Gifted Children

I came across this article yesturday, It basically states that only a tiny fraction of children can be accurately called "gifted" It goes on further to offer advice on how to maximize the potential your child does have. Suprisingly effective preschool education can be done rather cheaply. A lot of the expensive, trendy gimmicks are not effective in the long run, I thought it was very well written.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/famil...ids/index.html

TJ

arent all children gifted?.........a gift from God

If you put it that way I cannot argue with you there.

I agree, all children are gifted in one way or another.

My school district would argue that point. Kids are being tracked as early as 1st-2nd grade in my district, this is totally BS in my opinion. What kind of valid and reliable measures are the schools doing on 6-7 yr old that are good predictors of academic achievement.

I have a feeling my district would maintain that being gifted and being a high academic achiever are two separate things. Lots of kids who are identified as "gifted" are not high achievers. I'm not sure I believe that sequestering all the gifted kids together is the best learning environment. I like having multiple levels in one class--more like the real world.

You raise an excellent point. I can give you a great example of mislabeling. Economist Thomas Sowell as a child was a "late talker" During the 30's when he was a child, he was labeled as slow and borderline autistic. Now days he would have been considered learning disabled. Mr. Sowell managed to graduate from Harvard...

Magna Cum Laude, also he has authored dozens of books on economics, chaired the Hoover Institute at Stanford university, writes a regular syndicated column.

Also an even better known example of late bloomer,

Albert Einstein, who as a child was labeled a dunce.

Chaotic - I believe that this is a fund raising tactic on the school's part. When my twins were in Kindergarden they were both placed in the Title 1/Chapter 1 reading and math programs. Schools get more federal dollars based upon special needs children.

I would like to think that by spending this extra time with them one on one gives them an idea of the child's strengths and weaknesses. But I doubt that this is true. My elder twin was forever being punished in his math class for day dreaming. As it turns out, he was doing the math in his head. They both qualified for "high math" in the 7th grade.

The older twin, still does all these complicated math equations in his head.

My youngest son was labeled "gifted" back in the third grade per his high IQ which was above genius level and I personally believe having him take the test required was well worth the label as it enabled him to be placed in class rooms with other gifted children that needed a higher level of education in school as most of these kids were any where from 2-3 grades above their present learning abilities as defined by the school and their age.

My son is now 18 years old - gradated high school with high honors - and attending college with several different Merit Scholarships.

We are very PROUD of HIM.

Congradulations! Your son won the genetic lottery. The real shame is that gifted children are the only ones who get a quality education. Best of luck on his continued endeavers.

Hmm - I can't really say that only gifted children get a better quality of education.. as my oldest son who was a "C" student at best in high school is going to college as well, and his funding has mostly been covered with government grants to ensure his continued education and future success.

By 2010 - I will have had both my children graduated from college... and that to me is success in education.

I challenge this statement.

Many would argue that in the US the children currently being left behind are the ones who are simply "average" or just "above average". IMO, US public schools are investing most of their resources into children who are just below "proficient". These are the ones who with some additional tutoring can be quickly converted from "below standard" to "proficient" in order to meet the national guidelines. Resources are further dedicated to target special "sub-categories" in order to meet these criteria when breakout groups are mandated. IMO those children who are somewhere above "proficient" are not being invested in. Those at either extreme (identified as "gifted" or "learning disabled") at least have some protection under the law.

I like most people have two children that fall somewhere in the 2nd and 3 quartiles of the normal (bell shaped) distribution. In other words they have the misfortune of being of average intelligence, white, middle class, public school children.

My youngest struggles with reading but the school refuses to address my concerns because he because doesn't struggling enough. The school offers an early morning enrichment reading program but he is not permitted to participate in it because he doesn't "qualify" for the program. In other words I have to wait until he regresses to a "below standard" level before they will allow him to benefit from a school-based program.

My oldest at one point was just a data point to be manipulated by administrators who are not motivated to providing quality education but instead are interested in make their schools look good on paper and meet state and national regulations. When my son was in 3rd grade he scored in the 90-95% percentile for his grade level on the some standardize reading/comprehension assessments. It turns out his actual scores were 3-4 points below the "gifted" cut-off, so according to the school he was not "gifted". Keep in mind that if he was determined to be gifted the school would then be required to provide him with an IEP. I was OK with this assessment because... honestly he is smart, but not some savant or anything.

He was placed in what the school called a "regular" classroom. When the work started to come home I noticed is was all drill and practice work (low-end of Bloom's taxonomy). So I asked if he was placed in some kind of a remedial class. The official reply from the school was... "Oh no, we do not have remedial classes for this grade level, he is in a normal level class." So I asked to see the actual data for his class (no names just the test data), which they actually gave me. His class data showed that 60% (14 of the 23 students) of the children in his class had tested below a 50% compentency on the end of the year math and reading assessments. My son and 2 other students in the class scored a 100% on these measures. Basically this class met the definition of a normal classroom because the class mean was consistent with the other 4 other sections; however in reality this was a remedial class with 3 high achievers thrown in to make the overall class statistics look comparable on paper.

I know some reading my post will think I am just one of those complaining parents who is always looking for a fight. I don't believe I am. I have looked at the research on both sides of this issue. It is definitely a divisive issue to say the least. Deep down inside I believe that the risk to harm benefits favor heterogeneous classrooms at least at the elementary level. Higher levels I can see where ability grouping becomes more advantagous. Whatever level it is done at... you can be sure that it is not done solely on what is in the best interest of the children involved.

In a perfect world, having diverse heterogeneous classrooms with well trained teachers at the helm (not bean counting administrators, politicians, or loud mouth parents ) who have the flexibility to group, ungroup, and regroup children based on specific skill needs and abilities would be the best learning environment. IMO Unfortunately, reality is less than perfect.

Sorry I tend to get on a soap box with this issue.

I actually agree with most of what you say, but I think that sometimes the attention given to learning disabled kids amounts to more of quantity (teaching to the test) than quality (teaching them life skills suited to their paticular abilities and talents)

Just remember that our current public education system was originally designed to churn out factory workers, and unfortunately a lot of that model remains. I think parents should consider a lot of options for their children. The standard public school may not work for their kid and they may need to take time to explore other possibilities.

I agree that the public school system cannot be all things to all people. Already it has evolved from simply educating the populous to being a one- stop-shop for all social services (health clinic, dental office, food pantry, counseling center, dietary/fitness center, after school daycare center...... oh yeah and an educational institution).

However as a tax player after paying $5000/per in school taxes for a modest 4 bedroom home, it is difficult to find affordable alternatives for my children.

I think that the topic of quality education varies greatly from school district to school district. When we made the decision to move here, our choice of school rested entirely on the LD program. Our eldest suffered greatly from hubby being in the service and moving from place to place. As we educated ourselves, we would contact the next school that he would be attending so we didn’t hear “oh, that program is filled, if we knew he was coming…”

This school district is number 3 in the area, but their LD program was #1. As it turns out, my other children did not suffer a bit, smaller class sizes than #1, and more one on one interaction with the teacher.

The LD program did not teach for the test, as my son’s goals were very personalized and realistic.

However, because of changes in the laws due to the “no child left behind”, my twins had a HORRIBLE year their third grade year! Because of the testing of that aged child, they literally did homework until 10pm at night and still not competing all of the work required of them.

They had more homework than their high school aged siblings! I would read their history to them as they ate so when they finished they could answer the questions. As they were bathing I read the articles in Reading Ranger to them so they could answer those questions. My daughter would do the stupid crossword and word find puzzles. I would look up the definitions to their vocabulary words and put it on the computer screen for them to copy down. For 2 months from the minute they got home from school until the minute they went to bed, they were doing homework. I’d send a note on the uncompleted worksheets saying “10pm, no time to finish.” I let them have Saturday off, but on Sunday, they had to start a new book, because these third graders had to do a book report a week. Why you ask? Because they wanted them to have a well rounded knowledge base so they could test well.

I finally attended a meeting about these stupid tests and stated that my sons would no longer be required to do more than 3 hours of homework a night. Furthermore, I was denying them permission to administer the test to my sons. Which started a frenzy of “we can do that?” The district president was not pleased, but I was going to be damned if my 8 year old kids were spending 8 hours in school and spending another 6 on homework. They went from loving school to hating it so much they were physically ill in the morning when I got them up for school.

As another example of the same sort of thing, the gifted program in my kids' district is housed in the lowest performing school of the district. So when the school takes standardized tests, the gifted program kids help raise the average test scores of the school, thus making it appear that the school is doing fine, instead of in real trouble. How is this helpful?

Here is yet another example of creative tactics that have nothing to do with educating our kids. My district just open a new elementary school. They did some very interesting shifting of school populations from the surrounding four elementary schools, divided neighborhoods, and on the surface it seemed like just some real stupidity regarding efficiency in bus routes. So as I sat with my colleagues and discussed these irregularities and entertained the possibility that these might not just be random inefficiencies within a large school district struggling with a rapidly changing population. One interesting observation surfaced...could the school district be attempting to redistribute children among the 5 schools in a way that would keep various sub-groups just below the threshold that would require the district to break out and report the detailed data on these groups. Now this was just a hypothesis so I cannot say if is valid or not. But I can tell you, the general consensus of the group was... money and creative reporting were trumping common sense and efficiency. None of the plausible hypotheses related to quality of education or better services for the surrounding community.