, and 36% scoring proficient or advanced. By spring of 2011, 96% of the kindergartners were proficient or advanced. Blended learning isn't the only good thing going on there, but it's certainly part of it. Good educational technology is the equivalent of "deliberate practice" -- the kind of intense practice that professional musicians engage in, addressing their weak points and repeating skills over and over. The KIPP kids are getting an extra hour a day of pure deliberate practice on reading and math skills. Is it any wonder they improve?

Most people are excited about blended learning for the possibility of getting lower-performing kids up to grade level. I'm personally more excited about the potential for acceleration. At one middle school, the principal and teachers had implemented blended/digital learning for math. The teachers did a lot of assessments through the year, using the data, and found that a few sixth graders had mastered pre-algebra concepts by the middle of the year. So...they got to start algebra. Right then! No waiting around for a new school year to start. A child who demonstrated mastery in algebra got to start geometry.

People get a little worried about acceleration because it often involves going to "different" classes, and tends to involve whole units of years. But there's no reason it has to. In the past, people have always done independent studies, but I know from personal experience it's easy to fail when you're trying to teach yourself. Educational technology gives more feedback, so failing is more difficult.

The Question of AP Exams

Over the past decade, the number of students taking AP exams has basically doubled. These tests are supposed to show whether high school students have mastered college-level coursework. Offering AP classes can be a way for schools to challenge students and AP classes are the closest thing we have right now to a common, high-standards curriculum. The AP Calculus exam, or AP Biology exam is the same over the whole country, and a 4 score in California means the same thing as a 4 score in New York.

Of course, just because a class is offered doesn't mean students are learning -- and the AP exams show this rather well. According to this article from the Associated Press (another AP!) the proportion of students scoring the lowest number on the exam -- 1 -- has also risen dramatically, from 13% to 21% over the past decade. In addition, there are whole school districts where no one is passing (scoring a 3 or above). As the article notes, "In Indiana -- among the states pushing AP most aggressively, and with results close to the national average -- there were still 21 school districts last year where graduates took AP exams but none passed."

There are also a number of specialized schools serving low income children with poor results. "Baltimore's Academy for College & Career Exploration, where 81 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced price lunch programs in 2010, added three AP classes in recent years. Over the past two years, just two of 62 exams taken by its students earned a 3."

Some argue that these low passing rates show that offering AP classes is a waste. The classes are probably smaller than others, and hence resource consuming, and the teaching time spent on AP classes would be better spent making sure kids don't have gaps in their prior knowledge.

Which makes sense except...we spend a lot of time and energy on making sure no child is left behind. Much of American policy is focused on bringing low achievers up to the bar. Even if no one is passing the AP exams, offering more challenging classes is at least throwing more advanced students a bone. Would it be better if more passed? Of course. But thinking in terms of offering AP classes isn't a bad mindset for a school. Ideally, some with low pass rates will keep that mindset but offer new ways of preparing for the classes and teaching them over time -- maybe digital learning strategies or other such things. Sometimes it's about student preparation, and sometimes the AP class just isn't well designed or taught (which digital learning/distance learning could help solve). I only scored a 2 on the AP Physics exam in 11th grade, but scored a 5 on the AP Calculus BC exam, a 5 on the AP Chem and a 5 on the AP Bio. I don't think it's that I wasn't capable of understanding physics. While of course I am ultimately responsible for my own learning, I think the class wasn't as good as the others, and that showed in the results. The good thing about AP exams is that at least they show that -- unlike watered down state level tests.

Did you take AP classes? Are your children taking them? What do you think about them?

A little nudge toward college

One of the current major public policy goals in the US is to increase the number of students going to college. Historically, children from lower to moderate income families have been less likely to enroll, even if they've done well enough in school that college is a possibility.

Money is obviously one barrier, but there is at least some financial help out there in the form of Pell grants (and loans) from the government. The problem? Policy makers have long suspected that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) has inadvertently become a barrier by being too complicated.

So over the past few years, some folks who care about this issue have been running a fascinating study. Many low-to-moderate income families get help with tax prep. Why not have tax professionals help these families with high school aged kids fill out FAFSA at the same time?

The results, according to publications of this study, have been positive. When families visiting H&R Block got help filling out FAFSA, their children were more likely to enroll in college vs. a control group that got information about financial aid eligibility, but didn't get any help actually filling out the forms.

Going to college is a huge decision, and earning a degree can have a massive financial benefit in one's life. So it's disconcerting that something as simple as a complicated form can have such a deterrent effect. It gets at the point of Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's book, Nudge -- that choices can be profoundly influenced by small things, like how easy something is, and whether someone you trust behaves in a way that shows a choice is a good idea. Given how simple this is to have tax preparers help with FAFSA, it seems like a good policy to pursue.

High school, only shorter

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature ("High school, only shorter") on the handful of states that now give scholarships to students who complete high school early. If it takes you three years instead of four, the state is saving cash. So why not split that bounty, and give a small scholarship to be used to start college? Indiana, Minnesota, Utah, South Dakota and Idaho all have programs that create an incentive for kids to start college early.

I love this idea, and it may be working. According to stats from the WSJ article, some 2.9% of students who were sophomores in 2002 graduated from high school in three years or less, vs. 1.5% in the 1990s. The availability of online classes is helping this (since that's how many students earn the additional credits -- or through summer school).

The "pros" are obvious: if you've finished high school, why stick around? It's time to move on to more challenging work, or to start your working life earlier. What was most fascinating to me, though, were the "cons" the journal listed, which show how entrenched the idea is that high school is just part of American life. What about prom? What about senior class trips? Perhaps students will be "socially or emotionally unprepared for college" and, of course, graduating early "requires more work."

I get the hesitation. We live in an increasingly fractured society. Experiences like prom or homecoming and the supposed glory of senior year are some of the few universals we still have. From the vantage point of dull jobs, bills, and the responsibilities of raising families, people like to look back and view ages 17-18 as the best years of their lives. But prom is a relatively recent tradition. And as Nicholas Myers of Indiana, now enrolled in Ball State, told the WSJ, "Nowadays we have CEOS in their 20s... If I get out a year early, that's a year extra of pay... That's a whole year of my time that I can do whatever I want -- make some money, invest some money or just relax." Exactly. For all the worry about "hurried" childhoods, I see no reason to prolong it if the child is ready to grow up.

But I'm curious what other people think. Do you have fond memories of your senior year of high school? Do you think your children will?

Disney World, and access to calculus and advanced math

I'm back from a week-long vacation at Disney World with my three small children. It was a lot of fun (if not exactly relaxing). My inner geek was on display, though, as I kept pondering the logistics of line management. Disney has huge crowds for the popular rides. In a keen bit of psychological insight, Disney understands that people tolerate waits better if there's transparency on time. The powers that be also know that some people detest lines enough that they will give something up (like complete flexibility) in order to be guaranteed a short wait. So all popular rides have two options: a stand-by line, with a posted wait time, and a "Fast Pass" option. To get a Fast Pass ticket, you go to a machine by the ride and insert your park pass. The ticket gives you an appointed window to show up in order to bypass the line. The catch is that there are only a certain number of Fast Pass tickets per day, and they are given out in chronological order. If you show up at 9am, you might get a fast pass time of 10am-11am. Show up at 1pm and your time window might be 8pm-9pm, with the downside that you probably can't get another fast pass ticket until you return yours to the ride in question. So you're shut out of other popular rides for the day, unless you wait in the 60-plus minute standby line.

Making best use of all this information involves optimizing various variables: how much you dislike lines, how long the lines actually are (often a function of time of day and day of week), and how much you care about this particular ride in comparison to other rides. For example, "Soarin'" is by far the best ride at Epcot. Our first day at Epcot, we got Fast Pass tickets for the ride for a roughly 8pm return. That was fine, because there weren't very many other popular rides at Epcot. Once we learned that Jasper really liked that ride, though, we showed up the next day when Epcot opened. He and I made a beeline for Soarin' and got on the first run. Meanwhile, my husband got us all Fast Passes for the 9:45-10:45 window. So we got to go on the ride twice with no wait. By the time we got on for the second time, the standby line was up at 30 minutes, and it hit 60 very shortly. Fast Passes sold out by afternoon.

Optimizing in a world of multiple variables is, of course, a real world application of math. Amusement parks are one thing, but many other fields make use of this knowledge as well: economics (and business forecasting in general), engineering, logistics. Not having a background in advanced math would make getting jobs in any of these fields rather difficult. That's why I was quite disturbed to read (in Marian Wright Edelman's Huffington Post column) about the results of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights survey of public schools in America. Edelman has her own opinions on tracking and funding that I don't share. But regardless, these are some disturbing statistics: "Fifty-five percent of the low-minority high schools surveyed offer calculus but only 29 percent of high-minority high schools do. Similarly, 82 percent of low-minority schools offer Algebra II compared to 65 percent of the high-minority schools."

While some enterprising students might take Algebra II or Calculus during the summer or petition the school for an online course (or do Khan Academy on their own), a school's course offerings pretty much set the tone for what a student is expected to know. That such a low percentage of high schools offer calculus -- and an appallingly low percentage of schools serving mostly minority kids -- does not bode well for a mathematically promising future. That's a far worse outcome than a 75-minute wait in the line for Space Mountain.

A real breakthrough

In education circles, people like to use the word "breakthrough" a lot. It's to be expected, given that the space is a bit evangelical right now with people trying to come up with transformational ideas.

But what, really, would a breakthrough mean?

If we think about technology, breakthroughs tend to mean better performance for less cost. An iPhone does a lot of the stuff people use their computers for, but costs less and can travel in your pocket. A digitally-delivered magazine could have more interactive content, and not have all the distribution costs.

Viewed in that light, a real education breakthrough would mean something that raises achievement but also cuts costs from the current model.

I think that last part is going to be critical in the near future. It's no secret that many state budgets have suffered a lot in the last few years, and also that the political interest in raising taxes is, well, minimal. Some states like California are already re-working their per pupil allotments and given the benefits and pensions costs that small class sizes will come with, this is likely not going to be sustainable long-term.

That's why many people are so excited about blended learning models -- doing digital/online learning for some coursework, and redeploying teachers as tutors. A teacher who can track students in real time and let them all work at their own pace can cover more students (with non-teachers running interference and doing crowd control). Most blended learning schools are pretty new. So we'll see if their cost structure turns out to be lower or not (particularly once all their equipment is taken into account). Few things in the history of education reform have turned out to lower costs.

Sustainable financing models might be another approach to lowering taxpayer costs. The Cristo Rey Network has thrived with its urban Catholic schools by having kids work one day a week as temps at local offices. It's interesting to think if there might be ways students could raise money for their own education at other schools. I don't know, but perhaps that will be the real breakthrough someday...

Self-publishing your kid's work

My mother sent me a link to a piece in the New York Times about parents employing self-publishing companies to print books of their children's work ("Young Writers Dazzle Publisher (Mom and Dad)"). Plenty of people are self-publishing these days to sidestep the gatekeepers of publishing houses, and it makes sense that some of these people are under age 18. As the article notes, parents think that this is a great way to reward creativity and encourage persistence. If your child has taken the time to crank out a 50,000 word novel, why not publish it? Kids can play amateur lacrosse and get recognized for it. Why not amateur literature?

Of course, as the article notes, these young authors then often try to get publicity for their books (all authors do! oh, do we try), and newspapers or TV news segments pick up on the "published author at age 14" part of it. But there is a major difference in achievement between having a commercial publisher pick up your work, and having parents who can pay $250-$2500 (depending on the package) publish your musings.

As my mother asked, "Should we have published your early writings? Actually, you were published without our doing it." Which is true. I entered short story contests, won them, and sometimes sent in my work to different places. I had a story published in a children's literary journal at one point in there. I had a ghost story read on the radio. Looking back on my own middle school and high school years, there were other projects that, if my parents and I had been more savvy people, could have made for better college application material. I wrote a "book" of a dozen-plus short stories in 10th grade. I also wrote a lot of different sonnets. That could have made for an interesting book of poems in iambic pentameter.

But I got into college anyway, and I think one thing that's helped me in my writing career is that much of it has been self-motivated. I was also pondering the other day that I'm grateful that the Internet didn't really come into power until I was pretty much writing professionally. My early stuff isn't out there. While some is good or at least salvageable, much of it suffers from the usual problems of early writing. There are very few literary wunderkinds. The older I get, looking back at some novels stuck in a drawer, I realize that one has a better understanding of the human condition the more you live as an actual, you know, human. You can't wait forever to write your opus. We get better the more we write, and one way to get better is to get your stuff out there and get it criticized. But it helps to go through gatekeepers too. Sometimes they're there for a reason.

One middle ground the article suggested is to pay to have your kid's work put through the wringer by a professional editor. Now that is an idea I like.

Would you self-publish your children's writings? Jasper shows a lot of interest in writing. If he starts writing stories, should I pay to publish them?

Pride and the gifted child

An exchange the other day: A mother was told by a teacher that her child would likely be identified as gifted if they had him tested. Quote from another person: "You must be so proud."

I've been pondering this choice of word. I think "proud" is not the right one. It's like saying "aren't you proud your child has brown eyes?" In the realm of intellectual giftedness, having a certain IQ is probably not something that shows great parenting, or hard work on the part of the child, at least not in the way that getting an A on a tough assignment would. That you could be proud of. IQ, like many human characteristics, has a very strong genetic component. There are probably some things that lower it (like malnutrition), and perhaps things that raise it on the margins. I just read an article about a study in the European Journal of Public Health finding that babies who are fed on demand (as opposed to on a schedule) have a slightly higher IQ than other babies, controlling for parent education and income and "parenting styles." Though really, with that last one, it's hard to know how one controls such things. One can imagine that there are other variables that correlate with demand-feeding that a study would just miss.

So if giftedness isn't really a result of something you or your kid have done, how do you deal with the "proud" comment? Obviously, parents are usually proud of their kids but that language seems to hint at one of the major misconceptions of gifted education, namely, that it's a reward. Ideally, gifted education is an educational intervention for children who need it. How have you responded to people saying you must be "proud" for your children to be in a gifted program, or to have been identified as such?

Answer to lagging scores? Bedtime math

I'm over at USA Today in today's paper writing about bedtime math. As we talked about a few weeks ago, the idea is that by making bedtime math problems as much a part of the culture as bedtime stories, we can change the "math-is-hard" and "math-is-foreign" mindset that seems to grip otherwise intelligent folks. You can read the column, "Answer to lagging scores? Bedtime math problems" by following that link.

We've been doing some of this with Jasper -- at night, at dinner, in the car, etc. He's sometimes been coming up with his own math problems. For instance, the other day, he suggested one: if a fire truck has 4 wheels, how many do 6 fire trucks have? Then he got silent for a while. We were in the car, and so eventually I asked "Are you still there?" A voice comes from the backseat, "Mommy, I'm counting!" He told me there were 20 wheels in total. I was debating how to respond to that. I think I said something like "Cool! I was counting and I got a different number. Do you want to hear my number?" I told him that when I was counting I got 24, but when he got to school he could draw 6 fire trucks and see what number he came up with.

I asked him later and he said there were 30 wheels. Maybe all the fire trucks had a spare.

Have you been doing bedtime math problems with your kids? And how do you respond when your children suggest a wrong answer?

Cubicles and blended learning

I'm starting a fairly large research project on blended learning. This is the phrase people use to describe a mix between online/software-based learning and face-to-face learning with teachers. One example would be the Khan Academy, where students watch instructional videos and work online problem sets, with teachers monitoring progress and swooping in to tutor when kids are having trouble.

I think in general it's a good idea. Kids can work at their own pace but with plenty of accountability, moving through lessons as they achieve mastery. So I was a bit surprised at my initial reaction to a profile (in Mind/Shift) of a school that uses a similar approach, the Flex Academy in San Francisco.

At the Flex Academy, students sit in cubicles and work through most of their lessons online. When they need help with something they can ask a teacher or fellow student. The pace is pretty self-directed.

I like self-direction, and I like the idea that you wouldn't even know what level your classmate was working at, so maybe it was the mention of the cubicles that got me. One of the things I write a lot about the workplace is how silly it is that people commute to a place only to use laptops and email and call people in other places. Why not just stay home? Maybe not every day, but 2-3 days a week seems doable. It doesn't seem any better when kids commute and then simply work online, though of course the presence of teachers-as-tutors does change that equation. The school leaders are correct that this is how many people work, so school is preparing kids for the workforce. The problem is it's not necessarily how people want to work. At least the cubicle part. No one likes cubes.

Several of the comment writers on the article had the same visceral reaction. Students choose from online electives as well; perhaps in an ideal world there would be face-to-face electives and online core subjects. It's hard to know. The challenge of blended learning is hitting the sweet spot of learning at your own pace and from master teachers, without producing something like Dunder Mifflin from the Office.

The Math of Khan

Last summer, I wrote several posts about Salman Khan and the Khan Academy. I was researching the topic for a feature piece for City Journal, the magazine of the Manhattan Institute. The feature has (finally!) been posted online, and you can read "The Math of Khan" by following that link.

A few other items: I'm also writing about Laura Overdeck's quest to spread the concept of a "bedtime math problem." Gifted Exchange readers may remember Overdeck from her quest to save New Jersey's Governor's School a few years ago. The idea behind Bedtime Math (follow that link to sign up for the daily email) is that kids learn to love language and understand plot naturally from bedtime stories. Why not learn to love math through cozy bedtime math problems too? If the world of the future will require deep math understanding, it helps to view math as a familiar thing, like a first language.

And finally, after years of writing about schools, I am about to experience them as a parent. This week, I took my 4-year-old to register for kindergarten for next year. It was a very straightforward experience, very different from what my life would be like right now if we were still in New York and having to apply different places. He'll be attending our local public school, which is less than a mile from our house. I'm excited about moving into this new phase of our lives and seeing my little boy grow up. And I'm sure being on this side of the American education experience will give me plenty more to write about!

Family vacations

We've been pondering where to take a family vacation this year. I'm going to register Jasper for kindergarten today, and I realized that this is the last year we'll be able to travel at non-peak times (without it being a bit of a fuss -- though kindergarten is only half-day in these parts, so we're still easing a bit into school). Anyway, it reminded me of a post I meant to share with Gifted Exchange readers, written by Kristen (aka "The Frugal Girl") on her blog called "Why I homeschool my children." One of the reasons was the freedom to go places at times that didn't correspond with school breaks. It is true that few family-friendly destinations are really busy the last week of September. I thought you all would enjoy the essay, so here it is.

When should gifted students be identified?

Recently, the State Board of Education in Maryland adopted new rules on the identification and accommodation of gifted kids. According to this Washington Post article, the goal was to set minimum standards for the districts. In some cases, districts will be identifying children as young as age three.

A few advocacy groups protested the decision, claiming it was wrong to label children. I'm not sure they have much of an argument, given that kids are labeled in many other cases. There is an incredible amount of diversity within the category of "Hispanic" for instance, yet districts often keep statistics on that sort of thing. But a more interesting question, for our purposes, is when should gifted kids be identified?

For years, the common answer among school districts was around 3rd grade. The idea seems to be that by this point, any disadvantages or advantages one came to school with would be ironed out, and you could actually assess if a child needed extra services. With all we now know about early childhood, though, this is becoming a pretty outdated belief. Children are learning since birth. Many children attend preschool these days, and hence are encountering academic work long before kindergarten. Indeed, many preschools with less of a formal curriculum naturally differentiate for different children. Here's a journal. The not-yet-literate ones draw. Others write stories.

Preschools often do this without official labels, but they have certain things going for them that primary schools do not. Small classes, for instance. Multiple adults per class. Less emphasis on a certain amount of material that must be covered in a given year. Flexibility that big school systems often don't have.

When you lack that flexibility, that ability to meet kids where they are, then labels do become necessary. Labels help schools meet kids' needs. I tend to think that the beginning of kindergarten tends to be a good time for an initial assessment. I also think that assessment should be continual, with decisions about gifted programs re-evaluated regularly. You can go in and you can go out.

When does your school district identify children?

Should the progress of gifted kids be tracked?

I've been reading in a few different places about the TALENT Act, a bill in Congress that would require states and schools to measure the progress of students who score above grade level on standardized tests. The progress of these students would be reported on state report cards. The idea is that, while No Child Left Behind has done a reasonable job of tracking the progress of students scoring below grade level, anyone above grade level is deemed to be doing fine. If the proportion of students scoring at the highest levels goes down, that doesn't trigger any problems under the law.

It's an interesting idea. You can read an editorial in favor of the idea over at Education Week here. The author, Frances R. Spielhagen, writes, "As a former high school teacher and coordinator of programs for gifted students, I know firsthand the frustrations of the very capable student who must slog through drill-and-kill reviews every fall while teachers ensure that everyone is up to speed and ready to move forward."

What all this gets at is that schools should be serving a "value-add" function. There is no particular glory, as a school, in getting students who are all from well-educated families, and then producing students who score reasonably well on grade-level standardized tests. If you got kids who were on average one year above grade-level, and cranked out kids who were performing at two years above grade-level, that would be more remarkable. Likewise, a high-poverty school that produces students scoring at grade level, when similar schools score far below, is adding quite a bit of value.

People track these kinds of things in other spheres, and it certainly seems possible to track it in education as well. I hope we'll be moving toward the day of high-tech testing, when the tests respond to the student, and we figure out exactly where a student is, and can monitor progress more closely. Laws, though, are blunt ways to get at this idea.

On a personal note: I have a new book out today (March 1)! It's called "All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending," and it's published by Portfolio (part of Penguin). The book looks at money as a tool for building the lives we want, and argues that money can buy happiness (usually) if we spend it right. If you enjoy my writing here, I'd appreciate if you'd check it out. There's more over at my personal blog, www.lauravanderkam.com.

Homeschooling and working

I have long been fascinated by homeschooling. I wrote my senior thesis on the topic in college (basically on the legal framework; you don't want to read it, it wasn't any good). As I started researching gifted education later, I learned that a very high percentage of families of highly gifted children homeschool. If you can't get a good accommodation in school then homeschooling winds up being the fall back option. When I wrote Genius Denied with Jan and Bob Davidson, we noted that about half the families of their Young Scholars homeschool at some point.

I don't have the personality to homeschool my own kids, and I don't think I would have been a good homeschooled student myself, but I'm intrigued by the parallels to the way I work. I pursue new knowledge as I have reason to do so (usually because I'm writing about it). I work at my own pace on longer projects (books; when a deadline in 12 months out, you have to self-pace). My schedule is my own as long as I get the work done. I don't commute to an office every day at a certain time to do certain things just because it's 9 a.m., and homeschooled students don't either.

I'm pretty sure that a lot more people will be working the way I work in 20 years. So the question becomes, is homeschooling the best way to prepare for the workforce two decades hence? That's the thesis Penelope Trunk (gadfly blogger and serial entrepreneur) has proposed over at her blog's section on homeschooling:

"Gen Z will have an education that is practical. College is widely seen as worth far less than its price tag in most cases. Graduate school is an anachronism, now seen by many (including the Chronicle of Higher Education) as a babysitting service for adults. So I started thinking, if Gen X ers – the parents of Gen Z – are not buying into the education system, then what will happen? The answer is that Gen Z will be homeschooled much more frequently than any generation before them, and Generation Z will understand how to synthesize data, self-direct learning, and ask the kinds of questions that make or break companies. The portion of Generation Z that gets the old-fashioned, classroom-based education, will end up being unprepared to compete."

Of course, homeschooling requires something from the parent that many didn't necessarily plan on doing: being a teacher (or at least an education facilitator). The traditional model of homeschooling is that mom stays home with the kids to teach them, rather than building a traditional career. A tiny number of families hire governesses, and thus can homeschool as two-career couples, but this is a small number.

But as people are working in different ways, this is opening up new options, and I've been coming across a few more mothers (or fathers) who work while homeschooling, often in a freelance or entrepreneurial fashion. Trunk, for instance, has her blogs. Modern Mrs. Darcy is another homeschooling working mom, as is Catherine at A Spirited Mind. I'd love to find more examples (and I've written about a few readers from Gifted Exchange as well). As technology opens up more options, we may see more families trying this different way of educating their children, which may change the workforce in more ways than we can currently see.

Paleopalooza!

Over the weekend, we got to meet Dr. Scott, the paleontologist.

Those of you with preschoolers may know just how big a deal this is. “Dr. Scott, the Paleontologist,” is the scientist who comes on between cartoon segments on Dinosaur Train (a PBS Kids show). He talks about different kinds of dinosaurs, and other prehistoric creatures, and how we know various things about them. He always ends with “get outside, get into nature, and make your own discoveries!”

Anyway, he was in Philadelphia for some live events at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Hauling little kids anywhere is always vaguely traumatic. I couldn’t find parking, so I was circling around downtown Philly’s various small streets, eventually parking in a lot. I took a ticket with a magnetic stripe, then managed to fold it in my pocket, so it wouldn’t read afterwards in the machine or at the gate. I had to back my car out of the gate, run back to the hut to get the lot attendant, with the kids strapped in the car... ugh. But Dr. Scott! He told us all about various dinosaurs, and showed us clips from Dino Train, and then the kids got to meet him and take a picture with him afterwards. My 4-year-old found this a bit odd. How could Dr. Scott be on TV and talking to him?

But even if he found him odd, he did what he said. We came home and that afternoon, we played “finding fossils” outside for quite a while. Several rocks from our walk way turned out to look like T-Rex teeth. A stick that was bent at an odd angle became a fossil of a pteranodon wing (and shoulder-like hinge). We did, in fact, get outside, get into nature, and make our own discoveries.

I know there’s plenty to lament with TV, and how much of childhood these days is spent in front of a blue screen. But we never would have bothered to go be preschool groupies for Dr. Scott if we hadn’t seen the show. And in this case, a TV show encouraged us to go play scientists. So I’d list that as a mitigating factor in the sentencing of television for all that ails us.

(cross-posted at LauraVanderkam.com)

Another post on kids and sleep

We've looked at kids and sleep on Gifted Exchange a few times. Some gifted children seem to need less sleep than other kids (though this isn't a universal sign). But interestingly, there's some evidence that the usual sleep guidelines aren't necessarily right. Kids may need less sleep than the experts used to say.

An article in the Wall Street Journal this morning on "Challenging 100 Years of Sleep Guidelines for Children" notes that in 1897, a scientific book claimed 2-year-olds should be sleeping 16 (!) hours a day. Researchers in 2010 say that 2-year-olds should get 11.5 hours a night.

If you think about it, this makes the usual 2-year-old bedtime (like 7:30 p.m.) kind of nutty. If the kid is taking a 2-hour nap, this means it would be quite normal for the child to wake up at 5:30 a.m. Or earlier! My 2-year-old falls asleep around 9:30pm. He wakes up around 7-7:30 a.m. He takes a 2-hour nap. This adds up to exactly the right amount of time. It's just later. But why would I want to be up with him at 5 am? So I'm glad to know it's not worth fighting to get him down earlier.

My baby is shaping up to be a better night-time sleeper than the other two. She is usually asleep before 8pm and sleeps until 6:30-7am. She doesn't take great naps during the day - they tend to be short - which I was slightly worried about at first. But it turns out that the sleep guidelines for babies are 14-15 hours, plus or minus 2 hours. If my baby is sleeping close to 12 hours at night, she just doesn't need that much daytime sleep.

On one parenting list-serve I'm on, people use the abbreviation "YMMV" all the time. It took me a while to figure out that means "your mileage may vary." Meaning that what works perfectly fine for one kid won't work for another. Children, like adults, probably need varying amounts of sleep, and some kids are larks and some are night owls. I'm happy that at least my older two are now at the age where they can look at books in bed, which seems to keep them happy enough during the hours that other 4- and 2-year-olds are asleep.

How much sleep do your children get?

Teaching Self-Reliance

Things are a wee bit chaotic in my house these days. There are 3 kids under age 5, for starters. I have a book coming out in a little over 2 weeks. My husband has a busy time at work as well. We've called in lots of help, but there is still a lot to be done.

So I've been pondering ways that my 4-year-old, at least, could start to do a few more things on his own. He knows how to get himself dressed...but doesn't always want to. He could wash himself better in the bath. He could bring his dishes from the table to the sink (and throw any garbage away). He could put his and his little brother's dirty clothes in the hamper.

Thinking I would try to get buy-in on this project, I asked him what jobs he'd like to do around the house. The answer? "I want to take care of Cutie." That's his nickname for the baby. A nice idea, but a 4-year-old doesn't make a good baby sitter.

So where does that leave us? A sticker chart helped with the potty training project a few years ago, but I have a sense that it wouldn't be as motivational in this circumstance. I'm trying to talk in a polite way that makes expectations clear, such as "Thank you for bringing the Legos back to the basement" as he's standing there pondering whether he's going to do it. But I'm really curious if people have had success with anything in particular. He's a smart kid, so I've pondered just explaining what I have here. Mom and Dad are swamped, and we would really appreciate it if he could be a big boy and do some things to help. But who knows...