NYT opinion piece on recent research into achievement gap:

No (rich) child left behind

Some of this touches upon the apparent Flynn effect discussions here lately, and also upon test-prepping (and other advantages associated with high SES).


GT entry/testing/qualification is mentioned as an aside, but some of the comments are far more insightful. The graphical presentations of the data addressed are, IMO, not as well-presented as in some recent Times pieces. Unfortunate, that.

Is it TigerParenting run amok? This makes it sound that way. I'm not so sure. I think that maybe the REAL explanation isn't so much that families of higher SES are giving their kids that many more advantages via buying their little Mozarts 1/16th Guarneri's and taking family vacations to the rainforest ecosystem as that we (meaning societally) have done a better and better job of creating a system which is infinitely easier to 'game' than ever before. The temptation to do so if one has the means must just be overwhelming when you consider the stakes/outcomes in play. There really is no end to the kind of rationalizing that parents will do in the service of getting their kids EVERY advantage possible. Consider the steep rise in the number of teenaged kids getting initial 'diagnoses' in the early 2000's when College Board got rid of the asterisk for testing with accommodations. Suddenly some 20% of test takers at wealthy schools "needed" extra time? Really? Statistically, that just doesn't hold water... so yeah, some of that was parenting/push to gain advantage, and I think that pretty much everyone knows it.

Exploitative parenting practices are most effective in a system that is 'blind' to them, or disingenuously ignores that they skew outcomes. This is easiest on repeatable high-stakes assessments, where test prep is astonishingly effective at raising scores when done intensively. OF COURSE 'test coaching' is a problem in our test-crazed system. It fuels grade inflation, too, when parents have the time and energy (and clout) to insist on changes for their own children. OF COURSE that skews elite college entry, test scores, and similar measures of 'success' using numerical rubrics. No wonder rich kids look better than ever.

Anyway. My question is-- are rich kids really THAT much 'better' in a larger sense because of 'enrichment' provided by high SES? Or are they just better at the specific tools that are being used to measure children? Are their parents just plain better able to 'play the game' well?


I'm curious now to see what applications for scholarships reflect re: the 90/50/10 incomes, too. I'm betting that in need-blind applications, the same exact trend emerges as in test-prep enrollments-- and that elite college enrollments and test scores perfectly mirror those things.


So why post this here?

Because in districts like mine, where every parent is vying for their kids to be ID-ed as "GT" early on... and some 25-30% of the district IS thus labeled, it tends to water the programs down so significantly for MG+ kids that the entire system just becomes pretty broad 'tracking' for college-bound kids. The vast majority are ideally intelligent (probably NOT gifted, in other words, but close) and advantaged by any definition of the term. Most of those come from the top 25% of incomes locally, and just anecdotally, a lot of them are fairly Tiger-like households.

It also means that anyone asking to have a truly HG+ child's needs met is initially met with scorn and derision, because everyone here has had a run-in with "that" parent. The entitled helicopter parent from hell, whose special snowflake deserves only the very very bestest of everything...

I'm interested in others' thoughts here. I have even suspected that IQ testing is starting to be viewed by some educators/administrators as proof positive that parents have jumped on that bandwagon. It explains a LOT of why parents are increasingly getting pushback re: outside testing and high scores.

HK, do you really think that observed SES differences in IQ and academic achievement are *primarily* due to "gaming the system"?

I am heartened to see that tons of NYT commenters understand The Bell Curve. I will quote just one, named ".N".

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind/?comments#permid=2

The situation you're describing reminds me of the situation in research science. In both areas, there are too many people competing for too few resources, and the results are predictable.

One result is that the people who make decisions start looking at the wrong things or make errors in how to best judge a large number of competing people. As a result, people respond erratically and game the system. Then you get an arms race. This is to be expected given the stakes: when resources are scarce, people start to move toward extremes in order to be able to compete.

IMO, each system creates its own problems. Schools mismanage their money and then complain about being broke. Universities over-hire, work new faculty to the bone, and then toss them aside if they can't get grants. Funding bodies get too many applications, fund 10% or less of them, and then articles like this one and this one appear. And yet people wonder why it happens. The former (making up results) is human nature but IMO is also driven by science's current focus on shiny dazzling positive results, and the latter (breast cancer) is driven IMO by focusing again on the wrong thing and desire for shiny results over the long and complicated slog toward real answers.

Okay, this is a bit oversimplified here, but I have to get back to my long and complicated slog toward real answers now.

The social Darwinism argument is the new divine right argument. It's just another attempt by the wealthy to rationalize away their anti-social tendencies.

A mom who doesn't help with the homework because she's busy trying to put food on the table has misplaced priorities... sure.

Bostonian, I think that probably there is some truth to the notion that children born after 1975 in this country have been born in an era, at least, when such a thing is plausible.

The problem with that assumption, however, is that it relies heavily on one very flawed series of assumptions to begin with:

a) Ivy/Elite colleges have always admitted students upon purely meritocratic standards, and were certainly doing so from 1970 onwards in a way that perfectly captured the "brightest" students and sorted them out into elite schools in order of prestige.

b) that there is a perfect correlation between IQ (as measured by...? Oh, nevermind) and income. That's not really so, though the trend is certainly true that the highest paying 30% of occupations as a whole tend to draw from, perhaps the highest 40% of population IQ's. But that effect largely dissipates significantly when you look at individual occupations, or even at "what does the average person with IQ 140-145 have as an occupation?" Does that make sense?
One need not take an IQ test to major in physics, but I think that most people understand that it is certainly a proxy for high IQ. The thing is, majoring in communications isn't a proxy for low IQ, and yet the lifetime earnings of the two fields are different... but for individuals, could be identical or even paradoxically inverted from what one might expect.

SO. Yes, I'd buy that as a complete explanation, or even a "major" one if-- and only if-- it could be demonstrated that in countries where gender equality in college admissions was NOT a factor this trend had not been observed... and that in another country where income distributions are relatively flat, that it DID still exist over the same time-frame in tandem with gender equality in higher education.

I also don't buy it because so many studies have shown-- again and again-- that test prep WORKS for things like the SAT and GRE. It also works if you have the means to take them 4-7 times.

Finally, it's also worth noting that in most of the highest paying (and also with overlap into highest IQ) fields, gender equality in college admissions is still not at parity yet. Engineering, physics, and computer science come to mind immediately.

__________________________________

Val, I think that you make a good point, but I think that it is not (as some comments at the NYT seem to indicate) that there is any kind of conspiratorial effort to keep the "great unwashed" disadvantaged in an effort to game the system so much. I think that it's a population effect whereby those with both means and perspicacity to note the nature of the game have lurched toward (as a group) the means of optimizing play. So yes, they as individuals may engage in ethically questionable activities (or worse) as a means of leveraging better outcomes, but for the most part, it's a matter of an arms race that parents justify by comparing that behavior and finding it more or less normative.

I have mixed feelings about test prepping and ghostwriting of grants... it feels... icky. Ethically, it feels like it's a grey area to me. Brinksmanship, maybe.

But this is real, and it's my child. Ergo, I am torn. We could play the game. We have a dream player in a fantasy league sense, after all. We have the means to do a few of the things that the rich do. We have the know-how to determine which of those trappings of upper-middle-class (and wealthy) upbringings matter later. (Country club brunch? No. Golf? Yes.)

But will higher INCOME mean the best chance at happiness? Would my daughter want her colleagues and peers to be the 'elite?' Are they really the best/brightest? I strongly suspect not. I think that they are just the 'fittest' and I think that it isn't the same thing.

The reason that the answer matters to me personally is that my daughter is someone who finds that ethically ambiguous super-competitive peer cohort to be abhorrent-- revolting in the extreme. I certainly don't want to groom her for that, if that is really what it is. She is troubled deeply by inequity.

I have to bite my tongue here - calling couples with a joint income > $165,000 rich, is well, rich! It may be a lot of money in 'Doofus, Wisconsin' but in the tri-state area it won't buy an awful lot. The whole idea that those dependent on wages (even high wages) are rich is just ludicrous.

I found the Stapel article amusing. He saw that people would only believe what they wanted to hear (a well documented bias) so he provided it. It further lowered my already subterranean opinion of most professional acedemics today.

Okay-- but consider what it says if you substitute "economically advantaged" instead-- is there a more fundamental problem with his statements?

Because calling the top 10% "rich" and conflating "super-rich" (that is, the top 0.5% of incomes) with that top 10% is probably wrong, true-- but the advantages that come with being in that top 10% for the children in those households--

well, I thought that part of things was interesting. I'm not sure that the attribution is correct, as it seems to be a lot more complex than just monetary factors can explain-- maybe it needs to include opportunity costs, or something, not sure...

but I'm wondering if you can get past the semantics enough to consider that 165K is a vastly different set of circumstances than 15K, no matter the labels, and reflect on what the data indicates about those different environments?

What exactly is the goal of this conversation?

I was simply curious-- since this tends to be a group of mostly 'high-achievers' who also are (mostly, again) parents to high-achievers...

I thought it was an interesting attribution-- that wealth is the answer-- when such a thing completely ignores real cognitive differences and also non-monetary enrichment as a mechanistic/functional difference.

We also-- as a community-- discuss access issues related to 'better' educational programs, etc. with some regularity. The article assumes that such barriers are monetary, which seems to run counter to what some of us here have encountered, but in some instances, it may confirm what we've experienced anecdotally.

Mostly, I'm curious to know what others think (again, anecdotally) about how this relates to GT policies locally. Do others think it's related? It seems to be in my own location-- the more advantaged (note that I didn't use the term "rich" because I'm actually convinced that higher incomes are also only a proxy for the real causative variable) children are pushed harder, have MUCH higher levels of parental involvement, more expensive educational enrichment, etc. etc. There is a drive to make MG kids seem to be HG (but it's also painfully clear, again anecdotally, that the vast majority of those kids are near-gifted or MG, and there is this weird dichotomous effect of making the GT programming-- which is all pay-to-play anyway-- "more accessible" which means, um, 'less demanding' basically).

So from my perspective, this is all part of the same phenomena which drive administrators to assume that the parents who post here are probably "those" kinds of parents (that is, parents of near-gifted kids who have a litany of excuses or have 'shopped' for a test score that qualifies for a program), which is obviously harmful to kids who really are HG/HG+ need differentiation.

It also seems to be true that, as a commenter to the NYT article notes:


I found the term "rich" when applied to a two-income household making 165K fairly inflammatory, myself. In many urban parts of the country, that income is solidly middle-class, and only in a few places would it be "wealthy" as far as I can tell.

I was also interested to see what folks who follow education (and cognitive difference/development) research thought of the piece.

I was perplexed by the apparent oversimplifications inherent in it, personally.

I am not really sure what to make of the article that you supplied us with, HK. I do agree that SE factors play a large role in outcomes and that unfortunately we are in an arms race.

I also think that the lack of tracking in public schools is the main cause of the polarisation of educational outcomes more than anything else. Tracking allowed kids of from humbler origins to be identified and enabled. The banishment of tracking has allowed the higher SES kids to get prepped for the one-off tests instead of showing constant and consistent ability above the mean as tracking did. Of course, this is all 'folk wisdom' no one will ever get a study looking deeply into it funded...

What I wonder, also, is whether or not such studies (of SES and accomplishment) ignore educational attainment of parents in favor of household incomes, which may be a looser proxy for many of the same factors--

because it IS true that there is a correlation between those things.

It just seems (and again, anecdotal, this) that most faculty expect their children to attain post-baccalaureate degrees, and that they DO.

Well, terminal degrees are certainly associated strongly with both high IQ and with high SES.

But I'm not sure that any of that is specifically causative. Which leads me back to madeinUK's remarks above.

NCLB has certainly caused a lot of trouble, hasn't it? Or maybe it isn't causative either.

Sooo complicated.


This is why I specifically indicated that the comments on the article were every bit as intriguing as the linked blog entry, though. Lots of different opinions and anecdote. If even half of those things are true, then the answer is that there is anecdote aplenty to rip apart everyone's pet hypothesis on the subject. Mine, too. LOL.

NCLB made a bad situation worse.

you have just described my district. And even though I am only at the beginning of advocating for dd6, and the school knows that dd12's one-yr. skip is successful (socially and academically) I can already sense the eye-rolling etc. (Thankfully I think the assistant principal does somewhat get it and could potentially be an ally). Anyway, off to read the article now. These issues certainly inspire me to get off my butt and finally finish my master's in education and get my state teaching certificate. Although it is pretty depressing to think how little difference one teacher can make (except to the individual student...)

Thank you Dude. ITA.

Yes. My dd12 is similar. I have come to the same conclusion.

If the top 10% of earners aren't "rich," what is rich? Top 5%? Top 1%? I'm curious.

Would people prefer "upper-middle class"? I'd grant that might be a better descriptor. But 165K is not middle class. Don't kid yourself.

I was also disappointed with the oversimplifications, but not surprised. I suspect that most people either can't or don't want to dig into the complexities of a problem. I realize that no one can dig into the details of some question every time, but the education problem in this country seems to be particularly resistant to thoughtful, nuanced debate (or even recognition) of its complexities.

People get offended and start shouting when they hear an idea they don't like (which is already starting on this thread). Perhaps this tendency is one reason for why it's so difficult to really get into the details of the problems in our education system.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-22/how-did-the-worlds-rich-get-that-way-luck
"...Canadian economists Miles Corak and Patrizio Piraino look at how often men end up working at the same company where their father worked, finding that as many as 40 percent have done that at some point. The proportion rises to 70 percent among the top 1 percent in income distribution. This helps to explain why the relationship between the earnings of parent and child is even higher at the top end than it is across the population at large, according to Corak... At any level beyond the local, differences in income due to inequality of opportunity dwarf those from inequality of effort or talent..."

I thought of this also. I also thought about the # of kids using ADHD meds as study drugs.

The author of the piece is making a pretty major claim--that pricey extracurriculars, luxe preschool, and tutoring are what is driving the achievement gap. I read a lot of education research and I haven't seen anybody talking about this. That doesn't mean it's completely false--but AFAIK, the more widely held belief is that it isn't so, well, financial, although these parenting practices are often ASSOCIATED with wealth, or more accurately, education and cultural capital. It's more about vocabulary, reading aloud, going to the museum, talking to your child in a "Why do you think so?" way rather than a "Stop! Put that down!" kind of way...These things don't really take money. GOOD preschool--well, okay. Good preschool is very important, but 25k/year preschool? I don't think we have any data showing that we need 25K/year preschool.

I wonder why a tiger-mom can send their kid to one hour of Sylvan tutoring a day and they get ahead, yet half of the town here sends their kid to school tutoring an hour after school every day and they can barely keep up? Is it because the tiger moms tutor their brightest kids and oour school only tutors the struggling students? I'm not even sure tracking is enough. I read here that the best educational fit would be to give the kids MAP testing (out of level achievement test) and group kids with a similar score in the same class for each subject, disregarding the ages:grade levels completely.
My homespun opinion agrees 100% with yours made in uk, if they would quit priotising socialization skills in school and start prioritizing education, plement tracking so that all students can learn enough during the eight hours a day they're already there, it would do more to "level the playing field".

Cognitive dissonance.

This supposed assumption on the part of Bostonian has approximately nothing to do with the issue at hand, and is certainly not a requirement for his line of reasoning.


It's curious to me that you can appreciate the trend, and thus understand that there is significant correlation, but in your mind anything less than a correlation of 1.0 makes the explanation unsatisfactory. Personally, I'm not bothered by the fact that statistics allows for variance and outliers.

Not a direct answer to your question, but here is a new article finding that the effectiveness of math tutoring may depend on the biology of the child. The article phrased things more strongly than even I would:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/29/us-science-brain-math-idUSBRE93S0XI20130429

Your child's brain on math: Don't bother?
By Sharon Begley
NEW YORK | Mon Apr 29, 2013 5:02pm EDT
(Reuters) - Parents whose children are struggling with math often view intense tutoring as the best way to help them master crucial skills, but a new study released on Monday suggests that for some kids even that is a lost cause.

According to the research, the size of one key brain structure and the connections between it and other regions can help identify the 8- and 9-year olds who will hardly benefit from one-on-one math instruction.

"We could predict how much a child learned from the tutoring based on measures of brain structure and connectivity," said Vinod Menon, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, who led the research.

***************************************

I think the paper is

http://stanford.edu/group/scsnl/cgi-bin/drupal_scsnl/content/publications
Supekar, K., Swigart, A., Tenison, C., Jolles, D., Rosenberg-Lee, M., Fuchs, L., & Menon, V. (2013). Neural predictors of individual differences in response to math tutoring in primary-grade school children. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. (In press)

If a person chooses to live in a place where $165k/year can barely pay for housing, that's the choice they've made. We all know that those choices come with significant other advantages that don't exist in places where such a person could pay cash for a nice home in a peaceful neighborhood, particularly in the quality of government services (police, fire, education, transport, etc.). But to call that "middle class" is just insulting.

Where we live, in a Tiger mom rich area, lots of highly educated parents, it is very common for parents to hire private tutors for their kids in high school and junior high. My friend hired a math tutor for his 5th grader, who is "good at math," but they want him to be better.
When it comes to the SAT, these kids will outperform the poorer kids who may be just as smart, since they will have access to better study prep resources.
My son got accepted to our local community college's summer gifted program. He will take 5 weeks of classes there in math, science and literature. The classes are pricey ($300 a week for a half-day class, ouch), but we think it is worth it. His best friend also got accepted but the dad is a truck driver and they just don't have the money for it, so he will stay at home this summer and read, etc.
Having financial resources can obviously help your gifted child, if used wisely. That isn't to say that poorer gifted children also can't do well.

I think $50,000 year is middle class an wiki agrees
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

and we can just assume both parents usually work because that's normal.
So 100,000 is on the border between "upper middle class" and above.

so says wiki.

It's certainaly not "independantly wealthy", like the upthread definition of "rich" described, saying "not dependant on income from work".
just my semantical 2c hth

I also think $100,000 yr is for a doctor which has always been called "rich" as a profession by most towns, although they have to work for a living too... in case we're talking about 100,000 as one income, not the family income.

eta I remember one town the richest lady in town was the one who owned three daycares.

eEta: 'ing too much because I'm speculating too much. I just googled & family doctors average $180,000/ yr now.

Re: defining "rich"

I live in a large Canadian city with one of the world's highest costs of living on a PPP basis. Even here, $165k/year will buy you a top-10% lifestyle. Housing might not be palatial, but thats a feature of urban geography.

I don't think we should misconstrue what "rich" looks like. I would say being "rich" is about virtually all of life's decisions containing an element of personal choice. If a household can choose which city it lives in, have control over the school the children attend, participate in regular leisure activities, pay for post-secondary studies, and still have money to spare for a comfortable retirement, then that's rich in my books. And, even in the most expensive geographies, a $165k+ household can achieve at least several items on that list.

Maybe a simpler litmus test of SES is whether, on a given day, the bulk of a household's concerns could be lumped under #firstworldproblems.

In what world is the problem not being able to retire until you're 90 yrs. old?

I think this is such an important point and I think that everything the article describes the rich as doing is just an extension of the rich perceiving their children to be capable of excelling academically, and that perceptions of our children's abilities probably do correlate to our own educational backgrounds. It makes people uncomfortable to suggest that the parents of the poor would benefit learn to interact differently with their children home if we want to close the gap.

I have been wondering about this a lot lately after observing how differently and probably stereotypically a close friend on welfare parents her child compared to the upper middle class parents I know. I grew up in a very poor area and noticed this parenting style a lot. I've probably already said something offensive in that sentence and I apologize. It's obvious that this other parent views her child as much less capable of learning than I view my own so she dumbs things down that I would explain in a lot of detail. I don't know how someone comes to believe her child is smart and capable of understanding the answers to her own questions versus thinking her child is not capable and should not be given the full answer, and should not be encouraged to ask questions. Is it a product of being treated like a smart student versus being treated a dumb student in your own educational experience? I think this is part of it but there must be more to it. And then once you know how state this comes about, how you change a person's perception of her child's potential, especially when no one around her is telling her child is exceptionally bright and when her child may be already struggling compared to peers? It seems like a commonly occurring cycle that just feeds on itself for generations. I think things like better preschool for all would be a good start but not enough. We need to be able to talk openly about differences between parenting styles correlated to SES and not automatically blame all differences directly on money.

Yes, and I was perhaps MOST intrigued by the comments which, even in the most reasoned and logical/informed among them... mostly ignored what the article actually suggested-- which is that schooling makes quite a small difference. Most of the difference is coming from influences that:

a) started well before school age
b) occur in the "non-school" portions of children's lives, and that furthermore;
c) all of those hours in classrooms pretty much SLOW the natural trajectory of kids in the top 10%, not "help" the trajectory of the lowest 10%.

That part of things, I find fascinating. I wasn't terribly surprised that few commenters picked up on it specifically (and no telling how the social Darwinists/assortative mating people felt, because they stayed on their particular message and maybe they felt it was too obvious to bear remarking upon). I assumed that others here would note the over all trend as well, given how common afterschooling and enrichment is with HG kids.

Whether or not 100K + is "middle class" seems to me to be arguing semantics, here. 185K definitely pays for things-- "extra" and "nice" things-- that 50K doesn't, I think that we can agree. Just how far that income goes depends heavily on location, true. It is in the top 10%, however-- that is simply what the math suggests. In some locations, it might be top 1%, and in others top quartile, which blurs the lines a bit, but the trend probably remains intact.

The trends observed in this research are not about just WHICH benefits of high income are available given a particular level of purchasing power, anyway-- they are about retrospectives on how achievement is tied to income LEVEL, and they've chosen levels sufficiently far apart that the 'noise' in that signal should be minimal. Nowhere does 180K annually lead to a lifestyle enjoyed by a family living on 15K anywhere else, right?

--------------------------------

I've not ignored the possible contribution of assortative mating. It's just that I'm not willing to ASSUME that those factors are insignificant without noting them. ARE they insignificant? I think that they probably are far from small, those caveats. Like marries like, all right. But 'like' there means a lot of different things, not just intellect.

Is there a study that supports that spouses are within 10pts of one another in IQ? Given the (apparent) spread in many college programs, even, I doubt it.

Plus many MEN raised in traditional homes prefer women who are not at or beyond their own IQ level. That one I have seen studies to support.

Which means that yes, "like" may marry "like," but what that probably means instead is that people of more-or-less equal SES are marrying one another. If SES is not a good correlation for IQ (and I do question whether or not it is), then as we move down this chain of conclusions to assortative mating widening the bell curve...

the errors are not additive... they are propogated and increase as we go along. So yes, that makes the notion of assortative mating/social Darwinism little better than an unsupported hypothesis at this point.

What is also true is that there are 'break-out' cases that suggest it is flawed, too. I think of this as the Trading Places effect. Anecdote isn't data-- but it is sufficient to serve as a counter-example in a hypothesis.

MotherofToddler: I've seen a wide variety of parenting styles in my own middle-class neighborhood, so I couldn't chalk it up to SES. There's one mother nearby who describes her upbringing as significantly more privileged whose parenting style definitely needs work.

It's more about ideas regarding children. A child of an authoritarian background, for example, is likely to parent in that style. One common defense of spankings, for instance, is, "My momma whooped my butt, and I turned out okay."

SES definitely matters when we're talking about gifted children, though, because the free public education system fails these kids so badly. So... can you afford private schools? Homeschooling? Can you take your child to different museums? Summer camps? Can they do extra-curricular activities that teach them to fail gracefully, like sports, music, theater? What about 2E? Can you afford a full psychological profile? Occupational therapy? Lawyers or advocates to help your child get what the law says they get in school?

All of these things take time and money. Your SES may not allow for all of these, or even any of these. And we all know they have an impact on future results.

I like that!!

That is a great way of summing that up. Pretty much nowhere will 15K grant one that, and there are a LOT of places where 165 or 180K will. There are not that many places where an income above 165K doesn't give you the kind of security that someone raised in that lowest tenth of income cannot even IMAGINE.

I say that as someone who lived most of my childhood in the bottom half of the SES, and some of it in the lowest quartile.

It's about a lot more than teaching parents to interact in more supportive ways with children. It needs to be about teaching an entire CULTURE to interact with them differently. These are not kids worried about whether or not they get to go to camp or get piano/voice lessons... these are kids who are worried about basic safety and healthcare needs, and food.

It's really about Maslow's Hierarchy in my opinion. When you spend the first years of your life on the most basic levels, is it ANY surprise that you don't get to "learning" until you reach school, which is (mostly) safer, more pleasant, etc. than "home" is?

Whereas a child in that 165K+ household spends ALL (or nearly all) of their childhood and "home" time at the highest levels of Maslow's Hierarchy.

Maybe some exceptional homes provide the other kind of environment at paradoxical income levels. Wealthy but abusive homes, or impoverished but stable/supportive/loving ones, I mean. That would explain outliers far better than social Darwinism would predict, because they seem to occur in the same kinds of rates that are observable for abuse, KWIM?

Anyway. Kind of rambling. I'm testy this morning about the notion that some kids are "worth it" more than others, too. Just so everyone knows. Local school official and College Board meets out-of-the-box disability accommodations, let's just say.

But that brings up another good point-- as mentioned by Irena in a recent thread. What happens to kids with unusual or extraordinary needs in instances in which parents do NOT have time, knowledge, and resources to devote to solving those problems??


ETA: Cross-posted with Dude above me. Clearly I'm not the only one wondering about that last point.

MofT, you make some good points. It's complicated.

Differences in ability do exist, and I've seen how they play a role in how people interact with their children. As an example, I know people who aren't very bright, and from what I've seen, they have no or nearly no books in their house. Their kids are young, and are starting to get overweight and pasty-looking, due primarily to the amount of junk food they consume. They're a low SES family.

Yet one parent is very active in the PTA and is all over the kids to get their homework done. Both parents clearly love their kids, invest a lot of time into them in many ways, and want the best for them.

It could be argued that no one ever taught the parents about the value of activities like reading or healthy eating, and therefore they don't know their value or that there is some kind of low-SES issue there. But in this case, that idea seems odd, given the high level of involvement in school, family-wide sports involvement, and the lengths these people go to to find affordable enrichment programs. I suspect, but don't know, that the lack of books is due to a lack of interest. The junk food issue is more complicated than simple SES.

It's possible that the kids will fare better than their parents and that their children will do better still. I don't know; there are a lot of factors at work. I do know that these people work very hard with their kids, and that in many ways, they're setting them up to do well with their lives.

Dude - I did not mean to say every parent's parenting style can be predicted by SES and that there is no variability within groups, but there are trends in interaction styles that are supported by research.

La Tex-- I think that the notion of "retiring" at all is pretty much a first world problem by definition.

Sure, general trends exist. At opposite ends of the SES curve you can usually see very different behaviors generally, but in the middle, the picture gets muddied.

It's in the upper quartile where helicopter parenting is prevalent, with the attendant low self-esteem and resiliency issues. The behaviors of the upper quartile do have a noted effect on those below, though.

When desperately poor Jewish immigrants came to this country, with incomes below $15K in today's dollars, do you think they neglected teaching their kids before they entered school? What about poor Asian immigrants today?

Here is an article on how much poor Chinese value education:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/business/in-china-families-bet-it-all-on-a-child-in-college.html
In China, Families Bet It All on College for Their Children
By KEITH BRADSHER
New York Times
February 16, 2013
HANJING, China — Wu Yiebing has been going down coal shafts practically every workday of his life, wrestling an electric drill for $500 a month in the choking dust of claustrophobic tunnels, with one goal in mind: paying for his daughter’s education.

His wife, Cao Weiping, toils from dawn to sunset in orchards every day during apple season in May and June. She earns $12 a day tying little plastic bags one at a time around 3,000 young apples on trees, to protect them from insects. The rest of the year she works as a substitute store clerk, earning several dollars a day, all going toward their daughter’s education.

Many families in the West sacrifice to put their children through school, saving for college educations that they hope will lead to a better life. Few efforts can compare with the heavy financial burden that millions of lower-income Chinese parents now endure as they push their children to obtain as much education as possible.

Do you think that this is a matter of cultural norming? I wonder.

Because I think that you are right... but I see fault lines there in ways that are not necessarily SES, but other cultural groupings. For example (and really, just an EXAMPLE, based upon my experiences within my own extended family);

the more adherent to the religious faith (common to that group) the individuals within that group are, the more likely they are to use corporal punishment liberally and to use a patriarchal authoritarian parenting style-- one which ignores problems that it cannot solve.

The children of those homes (ten of them) range from PG to below-average in IQ, and the homes themselves range from upper-middle class to the lowest 10th (as in the study). My observations lead to me to the conclusion that within this particular group (okay, just think of me as Jane Goodall here ) fall most closely along the religiosity line, rather than either IQ or SES alone. This is a faith that is somewhat anti-intellectual and openly promotes rigid gender roles and early marriage and child-rearing. I have a cousin born within weeks of me, who was lauded to me throughout my entire life as a "model" child... her oldest child is 14 years older than my own. Her parenting style and mine are similar, but one large difference is the premium that we place on "book smarts" and our expectation that our DD will have high achievement and expectations of herself in that domain. The other difference is that her household is HIGHLY adherent to the group religious faith, and mine is an outlier in that regard.

Among my cousins, there are two of us with HG+ children and we are also the only two whose households are not advocates of that group faith. Mine is fairly high SES, hers is not.


Anyway.


Complex. Yes. I think that there is a huge mass of cultural norms at work here-- and that teasing it apart variable by variable is nearly impossible. People are reluctant to admit to some parenting practices, they hide dysfunction, etc. Those are the factors that (IMO) probably produce outliers to the SES effect.

What a great point!


Bostonian, I think that the argument to be made re: Jewish and Asian immigrant parents revolves not around MONEY... but around educational attainment of the parents.

Immigrants who have poor educational attainment themselves tend to raise children who go on to also have fairly poor educational attainment, regardless of income.

Immigrants who have (on average) fairly high levels of educational attainment (such as modern Asian parents, or Jewish ones of the past) parent those children differently.

Yes-- and it shows in terms of outcomes.

But adoption studies? The problem is that there just aren't quite enough of those subjects to make a good study group, and records are probably not complete enough to go back and look at what happens to children who are adopted into high/low educational attainment families versus high/low SES ones... too bad, that.

The problem is that adoptions TEND to be into high SES and high EdAtt families, and that trend has only accelerated in the years since WWII.

Social Darwinism is a pejorative name for a political philosophy, coined by its opponents. To what extent SES and IQ are correlated is a scientific question. I don't think you should use "Social Darwinism" to describe informed views about science. I can think of a poster whose views about IQ overlap considerably with mine but whose politics are very different.

You can believe that the poor are poor largely because of their genes and
(1) Support anti-poverty programs because poverty is not their fault.
(2) Oppose anti-poverty program for Social Darwinist reasons.

Now that you mention it, your observations fit my own very closely. I hadn't thought about this.

50K is median HOUSEHOLD income, not median individual income. It includes the incomes of everyone in the household.

Dual-income households are more common than not in two-parent homes, but there are many, many single-parent households, and there are quite a lot of SAHMs and moms who work PT. Contrary to popular belief, SAHM-dom is not the province of the privileged, either.


This is actually talked about quite a bit in the academic literature. It may not make it to the popular press as much. There is certainly a correlation, but it's obviously not a perfect one. Programs like Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Baby College start with pregnant moms to try to rejigger parenting and discipline beliefs with all this in mind.

One thing to consider when thinking about cultural differences in childrearing is that for young men of color especially, life and limb can depend upon being correctly and swiftly responsive to commands from law enforcement figures. Parents therefore may be very interested in teaching children to obey at whatever cost, and to respect authority at whatever cost, a consideration that is unlikely to be a priority for parents of, for instance, wealthy white female children. I read a fascinating study about how different children approach or don't approach teachers for help. Wealthy/UMC children ask for help from teachers much more often and are much more assertive and persistent if they still don't "get it." Poorer children and children of color are less likely to ask for help and will say "okay" even if they don't understand.

That is true. My apologies for the use of the term.

HK, I suspect that those Chinese parents working in a coal mine and an apple orchard aren't highly educated.


Actually, there have been a lot of studies in that area. For example, look at this meta-analysis from 2005. It summarized 62 studies. The abstract says that adoption raised IQand improved school performance relative to unadopted BIOLOGICAL sibs:

Thank you, Val! That was what I was recalling, as well-- but what I meant by "small numbers" was actually something that I left out. Immigrant children who were adopted. That's a much smaller group. Presumably the same facts would hold true, but there is little way to evaluate the effect of SES versus educational attainment in adoptive households among particular immigrant groups, nevermind among groups with a known IQ range. To be fair, though-- the sibling meta-study above suggests that the effect is what I'd assume-- that environment matters a very great deal.

I think that is an important consideration if Bostonian (and others') premise is to be taken seriously and evaluated purely upon its own merits. Can you take a birth cohort which is normed for IQ, and determine outcomes on the basis of two different measures in adoptive homes? One for SES, and one for EdAtt? I would bet that the LATTER is the more robust effect, but I don't know.
The other thing that adoption studies cannot tease apart is the impact of "wanted" versus "unplanned" childrearing. It's a problem.


My point is that most immigrants of "successful" groups tend not to come from the lowest level working class, in terms of educational attainment.

Well, they do from Latin America. But not from overseas. The groups that do tend not to produce "highly successful" high SES children in large numbers.

I'm pretty sure that such a thing does NOT go to supporting the notion that lack of success is related to ethnic differences in intellect, however. Because WHO those immigrants are (culturally, educationally, in terms of SES) matters a great deal. It's a vastly different slice of the demographic when you look at war refugees versus those immigrating for purely SES reasons.

I think it's important to note, also, that "authoritarian" parenting is not at all the same thing as "authoritative" parenting, and that one leads to far better outcomes (in terms of crime, antisocial behaviors, etc) than the other.

The one instills respect for authority, and the other instills FEAR of it.

But parents who use authoritarian strategies believe in that parenting model for a reason.

With the way college tuition has increased by double-digits annually over the course of an entire generation, with wages stagnant over the same period, are SES and EdAtt still separable at this point?

Val took the words right out of my mouth.

Also, attempting to teach your child to fear police/authority is not always equivalent to succeeding in doing so. It doesn't mean you won't try.

And also, what HK said.

No, and increasingly inseparable, in fact. But that is more recent data-- it could be what is explaining the trend in the article, though. I wonder what that curve looked like in 1920 or 1935.

It's possible that what the trend actually shows is a RETURN to a time when educational attainment was equal to SES, and that the period from 1948 through 1980 was an anomoly due to federal programs which made SES a less crucial factor in college attendance.

Interesting idea.

(3) You can oppose Social Darwinism based on the well-documented flaws in the "science."

As an adoptive parent I can say for certain that there are MANY reasons besides Bostonian's Bell Curve arguments that adopted children may struggle in school. Pre-natal care, malnutrition, attachment issues, the possibility that mothers who place children for adoption regardless of race may be more likely to have ADHD etc. I have two friends with adopted children, one from Ethiopia, one African-American, who are at least HG. If they were being raised in the environment they were born into you are deluded if you think they would "look" gifted. Deprivation has an effect on children that has nothing to do with genetics.

True.

I've been seriously questioning the price tag of private colleges costing $60,000 a year. I mean, seriously? Sixty thousand dollars for eight months of classes? This is not a realistic and reasonable price tag.

For decades, they've been telling us that "tuition doesn't even begin to cover the cost of an education at College X!!" Yet there is a long and unhappy history of annual tuition increases that surpass the increase in the cost of living. I suspect (but do not know) that increased tuition is helping to pay for fancy new buildings that may or may not be used by undergrads.

And I am speaking of a graduate of one of those pricey elite New England colleges! So, no sour grapes here.

THIS.

Maslow + bell curve = what we see is obscured by many factors other than genetically determined potential.

Only kids with high-enough SES get to meet their potential. The rest struggle to meet SOME of it.

The findings say that adoption improves IQ and school performance. The argument is based on environment, not heritability.

Yes, exactly. This is true of anthropometric characteristics (height, weight, etc). I suspect that it's also true of cognitive ability. And I also suspect that incremental generational gains in cognitive ability may occur if successive generations of a given family or population live in advantaged circumstances. This is certainly true of things like height.

Right. But that doesn't seem to be the argument of the Bell Curve which is often cited here by Bostonian. And re: racial differences on IQ tests, I will say that I am 100% certain there are questions my dd12 answered correctly on the WISC that a kid from Camden would simply never have been exposed to.

That's not (at least not totally) true. I knew a man who came to US to give his kids good future. He is just a handyman (he finished his HS only) and could not afford to live in good school district. But he always push his kids to study hard. Now both of his kids recieved scholarships are in medical school.

With regard to SES:

Dr. Ben Carson (Neurosurgeon from JH) came from poor SES. (His mother did not even read well but she wanted her kids to read 2 books a week and always on their back to study.)

Academic success depends on both

1) the kids' inherent ability (IQ)
2) motivation and support (school, parents, environment)

If we have both, SES does not matter. Of course, high SES means you can move to the good school district and provide top notch education and tutoring if needed.

The problem is the attitude of the parents. Unfortunately many parents are passionate into their kids sports activity than the education. One of the high school voted to build $ 10 million stadium but did not do anything about losing 10 teachers (half of them in special education) due to Federal and State budget cut.



But I do agree that educated parents encourage better education and advocate for their kids than their counterparts and therfore the children of educated parents are MOST LIKELY to find success academically than their counterparts.

HK re: cultural approaches to parenting, I will say that I have even observed extensively a subset of that religiously inspired authoritarian parenting style among educated professionals who reject some of the other choices commonly associated with it (i.e. traditional gender roles, homeschooling for religious purposes). There is A LOT of judgement around children unquestioningly obeying their parents and corporal punishment. I wonder what the long-term effects of this style of parenting will be on kids who have access to the other experiences referenced in the NYT article.

Charles Murray (co-author of The Bell Curve) argues in favor of the point. In fact, I first learned about the potential of adoption to increase IQ in his books.

But SES clearly matters for the portion of your statement I bolded. Low SES often means attending bad schools with limited resources. Low SES often means limited time with parents due to more immediate survival needs. Low SES often means living in an environment not conducive to the support of learning.

As I said in another thread, achievement is an intersection of ability, opportunity, and effort. SES is a dominant influence on the middle one.

OK. So I suppose I will confine my objections then to Bostonian's position in this and other past threads. I read Murray's book years ago and did not remember the details. Thank you for clarifying.

Due to a number of complaints about the context of this thread, and that it seems to be going off track, we have decided to close it for now.

After looking at this thread again, I may have locked it a bit early. Please feel free to continue the discussion, and please remain respectful in the conversation.

I would say this describes my father and one of his brothers, both of whom I would guess to be HG+ and most likely PG. Both raised in a very working class family with neither parent having completed highschool - but both parents stable, loving, attentive, supportive, etc. Three of the children have continued on to happy "normal" lives with only mild upward mobility in terms of education or SES. My Father graduated highschool 10th in the state, top in the state in one subject and was offered a full scholarship to an overseas university (which he was unable to take up due to health issues). His brother is internationally respected in his niche field and currently a professor at a local university. Neither my father or uncle ever had financial gain as a priority, so neither of them changed their economic status terribly much, but their social circumstances are very different from their siblings (or were different, in the case of my father).

While as stated above, I do object to calling a household with an income > 165K rich - once the 'R' word becomes 'high earners' then a different pattern emerges in my mind, at least.

'Higher earners' applies to those that are presumably in the occupations where the combination of luck and innate intelligence have brought them to a certain level - thus giving credence to the argument that hereditary factors are coming into play for their offspring.

However, the picture is obviously complicated by cultural factors, too. Those imbued with the a cultural ethos in which hard work and effort are valued tend to do better. And they do better regardless of race which is quite obviously hereditary.

The fact that high intelligence is found at all income levels (see Genius Denied) lends further weight to the argument that cultural factors play a large part in determining whether or not a child with high intelligence reaches his/her potential. It is simply untrue to say and the children of low earning households will automatically be stupid, right?

I think that more than anything else it comes down to parental values. 'High earners' tend to be people that have been to college and naturally expect the same from their children. I do not really understand why responsible parents that actively engage their children so that they can reach their potentials have to be pilloried.

I can tell you all that we in our household are not 'rich' and that we only have one child specifically because we will not be able to afford to put more than one through a decent college and we do not want to raise servants indentured to financial institutions (lenders). We also tend to spend money on supplementary books, trips to museums, hikes etc (things that do not cost an inordinate amount of money btw) instead of the latest electronic gizmo/hand held game platform or fashions.

Yes, that is untrue, but the children of low-earning parents do score lower *on average* on IQ and achievement tests, and fewer of them than children of high-earning parents score in the gifted range.

My daughter relayed specific questions from the WISC that I know, for a fact, she knew the answers to because she happened to be in the room, (or the car) while I was listening to NPR. That has nothing to do with innate intelligence. A child of a housekeeper (I know many of them personally due to my husband's line of work) who is working 12 hr. days to put food on the table is probably not choosing to listen to NPR while his mother is at work.

[quote=Dude
But SES clearly matters for the portion of your statement I bolded. Low SES often means attending bad schools with limited resources. Low SES often means limited time with parents due to more immediate survival needs. Low SES often means living in an environment not conducive to the support of learning.

As I said in another thread, achievement is an intersection of ability, opportunity, and effort. SES is a dominant influence on the middle one. [/quote]

Dude,

I gave an example with Dr. Ben Carson. His Mom was a single parent and she hold two jobs. She did not have extra money for tutoring or what not when her sons were failing. She just gave them ultimatum and made them study hard. (I do not remember about the school but most likely not a good one either but he succeeded anyway mainly due to his mom's intervention.)

The accountability is not just on the teachers, it fall squarely on the parents as well. But I don't think it applies to the parents in this forum.

I also noted that high SES is an advantage. BUT there is no excuse for not taking 10 minutes a day and make your kids accountable.

It probably has a lot to do with taste. My kids have tons of books because it's what I like so it's what they know. I like shopping for clothes, but I prefer shopping for books. We have so many books. I teach my kids to take care of their stuff, but nobody's perfect. We have so many books that I don't really care when I have to throw out a book because the cover got ripped. It hasn't happened often, but they're 2 & 5. The other day the five year old threw every book on one shelf carelessly on the floor looking for one book. I made him clean it up. It did cross my mind that if we only had library books my kids would not be this comfortable with books. I buy most of my childrens books used and in good condition for less than a dollar. But if your kid loses or breaks a book you borrowed, you're paying full price. (I lost a cd I borrowed from the library-$35.00).
People keep saying everybody has access to a free public library. It would be an extrordinary kid who has the EF skills to do all that and never lose the books. The librarian will give you some slack, but my friend's kid can not use her library card because she has five books somewhere around the house she can't find. Everybody knows a story about some unlikely kid who did use the library successfully, but still. My kids library books stay on a top shelf and I told them not to use a stool to get them, only ask me.

Agreed 100% on both counts - I think that this is the primary area where cultural factors play their part.

I also laugh at the notion that higher earners work less hours and therefore have all this wonderful extra time to spend with their kids (sigh).

Yes, some higher earners work very long hours. My dh (not bringing home anywhere near the figure from the article, but we do have choices in providing enrichment for our kids) works 75-80 hours a week. But I have many friends and neighbors who would be considered high earners, and many of them are able to spend wonderful extra time with their kids due to a combination of hard work and connections and luck. They don't work harder than the people I know cleaning hotel rooms for 10-12 hours a day.

My spidey-sense is telling me that this is a gross oversimplification.


Just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding you here, it seems to me that you're implying that, since low-SES families are generally associated with low educational achievement, the primary cause is that the parents do not spend 10 minutes a day with the child, in which they emphasize the importance of good grades. Is that correct?

It's interesting, I've been following this same article in another forum and the conversation has gone a completely different direction. I had to go back and reread it. Two things jumped out at me:

1) The point the author arrives at here: "If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class [and low SES] students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school."

This difference in preparedness is what I see at our local school, which pulls entirely from those two SES groups. I left kindergarten round-up my first time and cried. They had given us a small stapled booklet of nursery rhymes and pleaded with the group of parents to read to their children 5 min a day throughout the summer. 5 min? We read and sing for hours, just 'cause it's fun and we have time to do it. Clearly from the plea, this was not the case in many homes.

Having a background in early childhood educ, the author's point resonated with me and was hopeful. He's pointing out what we know -- the gains in those early years are irreplaceable. And he's calling us to do something different, because the strategies used during k-12 aren't cutting it.

If we're only concerned about our child(ren), then it's enough that we're making choices to prepare them. But if we're concerned about everyone's children, then we need to advocate for systems that help them all succeed, which brings me to another of his (the author's) points....

2) "investments in early childhood education pay very high societal dividends."
And he mentions maternity/paternity leave and other key interventions that we could choose to provide.

Working with teen moms, I've known new moms who are back to work days after giving birth, working long hours to bring home minimal income, because they have no options. And think about the gentrification in many of our cities -- workers with the longest commutes in those areas are often those earning the lowest wages, with kids spending the longest hours in childcare.

What if we not only helped parents parent well, gave them paid parental leave as in other developed countries, and also made all childcare amazing? That's what I took away from the article. So far to go!

Love this. I agree on all counts. And the evidence I have seen strongly supports the return on the investment in quality pre-k.

My kids are 2 and 4, and their library books (which we check out 20 at a time) are kept on the bottom of the bookshelves in their rooms, where they can easily peruse them and make up their minds about which one they want to read. We have never lost a book. We have never significantly damaged a library book. We have repaired books that were damaged when we checked them out. My kids have been taught to take care of books. We don't bend pages. We don't stand on them. We don't throw them. We try not to drop them. My son is certainly not known for a gentle nature, but he manages to live up to our expectations most of the time, and he understands that there will be consequences if he doesn't. (That sounds bad, but I'm talking about taking away a favorite toy for an evening. The threat of losing a toy is much more effective for him than the threat of time out.)

I really don't think that using the library is a privilege reserved for only the extraordinarily well behaved and organized. I think a family that absolutely can't manage it is the exception. I suppose there is the matter of priorities though.

Our DD8 tore a couple of books before she was 1. She learned the consequences then... now we can't read it, the story is ruined. We explained/demonstrated to her how easy they were to damage, and how to handle them properly. And that was the end of that. She valued her books well enough to be more careful with them.

But still...

- Higher earners have the option of becoming a single-income family, at the expense of lifestyle. Middle and lower income families do not have this choice.

- Higher earners have the option of hiring in-home care providers for individualized, full-attention, high-quality service. Middle and lower income families, if they can't find a family caregiver who can provide it for free, often have no choice but to send their wee ones to Lord of the Flies Daycare.

I love your take on the article and I agree. Our county has determined that if a child hasn't learned to read by 3rd grade their chances of graduating high school are abysmal and children raised in poverty come to school knowing significantly fewer words.

This is the crucial point, this advocacy for early education and it begins with the parents. But how to implement? How to not repeat our ineffective policies? This is the puzzle...

I gave up on the library. The other adults in my children's lives can't be relied upon not to loose books, let alone the kids! My child with ADHD chews books with her hands, as she reads. she is completely unaware that she is doing it. She's not throwing, dropping, tearing or in anyway consciously abusing her reading material, but the wear and tear from her readif a book looks like 10+ readings... I don't use the library, it's too stressful.

Personally, I doubt all of this bleating about how disadvantaged the poor little lambs that don't get Mozart played to them in their cribs (insert envious cliche du jour here) before kindergarten are.

From what I have read - would take time to drag references out - the differences between the 'hurried kids' and the others tend to even out by third grade. After that point the innate intelligence and whether or not the home environment is supportive of educational achievement kicks in.

I know all about working hard for crap money - I basically grew up dirt poor and have family who are still in that rut to this day. I was lucky and I know it but that doesn't detract from the fact that despite the lack of material wealth and trappings I was raised in a household where hard work and educational success were valued.

The values literally count more than the money from my personal experience. There are plenty of successful people out there that were raised by single parents the while toiling (yes toiling) for minimum wages and never being home because of it that managed to raise successful and productive children.

We aren't talking about Mozart. We are talking about kids who have not had quality pre-k, kids who may not be able to concentrate because they are hungry, kids who live daily with the threat of violence. It is not rocket science to improve the outcome for these kids, and it is in society's best interest to do so. (see Harlem Children's Zone).

Re: the implications for gifted children, it is clear that many parents face long battles advocating for an appropriate education for their child. It seems clear that there are gifted children who are being left behind because their parents cannot afford private testing and because they cannot miss work to meet with schol officials. Parents may value hard work and educational success but they probably also value having food and water and electricity.

In my city, the library reports you to a collections agency if your books go overdue long enough. "Long enough" isn't that long--a month? Two months? You pay to have the card reinstated--$10, which isn't much, but the collection agency thing probably terrifies some folks.

(Not that this has happened to me. Ahem.)

Actually, it's sort of the opposite. A child who is not reading well by 3rd grade is statistically unlikely to ever catch up, and far more likely to drop out of school.

Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation
http://www.aecf.org/~/media/Pubs/Topics/Education/Other/DoubleJeopardyHowThirdGradeReadingSkillsandPovery/DoubleJeopardyReport030812forweb.pdf

Yes. My understanding is that it is BOTH things.

HeadStart programs barely make a dent in the problem in early childhood, though, so it also seems reasonable to me that school programs to little to budge this later one, too. (Which is what the study referenced in the article also states.)

LOL.

You too?

In our library, it's anything over a $20 amount. Anything over $10 in fines, and they freeze your card. Which is really a bummer when you can't access the digital downloads, either. Ahem.

ETA: I also was talking about library stuff with a middle school English teacher in a neighboring county this weekend, and here's a sad set of thoughts for y'all. These are WORKING poor people, basically, just as a preamble. Even a $10 out-of-city library card is more than some family budgets in her classroom can afford. (Wow. And me? I should know better-- I grew up in a household like that.)

The city library will NOT honor student ID's and give them cards anyway if they reside outside the city limits. These are kids. Who need access and do. not. have. it.

but as noted above... the parents on this and every other parenting forum are the ones being called "staying involved and providing an enriched environment", which for some reason people are trying to call it "gaming the system" for this conversation, enmeshment or lawnmower parenting in other conversations. I just call it immersing yourself into the experience of raising your kids. I don't how you managing your kids library books (and actively teaching them to manage it themselves) has anything to do with gaming the system for any kind of outcome. It's just parenting. But these articles keep coming by that seem to call parenting out for "tipping the scales" in some kind of game or system. Then the outraged response is, well, everybody makes choices and everyone has a free library. Well, not unless your parents make sure you take care of your books. Otherwise the free library charges money or revokes your access. We are talking about chidren. They aren't born with good sense.

(and my kids personally have always had great fine motor skills and been able to be very gentle with things, plus a mom who lets them touch things, so they have a lot of book priveleges for their age... just talking why about houses without books can't "just use the library".)

can you imagine... a house without books?! <>>

also, if my kids break or lose a library book I can and will pay for it and keep our library privledges. Some people can't or won't.

But there appear to be some benefits from Head Start that follow into adulthood.
The Case for Saving Head Start The Case for Saving Head Start

"Moreover, research has shown that the test-score fadeout was most severe when Head Start students went on to attend low-quality schools, so there is little doubt that high quality preschool would be even more effective if coupled with subsequent high-quality learning environments, especially in the early grades."

See it is simple. High-quality learning environments in pre-k and beyond for all kids.

I do not agree with the emphasis on pre-K one jot, so all of these negative factors (hunger, violence etc) miraculously disappear post pre-k? Come on!

Obviously, if someone has not reached an average level of attainment by gradeX then they are not going to follow along at gradeX+Y unless they are brighter than average and lucky. Do we really need a funded study to prove that????



I think that insisting that the public schools focus on dragging sub-average students up to average (NCLB) instead of allowing the truly bright to excel is entirely the wrong direction to head in. NCLB is basically walling in the brighter children of lower income parents and utterly smothering the majority of legal chances at social mobility

also, if your kids know the consequences of treating a book disrespectfully, doesn't that mean there was at least once where a book was endangered?
There's been a couple of books I've had to toss for damage. (maybe 3 or 4) for as much as my very young children use books and as many as they have I'm glad to pay for a few wasted books in the "game" of literacy.

But is this because they truly are NOT that high in cognitive ability?

Or is it because those things are merely a proxy for whatever that quality is? This is why test scores are quite often NOT the sole means of entry-- even for programs specifically intended for HG+ children.

We know full well that some disabilities can depress those scores-- and in lower income groups, the ability/impetus/understanding necessary to PURSUE a proper diagnosis (leading to a 2e diagnosis) is lacking.

Therefore, pretty much ALL 2e children who are identified are from high SES homes.


Likewise, most children from low SES are never tested. It's money that those families (and, all too often-- their schools) simply do not have.

You may not agree with it, but the evidence shows it is effective. I don't know anyone who is a fan of NCLB.

One interesting point about Head Start--a potential weakness is that it is all kids who are poor. A new study came out on a brand-new public pre-K program in Boston that is not means-tested--pre-K for all regardless of income. Good results. One thought is that the mixed-income environment may be helpful to the poorer kids.

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/201...-poor-and-affluent-kids-study-finds?lite

The thing that I was pointing out-- and which I think that MadeinUK is saying, too, is that the effects of any of those school-based intervention programs is really quite small.

Yes, it's a positive impact, but it is so short of what seems to actually be needed.

I was intending to suggest that this may mean the same thing that I suspect it means in this current study-- that being that there are SO many influences that get in the way of learning and performance in low SES homes that programs based in schools that don't control the other 70-80% of those kids' lives...

well, it isn't much wonder that those children don't do their homework, don't have parents signing reading journals or attending conferences, etc. etc.

Placing some of those expectations on a mixed SES classroom of kids could merely confer additional advantage to kids with high SES. They aren't worried about asking for supplies for the science fair... taking home a note for a meeting with the teacher... losing a library book... or needing money for the book fair...needing help with reading homework, getting a parent signature, asking if dad can chaperone a field trip, etc. etc.

Those aren't even things that are about NCLB, or ignoring the highest potential kids in the room. Those are things that are about assuming a minimum level of affluence among those children's families.

Also, the thing about 0-5 interventions is that it really IS DIFFERENT at that age. The brain is developing so rapidly. Later on, it just isn't the same. It's biology. You can dislike it, but that doesn't make it go away.

Well, some of them actually show pretty impressive effects. Head Start does not.

Right, and my understanding is that the ones which show the most robust effects are those that tackle the entire environment-- not just "education" in the form of schooling for the child.

Yup. I like Harlem Children's Zone. Also Urban Promise in Camden (and other cities).

Re: "Well, some of them actually show pretty impressive effects. Head Start does not."


That's right, it doesn't. That's the puzzle. There are plenty of economically-challenged parents who care about the welfare of their children and the quality of education and there are those who do not. The challenge is how to reach the latter group.

The effect of poverty and malnutrition on the developing brain is staggering...

I live in an area in which astonishing wealth is right up close with middle class and horrifying poverty. Poverty in which you see parents who have their priorities all wrong; children who are homeless or are surrounded by violence every day, and not having a book in the house is the least of their stresses.

America's Staggering Education Gap
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/americas_staggering_education_gap_partner/

More food for thought.

Yes.

Exactly. And for children in those kinds of circumstances, I'm just stunned when administrators/policy-makers don't see this as an economic problem-- but view it as "bad parenting" alone... and chastise parents for not "being more invested in their children's educations."

The argument always seems to be-- well, then those parents should move/find better housing/look for a better job/...

You know-- make better choices.

I just think-- "WOW. Somebody doesn't get it."

Is it really such a wrong set of priorities to be concerned about purchasing antibiotics or keeping the electricity turned on rather than reading at bedtime every night? And if you don't happen to have an education sufficient to earn more than minimum wage, how exactly DO you go about building a nest egg for first/last/deposits on a nicer place to live? How do you take time off from work to go on job interviews if you can't afford to even stay home when you are sick?

Being truly poor is, I have decided, almost beyond comprehension for anyone who has never had to make gut-wrenching choices about WHICH basic needs to fulfill.

To even talk about education to that group of people is kind of hysterical. Not because they are stupid or don't care-- but because it's like trying to describe the ocean to a prairie dog.

If you provide a suite of social services so that the children of unwed, uneducated single mothers are well taken care of, this may send a message to young women and men to have children that they themselves are not willing or able to care for.

Where would the money come from to expand all these programs nationwide? Many people are willing to work hard to provide for their our children but not to subsidize the irresponsibility of others. The illegitimacy rate in the U.S. is about 40%, and it should be lower. Birth rates have fallen in this recession, especially for people in their early 20s, whose job prospects are worse than those of the same cohort in 2007. People decide to have children or not based based in part on economic viability. That viability should be based on their earnings, not the taxpayer's.

You're paying for it anyway. Do you want to pay for schools or prisons?
sappy & oversimplified, but still

Oh, I don't know. Maybe the prison industrial complex? the money spent on appropriate education and social programs, (oh, and perhaps comprehensive sex education and access to birth control) would be less than the cost to society of not investing in ALL children.

I agree that using the library with small children is a risk than many people really can't afford, and I think it's reasonable to suggest that people who are financially struggling probably stop going to the library as frequently after the first time they lose a DVD or book.

There is no way I would be able to check out the 20-30 books we check out at a time and keeping them in a spot my child has easy access to all day long if replacing them would be impossible for us. So far we've only lost one book, which was easy to replace used in good condition on amazon ($6) but for another family that one $6 book might have kept them out of the library for a long time.

I know that this is a common defense of why social program spending is "encouraging" this problem. I'm not disagreeing on philosophical terms, just to state that up front. I think that it has been addressed with research, however--

what that research shows is that if you make family planning methods free/affordable to poor WOMEN, then birth rates plummet in that cohort. More reliable birth control methods which the WOMAN controls... are expensive.

My apologies for not digging out the original article--

live-science review of research study on providing free contraception



That is a truly astonishing result. HUGE difference.

Hormonal methods are the most reliable-- but they are simply out of (financial) reach of many poor women.

But that is FAR cheaper than welfare for a series of accidental children, medicaid for the mom and those kids, and later, prison for some of them.

That sounds pretty stark, but it's also realistic.

So true.

Indeed. That's why I always find it so shockingly dumbfounding that the same people who so readily cast blame on people for circumstances they're totally unequipped to understand are the same people who are often arguing that government should be run as a business.

YES! Run it as a business, please! History has demonstrated that humans are a resource which, if you invest properly, pay off big!

The cost to incarcerate one prisoner in CA, as of 2008-2009, was $47k. That was roughly the median household income at the time. Factor in government subsistence now required by any dependents left behind, and the total cost to society goes even higher.

http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/6_cj_inmatecost.aspx?catid=3

Slippery slope fallacy.

It's usually not just one book. My friend's kid lost her privledges because she lost five books. That's $30 even at the thrifty rate. And she's a reader. The kid reads books. But, for now she has lost her access to the library. What I'm describing is the grey area in between.
Here, people work. They are employed (oilfield). They are not well educated and many have large families starting as teenagers. Everybody has food in their belly and there's no homeless children. Two years ago less than half of the kids passed the math standards test for the year. They raised it to over 90% by afterschool tutoring at the school. That's probably waaay TMI, but these articles always leave it out that not everybody is going to college, or even thinks much of it. If the system is getting easier to "game" maybe it's getting better at sorting the people who want an education from those who don't. And from what everybody says there's not enough seats in the good schools for people who want theid kids to have a good education. Why not try to make the schools fit the peoples needs in stead of trying to make the people fit one idea of "a good education".
If a kid lives in the ghetto you need to make his school a safe haven and teach basic literacy. If a kid lives in the oilfield you need to teach him votech in case he doesn't finish school he has something to fall back on. If too many people are hyperfocused on gaming the system it's because you need to build more good schools in those neighborhoods.

You get no argument from me that, in an ideal world, life would be incentive compatible. I would be considered rather Draconian by many with respect to my views on enabling adults' dependent behaviour. But when the recipient is a child external to the decision-making process, I see no benefit to the taxpayer of having a child go hungry, be exposed to violence, or become unemployable. That child is an innocent bystander to a flawed decision making process. Why should his lot in life be cast in stone because of his parents' failures? Social security, disability, and prison are economically more costly than ECE for at-risk children.

I'm not aware of comparable US figures, but from a consulting engagement with Correctional Service Canada, I know annual costs of federal incarceration run over $105k for men, and upwards of $120k for females. I would rather see lower crime rates, greater labour force participation, and tax remittances by successful program graduates. That makes good economic and ethical sense when viewed as a lifecycle decision.

Sadly, politicians are elected on a much shorter term, and their success is determined by pandering to myopic interests on all ends of the political spectrum.

The reason that I think that the study I mentioned above is so important here isn't just the way that it addresses birth rates in particular.

I think (personally) that it can also be extended to suggest that if you give people without financial means the TOOLS to do so, they don't "make bad choices." Not when they have real options to make better ones. The thing is that "enroll in this program" doesn't present a real choice to a parent who NEEDS to work those hours.

If you're talking about taxes and social services you're talking about much more than just the school system.

Nodding my head yes in agreement with you.

I've seen more than my share of kids who had no real business in college.... and grew up with a fair number who went to work in the mills or the woods rather than finish high school.

Where are the options for THOSE kids?

Should we say that they "don't care about education?" I think that wrongly labels them as clods when the reality is that they may just not care about THAT KIND of education.


Frustrating.

Children don't just exist in a vacuum until they show up at school.

That's the real meaning that I think we can all agree upon.

What to DO about it remains elusive, and I think we're just discussing why that is.

Also-- what DOES that mean in terms of ignoring gifted children's needs?

I don't see how anything less than a fully integrated policy suite achieves any of the desired goals of a well functioning education system.

I just brought it up because threads are really never locked here, but when they are it's because the conversation got too broad beyond the topic of gifted needsz

although I guess thinking about the state of the world's problems feels like a gifted responsibility.

yes. a well functioning education system would definately meet all the gifted kids needs better. i vote yes!

I just find it hysterical that we daily read here about the struggles that ivy-league graduate, PG parents, who have food security and live in safe neighborhoods and can take time from work to meet with schools have getting their gifted kids an appropriate education but if parents with a high school degree living in poverty struggle some believe it is because they have inferior values and are lazy.

edited for typos

In all seriousness, that IS why I brought it up in the first place. It is very troubling to me that there is just more and more and more evidence supporting the idea that the school system itself is meeting NOBODY's needs very well, and that those of higher SES just have the means to do something about it for their own children.

But that is leaving an awful lot of real talent behind, I fear.

I don't think anyone made that claim.

+1

I've repeated it before, I think it was Grinnity who said it here, the only practical answer is to time block the classes in a school, MAP test the kids periodically, and place the kids in the right class for each subject by ability and achievement, not by grade or age. This is for the struggling students too. What kind of education are they getting being shuffled along, tutored after school, and still sitting through a poor-fitting classroom. Meet them where they're at. It sounds so simple on paper. I'll bet that helps the drop-out rate too. Even if it doesn't then you met their real educational needs while they were there. And this could be done just in the school system without having to convince the rest of the government or people anything.

For logistics the time blocking only works when you don't have specialists as teachers.

+1 deacongirl, although this board tends to skew toward the extremes (PG, 2E) who are an especially poor fit for the system.

I grew up a child of privilege in a small rural town close to a large industrial complex where the school population ran the SES gamut. The biggest difference between me and other kids was not exactly the values but the assumptions. Not graduating from high school was unthinkable. College and a masters or a doctorate were a given.

When a similarly situated friend got the career assessment in middle school and was told she had a future as a hairdresser, her parents laughed it off. When the daughter of blue collar parents was told the same thing her parents were ready to go with the suggestion, despite the fact that her grades were in the top decile. Arguing with figures of authority at school was unthinkable.

Absolutely!

And in this system the truly bright kids growing up in the least privileged families will realize that the educational game is stacked against them, and opt out.

Since our school district and state has decided to label my kids as English Language Learners, I have recently amused myself by attending parent meetings targeting those families. The assumptions by school/district personnel re. parents and children are unbelievable. And the parents who care enough to come to those meetings (and that's most of them!) just swallow it up. And sob while thanking the people who are making sure in early elementary school that their kids will get tracked to nowhere by high school.

I was listening to a conversation between parents and staff about rising high-schoolers who were refusing to go to the non-neighborhood high school with the special programs for ELLs. Their parents were terrified. The staff was telling them they had to do what was best for their kids. And I was thinking that those teens who had already spent 8 years into remedial classes, never catching up with their peers, were actually pretty smart to realize that maybe more of the same wasn't going to be much help.

California governor Jerry Brown wants to increase funding for ELL students and the schools that serve large numbers of them, which will increase the incentive to classify students as ELL.

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolaler...tion-plan-as-civil-rights-issue-too.html

That sounds like the kind of thing I could support, but...

Wouldn't such a system exacerbate the differences between the kids who get enrichment at home and those that don't?

What happens if the statistics of achievement don't change in a way that is popular politically?

I really don't think of it as "political" in any way that most people would like to see an educational system that does GOOD things for everyone that it serves.

It doesn't seem like the current system does truly good things for the majority of participants, quite frankly.

IF there is a genetic basis for SES, then that gap is fine. But there is pretty compelling evidence that suggests that is at least mostly untrue.

What that means, then, is that some students are getting WAY FEWER of their needs met-- educationally and otherwise-- than the cohort fortunate enough to have parents who are educated and economically empowered to do something better for their children.

Presumably we here are about 90% in that latter group, in one way or another.

I'm not sure that improving the educational system will do it, because it does nothing about the very real fact that when you look at the lowest quartile of the SES, those people as a group have children who are less concerned about educational needs because they are a lower priority than other needs which are ALSO going unmet.

In other words, I see a study like this one and I'm left thinking....
DUH. Is this really news??

School is a safe harbor for kids in that lowest decile-- it's predictable, it's cool in the heat, and warm in the cold, there is food there every day, someone to take care of some medical and hygeine needs, etc, and your only real responsibilities are to follow the rules (which are the same EVERY DAY!) and do what you're told.

Believe me, that sounds like Nirvana for some children. There are plenty of kids who would love to LIVE at school if they only could. Frankly, they'd be better off for it, too.

Studies like this one that show what happens to children of privilege versus children of grinding poverty over their "non-school" time... is unbelievably sad to me. But not surprising in the least.

I don't think there is any way they can meaningfully increase the number of students labeled as ELL (not without a backlash from the privileged minority). Right now in CA 95% of entering K students who indicate they have been exposed to a language other than English at home get the label. The 5% left won't make much of a difference.

What they can do is make reclassification an even more convoluted process. Right now kids only have to prove they are performing above average in language arts to reclassify. Maybe ask that they perform in the top quartile?

There is a certain segment of the population that will never be convinced that a school is doing good things for everyone if any kind of achievement gap can be measured. It seems to me that schools have been implementing policies specifically designed to lessen or eliminate achievement gaps, but they persist. If our schools met every kid at their level (and no policies were enacted to address what kids are dealing with outside of school), I think some of the gaps people concern themselves with would grow larger than they are today (a natural reaction to eliminating programs designed specifically at reducing the gaps).

As someone who grew up in a broken home, and received no advocacy regarding a public school education that never challenged me mathematically, I see the appeal of meritocratic education. As a parent with a family income over $165,000, I will be doing everything I can to make sure my kids have their educational needs met, in and out of school. I will do my best to set them up for success, and I am not interested in funding an equally enriching childhood for every one of their peers. Contradictory and hypocritical... maybe. I can kind of see things from both sides.

Yeah, I kind of can, too.

I'm certainly not going to DEPRIVE my daughter of enrichment as a means of 'narrowing the gap,' but at the same time, I know darned good and well that my lifetime earning potential was stunted significantly by the limitations imposed by my SES in childhood.

It bothers me also that some of those kids who won't get the chance to become neurologists or physicists or college professors would have been a lot BETTER at those things than the slightly less able, but ideally advantaged kids who will grab those openings instead.

We don't have so much talent that we ought to be throwing it away.

The thing is that achievement gaps will always exist, regardless of the field of endeavor. The reasons for the gaps are complex. Home environment, nutritional status, health status, internal drive, and innate ability all affect a student's relative level of achievement.

What bothers me about many educators is the belief that they can make achievement gaps disappear. This is wishful thinking. Unless everyone gets the same score on every homework assignment, quiz, and exam, there will always be achievement gaps. And wishful thinking damages kids at the higher end who get gypped out of appropriate instruction because of being "already proficient."

Personally, I think that an important idea has been missing from this discussion. We need to do a better job of ensuring that low SES people have access to safe housing, food, and healthcare. No, this will not solve all of our problems, but it sure would help. There is also the problem of shipping skilled blue collar jobs overseas. This trend puts a lot of people in a difficult position and is probably an important factor driving our current everyone-must-go-to-college mania.

Some years ago, Irish universities abolished fees (tuition). The thinking was that costs were keeping low-income students out of college. Enrollment statistics didn't change very much:


Keep in mind that Ireland has a national curriculum and school funding is much fairer than it is in the US. I knew lots of wealthy families there who sent their kids to state schools, because the schools are pretty good.

I know that it can be very difficult for a teenager from a depressed neighborhood to attend university, in part because some of the people around this person will make accusations about "thinking you're better than the rest of us" and suchlike. But I also know that not everyone faces this problem.

I suppose what I'm saying here is that there are many cases where people really aren't best-served by going to college, yet may have limited options otherwise in the absence of manufacturing jobs and skills blue collar jobs that pay a living wage.

So again, it's a complex problem and we won't fix it by looking at single things or even a few things (e.g. classroom size, teacher pay, high stakes tests).

I appreciate the info. about Ireland. Interesting. It is certainly a complex problem. I know you didn't mention race, and you said that not everyone of low SES faces the problem of being accused of thinking they are "better than", but I thought this article shed some light on aspects of that idea.

The Acting White Myth Show Me the Numbers: Why the academic achievement gap is not rooted in black anti-intellectualism.

Edited to add: my German husband and his family would strongly agree with you about the college mentality here. We have relatives and friends who thrived under the apprentice system (not that it is without flaws) there and had meaningful work and a good quality of life. I admit it is difficult to hear though that my (I would bet $) gifted nephew is already asking his parents to let him take the lower track for middle school so he can still hang out with his frieds. He is 9. This is a kid who excels at math who is getting in trouble for finishing his work early and then finding ways to amuse himself. Anyway, we have this discussion frequently in my house.

Exactly-- and we do seem, as a society, to be VERY focused on looking at those things. Is it because they yield numbers?

Is that really it? That we're looking under the streetlamp merely because we can 'see' there? (Reference to the adage of losing your keys on a dark street and only looking under the streetlight at one end.)

Equality of outcomes is never going to happen, because people are different. But we can only be a meritocratic society when everyone has an equality of opportunity. And that's where we, as a society, are failing. This whole conversation has been about the opportunities gap.

If every child, regardless of SES, had access to adequate nutrition, healthcare, freedom from violence, and a high-quality education, then the gaps we can measure among SES strata would decrease significantly, because so many other studies have shown that environmental factors matter more than genes when it comes to educational attainment.

Of course, we have to first decide we want to be a meritocratic society. I find DAD22's statement here to be most instructive:


I see nothing contradictory or hypocritical in this view. Meritocracy is good when it benefits the underprivileged individual, but when advantages have been secured, and can be passed down to future generations, meritocracy is a threat. These advantages must be protected from the masses, who might also rise up to challenge the status quo based on their merits. The field of competitors must be thinned. This has been the reaction of the privileged classes throughout history.

You were reading my mind re: separating equality of opportunity and outcome. I'll let Goethe speak for the rest of my point:

“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

Wow. Great quote. (except...I better shape up my parenting!)

It's a great life philosophy.

I bet it works equally well on spouses!

You'll have to ask my husband...I'm the defunct one!

HA. Oh, well, sure... it's a nice idea. But I've been trying this for over two decades at this point, and I'm not seeing much change. DH says he is equally frustrated, by the way. He says I have such wasted potential, too... if only I could learn to do things HIS way.



LOL.

I think in a lot of cases attitudes toward learning are more about educational background than money. I know plenty of people who are relatively financially disadvantaged but not worried about their next meal or the basics, still very uninvolved in their children's education. You probably won't check out a book about dinosaurs if it means telling your child you don't know how to pronounce the names. If you didn't go to college, your science and history background in certain areas might be inaccurate. You can't pass on knowledge you don't have and as long as schools are trying to determine in advance what kids are and aren't capable of and limiting kids or having lower expectations based on assumptions shaped by home environment, the kids are screwed.

At the end of the day maybe it doesn't matter why some kids are ahead and other are behind at any given point in time because differences are probably more often about environment than ability. I think the only assumption should be that in the absence of a learning disability all kids should be able to learn whatever material is logically next in line after their current achievement level.

I disagree. Ability plays a huge role in what people can accomplish. Yes, environment is important, too, but it isn't the critical factor that ability is. All the art lessons and encouragement in the world won't turn me into a professional artist. I simply don't have the ability.

Perhaps I misunderstood you, but it's kind of frustrating when people dismiss the importance of talent as though achievement is an either/or proposition. It's complicated.

Why are any of us here, if not for the cognitive talent our children have?

Sure, at the Ph.D. level talent matters but when we are talking about grade school kids learning grade school level math, I really think most kids are have "talent". When we talk about learning to read, most kids have "talent". Most kids have the talent necessary to learn basic science concepts. Even if a kid needs extra help she still has the ability to learn. Many kids aren't getting the basics and then grow up to be adults who can't help their children learn the basics, and I think part of the problem is people judging small kids as incapable or less capable based on nothing more than the fact that they are starting out behind.

*I don't think that kids are are equal in terms of speed at which they learn if raised in the same environment, I'm saying that 1.) kids aren't raised in the same environments so it's not reasonable to assume the child who is behind is a slower learner and even if they are a slower learning 2.) we shouldn't try to limit kids' potentials based on speed at which they learn. We have long life spans.

Ability plays a huge role in what people can accomplish.

This. Yes.

And this is, ultimately, why such achievement gaps (which are evidently the result of environmental factors and NOT actual ability) really matter.

Because if we're optimizing opportunities for only SOME people, that means that we are not getting the same proportion of people who are capable of truly remarkable, great things. We're leaving some of those people behind.

It worries me that we're seeming to prefer the appearance of the thing rather than the authentic thing here, too-- which is where we get when we focus on all of this testing, testing, testing. We are selecting for people who are naturally, or have been endlessly groomed for, being good at tests. Not sure that we're selecting for truly great things...

I love Aquinas' quote. So true. So much of potential needs to be noticed, named and called forth. Yes, there are those who just succeed... but many more who wouldn't.

I think I feel strongly about this general issue for just this reason. Navigating the school system this year for DS's kindergarten year has been exhausting. It took until March before anyone really noticed what I had been trying to point out in helpful, non-aggressive ways. It takes time and energy... which has heightened my awareness of what this must be like for all sorts of parents whose kids need special programs/plans/accommodations.

I have the education, time and confidence to persist. (Like when the one teacher pointed out that if he could read fluently upside down and in a mirror that it had nothing to do with him being an unusual learner and more to do with future vision problems he would likely develop. Huh?) I have the luxury of being in a position to homeschool, if need be. I suppose what I most desire as I advocate is for systems to be changed, so that it is more about paving the way for any child and not just my child. That the schools are more aware of the outliers on DS' end of the curve, while being more responsive for the unanticipated needs of all kids, wherever they are on the curve, whatever the capacity of their families to serve as advocates or even good parents... gifted or not, all remarkable in their own way, all deserving of being noticed and well-nurtured.

Amen!

I think a large fraction of the population is not smart enough to master the curriculum of an academic high school. In math that would mean getting through Algebra 2.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra-necessary.html
Is Algebra Necessary?
By ANDREW HACKER
New York Times
July 28, 2012


A substantial fraction of the population cannot use arithmetic to solve simple problems and does not meet the standard one would expect of a junior high school graduate.

Charles Murray's book "Real Education" (p36, can be read on Google books) mentions the results for the following 8th grade NAEP question.

Only 36.5% of 8th-graders got the correct answer, D. Bright people tend to associate with other bright people (and nowadays, marry them), and I think some have an unrealistic idea of what an IQ of 85 or 100 means.

Just because a large number of students don't get the answer right on questions like this doesn't mean they can't learn to do so. Are their answers wrong because they really aren't capable of learning the material, because teachers aren't doing a good enough job teaching, do they just need more time, do their brains need to be a little more developed than they are at age 13?

I feel much the same. Dabrowski's OEs manifest themselves in me as an innate drive to advocate, particularly for those who cannot.

A few pages back, Dude referenced the privilege attendant to high earners who can opt to exist on a single income. That's the path our family takes, and I don't for a second believe that my son isn't tremendously advantaged to have my full attention for upwards of 12 hours a day.

In my free time, I'm pursuing research into founding a local ECE center for children exhibiting early giftedness, because I don't see public policy adequately addressing these issues anytime soon. I think there's scope for a profitable model of price differentiation on abilities and means, even for ECE, and I sincerely hope that isn't just a pipe dream.

[The Oxford dictionary defines talent as natural aptitude or skill.]

Honestly? I think it's unfair to assume talent where it doesn't exist. A student who consistently struggles with a particular subject doesn't have natural aptitude for it. I have no talent for drawing. I can't do it, and I get annoyed when people tell me that Method X will work and I just have to try!! It's okay. I have other capabilities, just like everyone else.

IMO, it's especially unfair to a child with low math ability to tell him that he's got "talent" for math when he clearly doesn't. This approach leads students into deep debt while they spend time (unsuccessfully) in college majors that they don't have aptitude for. I also think this idea lets people find other explanations for what are basically uncomfortable ideas that have a lot of data to back them up. For example, a recent study in Stanford found physical differences in the brains of children with different abilities at learning math.

Also, I think that it's pretty easy to forget how hard long division can be for many or most nine-year-olds. And it's not just a question of learning it more slowly. There is also the unfortunate fact that some people forget stuff more quickly than others.

IMO, the idea that everyone can have "talent" at math makes things worse, both for slower learners (who get pushed too hard) and faster learners (who are forced to work below their ability levels).

Yes, I agree that the schools often fall short and that home environments are suboptimal in many cases. ETA: And yes, I agree that most children can learn elementary school-level math. But these facts are all facets of a complex problem, and there's no sole or even simple explanation.

I don't see how telling a child he or she is capable of doing grade school level math is setting him up for future failure in college. I think we are talking about different things. I'd like to know exactly what percentage of children are completely incapable of learning long division with one-on-one help. Who cares if someone learns more slowly and takes longer to master long division when that person could live to be 100 years old? It would be great if slow learners and fast learners could work at their own speeds and everyone could maximize her own potential.

Really, as long as the rich think that improving the quality of education for the poor conflicts with their own personal interests or their interests of their children, nothing will ever be done.

Perhaps you misread my message? I didn't say that most kids can't learn long division (I said that I think that most can). I said that telling people they have talent for something when they don't is a bad idea.


I don't think anyone here has taken that position. I also doubt that wealthy people in this country can be characterized that way as a group. That's not really a fair statement.

But in answer to your question about who cares if people learn at different rates: federal law (NCLB) is very interested in that question and requires that public school children learn at the same rate. I agree with you that this is a bad idea.

Has anybody been able to access the actual paper? The press release Bostonian linked to a while back had the most inflammatory (and unsupported from the content) title I had ever seen, and the abstract made me want to know a lot more about their methodology and results.

I will note that they say the ability of children to benefit from 1:1 tutoring for automaticity in arithmetic tasks (the study wasn't about "learning math") was not correlated to either IQ or working memory.

And there are often a chicken and egg issues with studies of brain differences...

I'll try to get it tomorrow.

I have long thought that talent (especially the cognitive variety) involves more than IQ. Factors like creativity, thoughtfulness (desire to dig deep and look at a problem in many ways), ability to focus, ability to question widely accepted ideas, stubbornness, and independence are all important to varying degrees, depending on what you're trying to do. Obviously, IQ is important, but it's not everything. If it was, we wouldn't have so many unsolved problems in theoretical physics (to give one example).

Unfortunately, as has been argued here before, U.S. society these days tends to focus on single factors as simple solutions or answers.

what's that ?

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!

The skills taught in elementary school, such as reading and arithmetic, are intrinsically important. Many subjects and skills taught in later grades and in college are rarely used, and employers value credentials such as the high school diploma or bachelor's degree to signal a certain level of intelligence and discipline, not for the specific knowledge acquired. Some pre-professional majors such as engineering or nursing may be exceptions.

Long division of numbers is almost never done in real life -- we use calculators. It is important primarily as preparation to do long division in algebra. Most people don't use algebra on the job or at home, either, and the people who really struggle with long division are especially unlikely to. My general point is that intensive efforts to teach certain parts of the post-elementary curriculum will have limited benefit, because weak students will soon forget what they have been taught, and because the correlation of academic achievement with positive outcomes such as high income is largely due to the correlation of IQ with those outcomes.

I lived a town away from a very bad school in a very poor town and I can think of people who graduated from high school who can't do basic math or write at a 4th grade level. Then they go on to struggle and fail out of community college because it's just too late for them to ever catch up and they can't pass that one algebra class they need to get their Associate's. Do people look at these kids as 10-year-olds and say "They don't need to know this, they aren't going to have a job where they need to understand math or know to spell?" because it really seems like that is what's happening to a lot of people, when maybe the reason they are failing is because they have parents who are out past midnight, not making sure the child is getting her homework done, sleeping enough, or eating anything for dinner that she can't dump out of can. Why bother teaching people for 13 years if you don't care about them or don't think they can learn? We're just wasting everyone's time.

The doi of that paper is 10.1073/pnas.1222154110 if people have access. Abstract:

abstract: (sorry about formatting--no time to fix)

Thanks!

With all due respect, MOST of the STEM fields are mastery-oriented and distinctly dependent upon mastery (80%+, I'd say) in order to learn at higher levels-- particularly in the physical sciences. Basically, the entire first three years of undergraduate education there is about learning what each tinker-toy can do, and then advanced study is about applying your knowledge creatively toward problem-solving and discovery. But you can't ever do that if you can't retain mastery of what amounts to 4-6 years' worth of material for the average, successful chemistry, mathematics, or physics student.

This is, IMO, probably why most efforts aimed at improving education there at the secondary and post-secondary levels are dismal failures. By then we've trained kids that learning isn't operating on a mastery model. Only-- surprise!-- it is.


No, not everyone has the raw cognitive material to be a rocket scientist, economist, or mathematician. But I still think that we're not even giving some people who COULD be remarkable even in that cohort a fair set of opportunities to try in the first place.

I'm not sure what to do about that, but it does seem like a pretty darned important problem for us as a nation/society.

This exactly.

I agree, this is why I am having such a problem with my school district. I have turned into just another pushy parent. There are ~100 kids (~20% of grade) taking honors geometry in 8th grade this year, and I know many of them are only there because they have been in tutoring for years. Very different than my child who takes the math teacher literally and will NOT ask mom & dad for help.

I am not looking forward to H.S. for him because the pressure to spend all your waking hours studying to survive in the honors classes is intense. Yet, if my son isn't in classes that challenging him he does even worse. We already went through this in the pullout 6th grade class.

I have the PNAS paper. PM me with an email address if you want it.

bluemagic, what we've found is that those "Super-HARD" and "ALL of my kid's waking hours" classes... um...

well, those benchmarks simply don't apply to HG+ kids. Seriously.

My DD is currently taking: Honors US history, Honors American Govt, German, AP Physics, some SAT-prep class that the school wanted her to take, a study-abroad elective (that has work associated with the pre-travel and post-travel parts of the term) and AP Lit. She's done in about 3 hours a day. Half of that time is on just AP Lit and AP physics, but clearly that isn't saying much.

We just don't mention that to anyone who doesn't already have a VERY good notion of how little challenge the curriculum actually presents for her.

Just figured I'd interject that here, since what MOST 'high achiever' type kids (including those who have squeaked into "GT" programs) require to earn top grades is WAY different than what HG+ people do.

DD views it as a great entertaining game to see how much free time she can generate for herself. We let her, as long as her grades are solid A's. Around this schedule, she has 20+ hours a week to just 'be a kid' and another 20 for various extracurriculars, leadership, community service, etc.

If you aren't sleeping through calculus, you aren't doing it right.

LOL. Somehow I doubt that most math instructors see it in quite those exact terms.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000263
Intelligence
Volume 41, Issue 4, July–August 2013, Pages 203–211
Investigating America's elite: Cognitive ability, education, and sex differences
Jonathan Wai
Duke University, Talent Identification Program, 1121 West Main Street, Durham, NC 27701, United States

Highlights
•Whether America’s elite are drawn from the cognitive elite was investigated.
•CEOs, federal judges, billionaires, Senators, and House members were examined.
•Democrats had a higher education and ability than Republicans in Senate and House.
•Females were underrepresented among all groups, but to varying degrees.
•America’s elite are largely drawn from the intellectually gifted.

Abstract
Are the American elite drawn from the cognitive elite? To address this, five groups of America's elite (total N = 2254) were examined: Fortune 500 CEOs, federal judges, billionaires, Senators, and members of the House of Representatives. Within each of these groups, nearly all had attended college with the majority having attended either a highly selective undergraduate institution or graduate school of some kind. High average test scores required for admission to these institutions indicated those who rise to or are selected for these positions are highly filtered for ability. Ability and education level differences were found across various sectors in which the billionaires earned their wealth (e.g., technology vs. fashion and retail); even within billionaires and CEOs wealth was found to be connected to ability and education. Within the Senate and House, Democrats had a higher level of ability and education than Republicans. Females were underrepresented among all groups, but to a lesser degree among federal judges and Democrats and to a larger degree among Republicans and CEOs. America's elite are largely drawn from the intellectually gifted, with many in the top 1% of ability.

Keywords
Cognitive ability; Education; Wealth; Sex differences; Political party

*****************************

Discussed by Steve Hsu at the Information Processing blog:

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-cognitive-ability-of-us-elites.html


This sheds light on the "NYT opinion: No (rich) child left behind" thread. The elites will of course try to boost the careers of their children, but some of the success of their children will result from the high IQ's they inherited from their parents.

***********************************

Related article by Wai, the author of the paper cited:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201206/brainiacs-and-billionaires
Of Brainiacs and Billionaires
Psychology Today
By Jonathan Wai, published on July 03, 2012
We're obsessed with America's high earners. But in the age of big data, the biggest brains will increasingly set the country's course and become top earners in the process. Meet the other 1 Percent.

Thank goodness for hedge fund managers. Improving the world for all.

I'm sorry, but I really weary of equating wealth and earning power with success and value to the world.

"Federal judge" was on the list of things I never wanted to do.

In fact, "clerking for a federal judge" was on the list of things I never wanted to do.

My wife keeps pushing for me to be an ALJ, which is vaguely federal judgish.

That would give me a six figure salary, government benefits, and I would get to be a union member.

I agree completely. It's a travesty I recognized while receiving my own public school education.

Well, my calculus teacher was kind enough to let me opt out of the month spent reviewing prior to the AP exam.

Megan McArdle espouses my views at the Daily Beast:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-pulling-away-from-the-middle-class.html
In Educational Achievement, the Rich are Pulling Away From the Middle Class
Apr 29, 2013 12:17 PM EDT
Is education turning into a caste system?

We know from the Flynn effect that average performance on IQ tests is increasing over time. It seems to me that theories like that presented here would lead to increasing variance as well, which should also be noted when re-norming the tests, right?

I suppose that there are factors that would lead to a decreasing variance, such as nutritional and medical advancements bringing up the lower tail. It just doesn't seem possible that the shape of the curve remains unchanged if IQ is significantly hereditary, and mating practices change.

"Our children come first" could mean either one. I don't who decides which one it means, the one who says it or the one who heard it. You're only responsible for what you meant to say, anyway. Does it mean, "our children are more important than your children" (for whatever reason, iq, ses) or does it mean "our children's welfare and wellbeing comes before anything else in our lives." Not everybody puts their kids first in their lives. Are you at the bar or are you building science kits with your kid? If you're working instead of either it's easy to think someone meant "our kids deserve more than your kid".

ETA: I mean the kind of work where you get off of work early enough to eat dinner with your kids only once every two weeks and the extra money is going to repair the car, yet again, not to SAT prep or high priced NIKEs. -I hope everybody knows that those families are not rare, and struggling harder every year since Clinton. The bad economy is a real thing. I think the existance of those families is why the opinion of this article exists, white guilt, or whatever. There are other issues, just addressing that one point.

As someone who spends a great deal of time reading papers in this field, I really feel the need to say that there is NO hard data that I am aware of to support the claim that the achievement gap between the rich and middle-class is *caused* by rich parents' increasing investment in extracurriculars and tutoring. If you look at the economics papers this op-ed is based on, you'll see that this is so. This is just a theory--a hypothesis--and by the way, the papers also present several other theories. Reardon doesn't talk about the other theories. I'm pretty annoyed that this is getting so much coverage when it's so pie-in-the-sky at this point. We really, really don't have the data to say that little Timmy's weekly judo classes are why he's acing the standardized tests, although I can say that we do know that involvement in the arts and music seems to be helpful academically.

I'm guessing that other people with boots on the ground in education and sociology are probably a little irked about all of this.

Also, I'm going to link this, because I still believe it's really more about this stuff than Kumon:

http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/risley.htm

Thank you UM for being the voice of reason here

See, I still see this as a Venn diagram which is being conflated to represent ONE group.

There are those with very high cognitive ability...

and there are those with "elite" educations.

Yes, there is significant overlap in the two groups. But they are not identical.

C'mon... how smart do you actually have to be to get a 2300+ score on the SAT your fourth or fifth time out, at 18 years old, after four years of daily tutoring for that test?

Apparently smarter than people like these:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57348498/the-perfect-score-cheating-on-the-sat/

I'm guessing that yes, if you look at PERFECT scorers, then yeah, those people are probably all MG+. But the top 2% of scorers? I'm guessing that a fair number of those people are instead in the IQ >120 range, which is a far cry from "the intellectual elite."

There is also the fact that there are many OTHER correlations to be made re: "the elite" as well. Not-so-savory correlations. take a look at how many executives would qualify as having serious personality disorders--



Board, Belinda Jane; Fritzon, Katarina (2005). "Disordered personalities at work". Psychology Crime and Law 11: 17

This startling finding is (apparently) even MORE striking when examining high level executives in finance and politics, many of whom apparently could readily be diagnosed as sociopathic using clinical criteria. (Again, I've seen studies, just no time this morning to dig them out.)

Anyway. I think that conflating the two groups (elite education + success and elite cognitive ability) is merely correlation fallacy on some level.

Yes, OF COURSE one must be more than average levels of bright and motivated to achieve that kind of success (material and status based)-- but "genius"? What are we calling "elite" there? Probably not as helpful as other traits, honestly.

Where are all of the introverts in that model of gifted people running the world? Those introverts sure aren't CEO's. And yet introversion is actually slightly MORE common among HG+ people.

(I'm pulling this from Linda Silverman-- too rushed this mornign to look up the original references, though I know they exist)

But I can also see how that is incompatible with traits which are absolutely essential to the competitive, driving mindset necessary for success as defined upstream in this thread.

Again, the sorting is ABSOLUTELY not a perfect proxy for "elite schools = higher IQ." The assumption is that everyone who COULD go there would, first and foremost, which is untrue. People of high cognitive ability choose all kinds of colleges for all kinds of irrational and rational reasons-- not the least of which is that many introverted HG+ persons do NOT see a life of interpersonally competitive professional interactions as "rewarding" in any way, shape, or form. Secondly, recall that the SAT averages really are only that-- and without a standard deviation associated, are virtually meaningless. What percentage of people at Harvard scored below that average, hmmm? Right. HALF. And maybe a few of them well below it. We simply don't know. It's entirely possible that the population of Generic Prestigious Institute is actually composed of two distinct groups--

a) kinda bright, but economically highly advantaged and therefore paying FULL freight... so lower test scores are entirely acceptable, and

b) VERY VERY bright, but requires a bunch of financial assistance because of low SES of family.

Basically that would be the two extremes. The latter group is going to skew the average higher, and the upper limit, of course, is "perfect" SAT scores, which a good many-- maybe even "most" of them are entirely capable of on a reasonably good outing. Then there are all of those somewhere in between, most of whom skew high on testing-- but as noted before, those with highest SES have the most advantages in securing the kinds of GPA's and test scores that show to absolute BEST effect whatever raw cognitive ability that they actually possess.

So circle back to my initial hypothesis. The SAT just isn't that hard. Nor is high school material. It's just hard for most people. ANYONE with cognitive ability in the 120+ range ought to be able to look more or less identical using those measures, providing that they were highly motivated.

Given that, I'd also argue that that may be the real sorting mechanism at work in elite admissions-- motivation.

It should come as NO surprise that the "elite" are highly motivated people. That they are disproportionately 'driven' types, personality-wise. I can see why it would be nice to believe that those running things are "earning" those positions through their superiority rather than through uneven advantage or selection based on some personality traits and not others, but I think personally that such a conclusion isn't entirely defensible given the evidence at hand.

Ultramarina, I'm aware of those findings but I've never understood - are the experts thinking that the poor tend to talk less because they are so overworked and focused on the next meal or because they just have less to say, don't have as much knowledge to pass on based on their own educational experience, or something else? Is this something people can be taught to do more of or are a lot of the conversations held by the affluent business people about topics that people without a decent education would struggle more with.

I am thinking about all of this as a person who grew up around poverty in an advantaged home and when I see the difference between how my husband, who has no experience with children but is highly educated, talks to our child and to see friends I've known forever talk to their children, I think it could be simply that people who know more pass on more. I think that it's likely that that when you fail kids today in terms of their education it probably gets passed on for generations because of this. I'm really interested in this subject, it seems so important.

I can agree that this is true. To what extent the effect is one versus the other is not at all clear, however.

If it is mostly the former, then that is a problem (societally). Given rising wage disparity, it's a very real concern, however, that such a thing is becoming more and more true... or at least that it is the case that relatively few children of the lower 2/3rds of the SES can seem competitive with the children of the top 1% of it. Not because of innate cognitive differences (which would be fine, if true) but because of a lack of opportunity and measuring methods that are only proxies for high cognitive ability.

That is, if EVERYONE were IQ tested using the same unimpeachable tool-- one which could not be "coached" or "studied for" and which ACTUALLY reflected whatever it is that we can consider truly "high cognitive potential" and not some imperfect proxy of that elusive trait-- THEN we could make these kinds of comparisons and know precisely the contribution of other factors.

But we definitely do not have that situation; not even remotely.

It seems to me that high educational attainment COULD represent some underlying (heritable) trait-- such as curiosity, verbal learning style, etc.

High educational attainment, of course, is also a loose proxy for higher SES, too.

But maybe the underlying mechanism is about language enrichment in the birth-to-four age range. That would explain outliers in both the high and low SES groups (that is, impoverished but highly educated immigrant groups with VERy high achieving children, and the occasional 'Superior Snooty-Highhorse the seventh' legacy kid with high sense of entitlement as a defining characteristic).

That's entirely consistent with the premise in the original editorial I posted.

Another thing that I wonder-- and this is another thing that correlates highly with SES and with language, probably-- is childcare environments.

That is, do children who have parents or other caregivers in very low child-to-adult ratios wind up better off? They do, right? So what kinds of childcare settings are mostly available for people at the lowest end of the SES? Not that kind. They have childcare settings for infants and toddlers that mostly resemble feedlots for human children. Not very enriched in the ways that apparently matter most-- hearing a wide variety of language used by real people around them.


ETA: Oh, and the other thing that occurs to me now that I hit post--

the curve may be obscuring this trend if I'm right because above a certain point in the SES, it is possible for one parent to forgo income in order to parent full-time. In highly educated parent-couples, that is a real zinger, because you're cutting the income of the household effectively by over 1/3, and in some cases by half.

That means that there are households in the middle two quartiles who are there by CHOICE, not by circumstance, and for most purposes, we don't really belong there, but in the upper quartile instead.


Skews things, that. It'd be really interesting to see what emerges when you tease apart HOUSEHOLD income with 'major earner' incomes.

Hmm.

I'm not sure the topics have been shown to matter very muc. BUt yes, people can be taught to do more of it. Here's another NYT editorial about THIS research: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/ Allow me to say that I find the accomapnying illustration rather vomit-inducing. I can't tell if it's supposed to be satirical!



One thing I always find fascinating is the vast gap between what different people know about what you are "supposed" to do with your baby and child. This comes up a lot with my friends, who find it repulsive and abhorrent that my state's public pre-K system teaches colors, letters, counting, etc. "They all know that already! It's drilling and killing! The children should be playing!" Yes, well--they should be playing a lot of the time, but the thing is, while you have been teaching your kids this stuff since they were born and they DO already know it, some kids have not gotten this foundation and need to catch up. I know it may seem impossible, but it really is true. Likewise, some people really do not talk to their babies and toddlers much other than to tell them to stop, put that down, etc. Not because they are bad parents. They may just not have gotten the cultural message that one is supposed to do this. My SIL is from China and was living with my parents when she had her first child--my mother has told me that she did have to tell her to talk to the baby. You also engage with children less and talk to them less when you are depressed, and depression is more common among people who are poor and struggling.



Actually, depending on SES, children may be better off in daycare. Daycare really hasn't been shown to be negative. It seems to be neutral as a whole, with positive effects for children whose home environments aren't great and a few slightly negative socioeotional effects for UMC children with good home environments. On the whole, however, you don't find studies that prove that daycare harms children, at all. Obviously, an abusive daycare is bad.

Wai agrees with you that the SAT should be made harder so that it can better identify the brightest high school students.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstein/201207/the-sat-is-too-easy
The SAT Is Too Easy
Why selective colleges should require the GRE
Psychology Today
July 29, 2012

That's an interesting point.

Regarding the language development topic and the relevance to achievement, I am wary of the fundamental importance. In light of the adoption studies that have been performed, we know to expect the importance of environment to be exaggerated in childhood.

Also, I read through the page that ultramarina linked, and I noticed discussion about low SES families that were highly talkative, and high SES ones that weren't. It made me wonder: did they give the parents IQ tests?

Good question, DAD22. I don't know. I'd like to see the original research.

Right-- and the consequent weighting of enriching, interesting, and unusual extracurriculars that is currently going on vastly favors those at the highest levels of SES. Because those are the students who CAN do things like spend a summer interning (at their own expense) in the Galapagos, or similar things. As opposed to working at a dead-end fast food job over the summer because that's what you need/are able to do based on transportation, costs, and family obligations. Note that I'm not faulting those parents who CAN and DO give their kids such glorious opportunities for doing so. I'm faulting a system that weighs those things as a part of determining which students have the best merit.


This certainly means that the system as it currently stands isn't as meritocratic as it probably should be, which is why I'm a bit suspicious of conclusions based upon who winds up in highly selective colleges.

The kids least likely to wind up there are in the VERY lowest levels of the SES, but also those who are above the poverty line, but not by much. The reason is that for the one group, they simply can't imagine the ocean because they've never known anyone who has seen it, but in the second group, they know it's there, but they also know that $$ will never allow them to attend, and things like Questbridge also don't exist for those kids because their family incomes are just slightly too high.

It's a weird patchwork of factors that favors a low SES "sweet spot" for some lucky (very) high ability kids.

But here is why colleges love the SAT. It isn't that it measures cognitive ability, for which it is generally not that great an indicator in the late-high-school cohort.

It's because it predicts first year RETENTION so well.

Now, retention is a big issue because colleges do NOT want high attrition rates. They have a vested interest in graduating each and every student that they admit.

That's not the same thing as selecting for the "best" students. Not at all.

Because some of the "best" students come with baggage that prevents them from succeeding in collegiate settings. That baggage could be disability, could be socioeconomic, could be (and often is) about lack of family supports. Colleges don't really care what the reasons are-- they just want to be able to sort out which kids are going to be back for years 2-4 (5, 6).

The SAT is a pretty superb tool for doing just that. Those who make great scores may not be the "very brightest" but those scores do indicate that they are either possessed of many OTHER advantages that lead to college success (family supports, etc) or they are incredibly bright and incredibly determined.

From a college's perspective, those two groups are completely equivalent-- at the undergraduate level, I mean. Both are quite low-risk.

Well, yeah.

Because if you have a high SAT score, you don't have to attend class the first year to pass all of the examinations.

Of course you're going to stay in college until year 2 at least.

Making the SAT to IQ leap has to be flawed by the very intent and design of the SAT test. The SAT is designed to predict college performance. Questions, difficulty, etc. are selected to optimize that correlation.

Who most succeeds their freshman year?
I would suggest: The students who come from a culture of education. Students who learned how to study,how to double-check their answers, ones who aren't worried about how they are paying for school, etc. Those who are driven, etc. SAT should be selecting for high drive students with good work habits. It is another reason that some segment of the gifted population (and the higher you go the worse it can be) don't max out, they don't have the drive or past experience to work their hardest.

ROFL. I'd (once I stop laughing so hard) also respectfully suggest that (as Zen Scanner has also stated above) that there is a second group which is simply determined and hard-working and all that.

But sure. BTW, college mathematics courses should NEVER be offered at 8 am. Just noting that. No reason.

Yea, I seemed to both in timing and content overlapped what I was writing with what HK was saying.

Btw, I didn't return my second year to my elite university, not for grades, but for socio-economic reasons. And not that we were working poor, but with no college anywhere with my direct ancestors there was no planning for college costs. Maybe the SAT could've predicted that as the three math problems I missed would've been caught if I had checked my work.

That I spent more time with Titan, Talisman, Bridge, etc. than I did studying or attending class had nothing to do with the outcome. I do regret that I didn't learn more of the bidding conventions of bridge.

From the Board Rules,

"Before posting, use the Search function. It is likely that your question or something similar to your question has been asked before. The Search function will allow you to see whether your question has already been addressed."

I would hazard to say that the topic of correlation between IQ/IQ proxies and economic status has been discussed exhaustively of late. Can we please put this recurring theme to rest?

Cribbage. LOTS of coffee-- I had a 32 ounce coffee mug that glowed in the dark. Seriously. A refill was .25c, and that was often "lunch" at school.

And chain-smoking while waiting for the bus. That's what I remember most about my first two years in college. Well, and worrying about money.

I didn't notice a question, though.

Maybe I missed it?

I'd hazard a guess that it's just an interesting topic that relates to other GT topics and because of the undercurrent of political ideology under policy-making surrounding the issues, there is a fear that Mark might shut down any of the threads without warning...

ergo more threads increases the survival odds for the conversation(s).

It's the same strategy that rodents and cockroaches use to ensure survival, so I don't know that it makes us especially clever, mind...



{yes, tongue firmly in cheek here}

The money issue is why I didn't go to an Ivy League school.

I mean, my choice was between "make a profit from scholarships in an area in which I had no interest, but could use the money for computer games and pizza" versus "take out $25,000" in loans.

Eventually, I figured out that if I slept too long, I would remain tired and go to bed early.

That was pretty odd and I never did figure out why I get too tired if I have too much sleep.

This thread will now unofficially serve as the lounge for the other thread. Feel free to kick off your sandals, put your feet up, and share personal anecdotal GT research relating to walking seven miles uphill both ways to college.

The money issue is why I practically had to. (Many of the Ivy's practice need-blind admissions, and give poor students enough grant money to make attendance possible.)

I was interested in the statistic that 75% of HG were introverted. And since this study looked at professions that attracted the extroverted, what was it showing? That highly intelligent, extroverted people climb the ladder of their choosing?

Just an aside, on the introverted, brilliant: a couple -- he the head, she heads one team under him -- parents from DD's class, have success curing childhood leukemia. And they are very nice people. None of those CEO personality disorders. It was in the NY Times a few weeks ago. Contribution to the world from the HG introverted.

I remember lecturing intermediate microeconomics and teaching the entire year's class in one hour. I made a 4-page handout on how to derive every equation in the course.

Funny, the prof noticed attendance was at a record low that year, but the grades were the highest they'd ever been. Must have been the GT section...

Here's another gem.

If you save enough money to actually enable you to retire (which I currently estimate to require saving approximately 35% of gross income every year), you will not receive any assistance from the Ivy League schools because you will be considered to have too many assets.

This is because future financial returns/interest rates have been driven into the gutter.

Buy a car to dilute your perceived assets and get Harvard MBA financing. (See book, "Ahead of the Curve")

I don't want to own a garage full of Lambroghinis.

Thanks, Wren! I've known many introverted scientists who also fit this model. They are definitely not commonly associated with the particular types of success noted in the OP, but the ones I've known all seem to be pretty passionate about what they do, and many of them don't regret not owning Lamborghinis any more than Jon seems to. In all seriousness, the world is probably a MUCH better place for the HG introverts in it.

Jon, this is why our plan involves spending it all on imported mineral water and cheeses (we aren't much for drinking), hoarding related to our many hobbies (since loose women also don't interest us), and musical instruments and lessons for ourselves.



That way there IS no "asset pool" to draw from. Ta Da!

I suppose that Italian sports cars or the purchase of a run-down historic home would also accomplish the same goals. But we don't really have the necessary interest, I fear. If only there were something more than me not working that were feasible regarding our unfortunately high household income... {sigh}

Oh, and about retirement. Well, I've talked about that plan elsewhere.

I'll just have to swear you all to secrecy when the FBI most-wanted posters start cropping up with monkeys on them.

Hmm, given the heavy overlap between introversion and highly gifted, and that there is a strong correlation between being introverted and being intrinsically motivated, and that scores (SAT, income, car brand, etc.) and grades are extrinsic motivations, I see a lot of interesting questions to research.

I agree. And plenty of them are not making "handsome six-figure salaries," or whatever the article mentioned.

While I'd certainly agree that some of the extroverted brilliant CEO types are bringing value to society, it's a mixed bag.

A highly intelligent person working in the nonprofit sector, science, journalism, government, library science, academia, or the arts (to name a few of the careers of my friends) can contribute a great deal, but they don't really appear in this piece about BILLIONAIRE POWERRRRRR.

Since Zenscanner approved sharing of personal anecdote, here is one. One my close relatives is a CFO of a very well known corporation. He is extremely driven and works very hard. He also knows how to schmooze to climb up the corporate ladder. He is financially very well off, a millionaire power, if you will. However, his iq, if I have to guess, is probably close to 110. He has limited creativity and cannot engage in intellectual conversations just for the sake of it. No bottom line, no talks. I have met his friends in various other high positions as well and omg, I want to run away as soon as I see one of them. I much enjoy my conversations with my poorer, high iq friends, that just decided to use their one life to help the world instead of make more money for the billionaires.

How does the "higher SES families talk more to their 0-4yr children gel with 75% of the HG+ are introverts? I know I do talk to my kids a lot, once they start talking to me at 9-10 months old, I do this despite my introversion (I'm not HG+, just introverted), but I know many friends that I would hazard are bright but not gifted talk far more directly to their children, and in their presence, than I do to my kids, at least 1 of whom is HG+... My kids are more likely to hear me beg them to please stop talking for a just 5 seconds. I'm also painfully aware of not talking to them much until they start talking back at 9-10 months old. I do however have this hard wired thing of being completely incapable of not responding to developing communication. I cannot ignore (and gently correct) attempts at communication, making 9months to 2yrs old an exhausting stage... And it boggles my mind when adults ignore children's attempts to talk to them (during language acquisition). So I guess I answered my question to some extent...

In NYC, just higher, not just ridiculously higher income families have nannies. And usually nannies are not the greatest at developing language or anything else in their charges. A good friend, part of a dual physician couple, told me that she found out her former nanny was giving the toddlers Benadryl just to put their to sleep.

But parents are generally aggressive about developing skills, so kids do get tutors, extracurriculars that make them push in something.

And it costs a lot to buy a seat in the IVYs. I know someone, the husband gave millions and the wife also gave a separate million to Harvard endowment, they were both alumni and their son did not get in. Someone else gave 10 mil and was told to get another year of high school and AP courses (and this was a top private school) before the kid could go to Harvard -- about 5 years ago. DH was involved in fundraising for his class at Harvard and was getting all these stories when he called his classmates.

Just heard of a girl getting into Harvard -- a piano student of DD's teacher. She is at Hunter, so has to be HG, is on the National ping pong team and is the model for Abercrombie and Fitch. And there is that piano on the side.

So it will be interesting to see the next generation of leaders we produce. It won't just be about getting into a good school and making money. They will have to show they can apply themselves to something and work for it.

I grew up in a low income, abusive single parent household (this is by way of illustration - no sympathy required!) I have a PG (tested) father and a >99.9% daughter.I have no idea of my own IQ, but I hold my own with my PG family members and the parents of other >99.9% kids I know, I have a successful career in an intellectually demanding area, so I assume I fit somewhere on the gifted scale.

I guess I wanted to perhaps provide a personal account of difference in quality of communication between house holds (I know I am not the only person on this board who has experienced these things, but through extended family and my husband's social connections, I have a somewhat unique opportunity to compare and contrast). In my house my mother worked long days. From 8yo I looked after myself before and after school. She was exhausted, would leave me in front of the TV or to play endlessly on my own. When she did talk to me it revolved around her problems. She took no interest in my education, I was never expected to do homework, She drank and took various illicit drugs, I assume to self medicate. She suffered PTSD and a personality disorder and all I really remember from school is spending the day in a state of complete turmoil - I can't remember a single lesson or a favourite (or even a hated) topic. (All of which has ultimately shaped who I am in quite positive ways, I should add - though I wouldn't necessarily recommend such an approach as a means of building resilience!)

I left school with a very poor understanding of the basics; I had to relearn even basic elementary school maths concepts with my daughter. I have had to re-teach myself the basics of grammar. I have picked up much of my current knowledge from returning to study. My knowledge of history, politics etc is entirely self taught as an adult.

Obviously not all low income families will have abuse or mental illness as a factor (and many middle and upper income families will), but the stress and exhaustion of trying to keep a head above water means things like checking home work, finding time to even get to the library, knowing what is going on at school, having the emotional energy to listen to a child's problems and dreams and time and energy to advocate, all go by the way side (especially for single parent households, where the whole load is borne by one, often with no one to bounce problems off). It is not necessarily that middle or upper income families work less, it is that (as others have touched on), the day to day stressors may be less and that means that even just the time people do spend together may be more enriching (plus there is access to the already touched on capacity to provide more experiences, more books, access to user pays information, having access to networks of interesting/useful people etc).

I contrast this with my daughter. We had enough money that I could work part time or not at all. I had time to read to her endlessly when she was very little. Time and energy to help her with those topics that piqued her interest. We explored (and continue to explore) how the world works together. I have advocated for her to a point where I know she is in the best possible place she could be school wise (it's not perfect, but I'm realistic about just how much can be done for her unless we home school - which is not an option, because I don't have enough of the basics myself). We are a team. Even without her mental health issues, my mum would never have had the time or head space to do these things.

Through a quirk of fate, my husband has introduced me to some of my home country's (including some of the world's) wealthiest families, and through my work and my extended family I have come to know a number of senior politicians, senior public servants and senior members of the judiciary quite well. There are a lot of people in those cirlces who are acknowledged to be in high powered roles simply because their networks (through family, friends, the reciprocal networks of elite private schools etc) have ensured that is so. That's a pretty cushy starting place. But I have also met through those connections some of the loneliest, saddest, most terrified people I have ever come across. That to me is not success - for their positions have not been earned and it has not resulted in anything that could be described as human flourishing. In these examples there is an expected progression and life is set up to achieve it - through the best educational opportunities (including tutoring), through prearranged jobs, through guaranteed financial support if things turn pear shaped. Don't get me wrong, most work extremely hard - but often no more so than my friends from public housing who have dragged themselves out of poverty and into middle level or senior roles on a smaller scale.

The assumption that success = high status is flawed (as many have said above). High quality of life is much more complex, is very personal and involves factors well beyond poverty or wealth.

(Edited to add - I don't mean that all the wealthy or powerful people I know are unhappy and/or don't deserve their success - only that high levels of apparent career success are not necessarily indicators of particularly hard work or happiness, and that structural factors absolutely influence access to education, support and opportunities. They just don't in themselves equate to happiness either).

I think I'm starting to hate this guy already.

Now I really hate him.

That number is clearly over-stated.

I wonder what his schmoozing up the corporate ladder involved?

Wowsers. Sounds like that CFO fella is definitely failing to help the world with all that money-making and whatnot.

A gifted student will likely take many classes in English, history, science, and math in high school, but he may have little exposure to business, especially if he does not work (and the teenage employment rate has fallen). An economics course could help but is still abstract. My high school offered an accounting course, but the best students did not take it. When I was a teenager I knew little about the business world or what executives did.

Here are some things I would like them to understand about business. There are probably books that explain the business world to teenagers.

Executives are paid to make informed decisions about what products to produce and sell, how to market them, where to open offices, whom to hire and how to set pay, how to fund operations, and countless other things. Successful executives tend to be smart because intelligence helps them make good decisions. Increasing profits is what they are paid by their shareholders (including many retirees, pension funds, and college endowments who need returns) to do. Bad management can be bad for workers as well. If executives make bad decisions about product lines, their companies are forced to shrink, and workers are laid off. Business is about serving people.

I am a little uncomfortable with the business bashing. Keep in mind where the Davidsons' money came from, where money that funds universities and the arts largely comes from, and what gets groceries to our table.

A particular businessman can be an arrogant bore, of course, but it turns out that's true of other callings too.

Universities are currently funded by massive federal debt origination.

Groceries arrive at my table because of cheap energy. (Absent these groceries, I would be eating a ton of shrimp, fish, and crabs.)

Me too, which is what motivated my last post.

[quote=BostonianExecutives are paid to make informed decisions about what products to produce and sell, how to market them, where to open offices, whom to hire and how to set pay, how to fund operations, and countless other things. Successful executives tend to be smart because intelligence helps them make good decisions. Increasing profits is what they are paid by their shareholders (including many retirees, pension funds, and college endowments who need returns) to do. Bad management can be bad for workers as well. If executives make bad decisions about product lines, their companies are forced to shrink, and workers are laid off. Business is about serving people.[/quote]

Look, capitalism in it's current form is completely insane.

And I mean completely, absolutely, beyond a doubt, insane. Crazy. Way off it's rocker.

It's incoherent, abstract, and mindless.

I totally would not be eating those things. Well-- maybe the fish. But I'm also not most people, even in my region. And they most certainly WOULD be eating those things. And sea lion. And deer.

Which makes me wonder what sea lion would taste like--

Chicken of the Sea?


(Sorry. Someone had to do it. )

Seriously Bostonian, I have to agree with Jon here that executives are mostly serving ANALYSTS these days... and while I agree with your list in theory-- it sure doesn't tally with what I've actually observed over the past 14 years any more than the Keynesian econ that I learned in high school (and which my DD also learned, ironically, during the 2009-10 year) tallies with what transpired in the "deregulated" "smart" market in 2008.

There are some things wrong with both models/theories. Clearly.

I'd also (respectfully and seriously) submit that being IDEALLY intelligent is probably even more critically important for an executive/CEO/COO than it is for most of the people working in technical positions for that person. Why? Because so much of that job is about understanding other people and being able to successfully communicate with them. The higher your LOG, the more difficult a proposition that becomes. I do think that those people probably have very particular areas of giftedness, and that they are highly gifted in those areas.

I like to think that people are better off now than in ancient times, but none of us were there so we really don't know. Money made that possible. Money let people work out how to work togeather. We talk about slave wages now, but remember reading about when it was just slaves with no wages? They would split up families to sell separately. What we have now ain't perfect but this is just us, just humanity's best efforts with what we know now.
We all do the best we can as far as we see it. To an extent we all help other people, and to an extent we all drain resources. The "crazy state of capitalism" is because money is just an iou, an abstract symbol. The world never has been "perfect". Capitalism is our collective efforts.
There are kids starving and being blown up still in the world. I wish their countries had better capitalism, even though we have problems here and kids still suffer, the suffering is less than the alternative. I'll take our crazy inequity over crazy malaria and bombings anyday thanks.

If you're not part of the soloution, you're part of the problem. Jonlaw, take up a new hobby, studying the law that empowers Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations,” and try to figure out how we planetary natives can do business togeather correctly. Listen to your wife and do something with your talents. A lot of smart people are already looking into it, at least I hope they are. But the solutions you see, what you see happening, is the answers found by people who tried. Quit yer bitching and start researching and developing legislation. Peace.

I shouldn't have added my 2c when the conversation is this weird.

Eta: HK, yes, deregulation hurts the working man's wages. Honestly I noticed Mitt Romney saying he wants to deregulate the oilfield industry during his fix America speech and I wondered if anyone heard him say it or knew what it would mean for the local economy, although he might have been good for the rest of the country which is suffering right now.

Does this mean that you don't like chicken?

LOL.

There is a real gift I've come to see with many successful leaders. They are comfortable and capable of making quick decisions on minimal information and at lower confidence levels. It may also be why there is an ideally intelligent range at all.

I think the learning behind that sort of expertise happens through the same neural network type of mechanism as learning common sense I mentioned on another thread. In a similar vein (though way more a mainstream/common trait, but still important for many leaders) is to always be on task and in character.

LoL, I prefer icecream. But if the world collapses I'm eating money. There's a hippy saying, "when the last tree is cut, when the last river is poisoned, when the last fish is caught, only then will u realize u can't eat money."

I don't like being told what I can and can't do. When all that happens I'm going to eat the money.

Interesting that so many people define "rich" as an income level. Many "rich" families would be homeless if their incomes were to cease. Many "rich" families have debts (mortgages, car payments) that overwhelm their assets. Having a nice lifestyle is not the same thing as having wealth. Having a mortgage is not the same thing as owning a house (or apartment blocks or companies).

The Upper Middle Class has to play the meritocracy game to insure the lifestyles of their children because their children will have to work, but the truly wealthy are fine with the "gentleman's C." Their children can live off their investments.

So, this article appears to be comparing Upper Middle Class children with slightly more disposable income to the Middle Class with slightly less. I'm curious if this investment actually pays off in their children's lifetime earnings (rather than just getting into better schools or having higher test scores).

Is there an article on that?
Or an article on actual wealth-based educational outcomes?

Because they don't save enough of their income and don't pay off their mortgages, etc.

Of course, if everybody saved enough of their income....hmmmm.

I guess that's me busted. My DW gave up her career for full-time child care. Also, our income is down due to my own career choices. I've said before how I took a 25% pay reduction to move to another location, for a higher quality of life. I also choose not to put in 60-80 hour work weeks, in the vain hopes of climbing the corporate ladder. I choose life.

There are opportunities out there for me to earn A LOT more money, basically doing what I already do, in which I would fly every week to a new location, arrive to a half-baked project plan, with too few resources allocated, and end up receiving all the blame when things don't go as (poorly) planned. My evenings would be spent working in the hotel room, with maybe a half-hour chat with my DD, if we can fit it in. The people who work this job in my place may be making a lot more money than I am, but you'd be hard-pressed to argue that they've made the smarter choice.

I would love to see some studies done on this, but it is my strong suspicion that these kinds of choices are fairly common among the gifted, and the more highly gifted, the more commonly these choices. After all, the American social paradigm is money as a sign of success. And aren't the gifted paradigm breakers by nature?

Back when companies used to invest in research, your smartest employees were likely to be found in that department, not in the board room. And you can make the case that the researchers made the smarter choice... economic stability, regular hours, the chance to explore, and someone else is footing the bill... how cool is that?

And then, of course, there's gifted underachievement, for reasons many and varied.

For documentary evidence, I submit that I'm reading this: http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10056.aspx

And the follow-up to the St. Louis project showed that the gifted boys had not gone on to eminence... they were leading rather ordinary lives.

Cheap energy made this possible.

Credit and money have been around for thousands of years.

And my point was about the current incarnation of capitalism, not about money or businesses in general.

And it's taken from Jeremy Grantham:

"Damage to the “commons,” known as “externalities,” has been discussed for decades, although the most threatening one—loss of our collective ability to feed ourselves, through erosion and fertilizer depletion—has received little or no attention. There have been no useful tricks proposed, however, for how we will collectively impose sensible, survivable, long-term policies over problems of the “commons.” To leave it to capitalism to get us out of this fix by maximizing its short-term profits is dangerously naïve and misses the point: capitalism and corporations have absolutely no mechanism for dealing with these problems, and seen through a corporate discount rate lens, our grandchildren really do have no value."

http://www.businessweek.com/article...pitalism-our-grandchildren-have-no-value

... they'd never be hungry again? (Using La Texican's logic here)


In all seriousness, Jon's last points reflect the exact same thing that I was referring to. This is a system that prides itself on "smartness" but it's really a house of cards built on aggregate human behavior-- and there's no factor for "human irrationality" since it's assumed for modeling purposes that people will ALWAYS act in their own self-interest. That's demonstrably untrue right from the beginning. Human beings may THINK that they are acting in their own self-interest, and they may sometimes choose to act in what they believe to be someone else's best interests, even at cost to themselves, and sometimes for reasons which are entirely irrational.

You can't really account for irrational human behavior, and modeling the behavior of large groups of people without considering that, or making the assumption that irrationality is bound to be an outlier phenomenon... well, it isn't always. That's what fuels bubbles to start with-- that couldn't happen in the first place if it were only true that a few people were behaving irrationally.

The rich don't have mortgages. That's my point.
Wealth is measured traditionally by net worth NOT by income.

My point is that you can pay off mortgages if you feel like it by not spending money on other things.

The poor don't have mortgages either. Just noting.

Just as well, since incomes below 20K probably don't really allow for "choosing" much of anything to start with.

Why would management care about the company shrinking, or laying off employees? There are countless examples of CEOs getting big bonuses precisely BECAUSE they shrunk the company and laid off workers. Many other times, it happened due to bad decisions the previous CEO made, but the chickens came to roost only after his stock options had already matured. CEOs are making more money now than at any time in history, and the quality of their work is exhibited in the economic conditions of the last 6 years.

The open question is how much the deteriorating quality of the modern CEO is due to deteriorating mental ability, and how much to deteriorating moral values.

Their employers like what they've been doing. Seriously. It's just that the public doesn't figure into this anymore-- nor do employees. It's about the shareholders and the market now.

Analysts are not apparently very troubled by-- oh, how to put this--

reality as the rest of us know it.

I don't see how the previous example has much to say either way-- since most college students are not financially independent from their extended families, it is generally unfair to group them with families with the same income levels.

It's also profoundly inflammatory, and personally I'm not much into having my chain yanked with the "agree or you're not patriotic enough" line. Not biting.

Instead, now that my allergy meds have kicked in, I'm going to take care of my yard for a bit. Since I have made choices that mean that I don't have "people" for this sort of thing. Of course, on the bright side, I also do not have (or need) a gym membership, since pulling weeds is pretty good exercise.

Well, a CEO reports directly to the Board.

The Chairman of the Board these days is, usually, the CEO.

So yeah, the employer LOVES what the employee is doing.

HK, I deleted the post you objected to.

JonLaw,

Someone with a substantial income and a propensity for saving may accrue wealth over time, but they are unlikely to become rich. (statistically)

If you don't have a net worth of almost a million dollars (minus liabilities), you aren't even in the top 10% of Americans, and after a comfortable retirement, there will be little left to secure your children's future. This is why most Upper Middle Class parents (even those who breach the 10% mark) are trying to ensure their children's future through academic achievement.

Now, I would guess that even those parents with enough true wealth to pass on their social class to their children still insist on good schools and such because, of course, wealth can be lost and one wants a little insurance for their children, right?

I wasn't talking about rich. I was talking about mortgages.

Exactly. The rich don't need them.

The thing about being rich is that they have a great many things they certainly don't need, and mortgages are among them.

Of course, at some point along the economic scale, debt (which is bad) changes its name to leverage (which is good).

I agree with this, but maybe my friends are just very self-selected. I also went a college that is selective (top 20) but whose graduates earn relatively low salaries due to making "hippie" life choices. It's a big issue for the endowment.

I know a LOT of highly intelligent people who have chosen not to maximize their earning potential for various reasons. My DH could make a lot more money were he to "sell out" his specialized skills, but he chooses not to because he couldn't live with himself if he did.

Leverage is one of the easiest ways to create or to deplete a great fortune. It's all a bit like gambling, isn't it?

At some point in the wealth scale, it becomes more about safeguarding wealth for future generations and less about courting financial risks to acquire additional wealth...at least in families that have managed to retain their wealth over three generations.

It would be interesting to see how childrearing practices and values differ in old money families as compared to new.

Businesses are run to profit their owners, but they do so (by and large) by producing efficiently what people want. That is no more problematic than workers choosing jobs and consumers choosing products to maximize their own welfare. I don't see why the pursuit of self-interest by some economic actors and not others should be criticized.

Except that this system now has a closed feedback loop that doesn't always include end-consumers as a major input.

That is, CEO/Board/stockholders/analysts reflect one another, and listen to one another, thereby manipulating the stock price of the company depending upon how happy the analyst(s) are based upon...

well, often it has relatively little to do with the company's nominal profitability/consumer satisfaction/market share, or productivity within corporate divisions. It's all speculative, and not terribly long-range in terms of the company or its customer base. That forecasting is also not very accurate-- perhaps not even as good as weather predictions in a ten day forecast. An extra penny of profit weighed against vanishing customer satisfaction/loyalty/reliability is just an extra penny... but it really isn't, if you looked longer term, because eventually that will be lost market share.

This actually is only recently my own opinion. I used to believe exactly what you're saying, Bostonian.

It's something that my FIL (himself a retired banking exec who lived through the S&L meltdown) has been bemoaning (okay, okay, more like ranting...) for YEARS-- that there is a huge reality and ethics breach opening ever-further in that particular analyst centric loop that controls corporate decision-making. I confess, it wasn't until after 2008 that I began to see what he was talking about-- that companies are increasingly about pandering (really, no other word is accurate) to stock analyst whims rather than making their own decisions about what might be good for the company, its employees, and its customers. He's convinced that MBA's need to start taking ethics again, and that it may well be time for additional market regulations... probably starting with firewalling off i-banking again.


I am not well-informed enough to know what the solution is, but I can certainly see that he's right about the feedback loop part of things. Not sure if that is the "cause" of any particular dysfunction, but it sure seems a little like a crazy way to run a capitalist market given my meager understanding of economics.

I think that would definitely be interesting.

I would also be interested to see the "working" versus "non-working" financial elite's practices, there.

Agreed, and would add that jail time is appropriate for a lot of these people. But not at a Club Fed facility. No, these folks need to spend time at a place with all the charm of NYC's Club Riker's.

Don't worry.

The Fed, through it's QE program, is removing any risk of a declining stock market at the present time.

So your investments are safe.

But the point of having all that success is so that you can privatize the gains and socialize the losses.

It's the Golden Rule!

He who has the gold makes the rules.

Plus, you can't lose money in the stock market anymore, so it's all good.

Capitalism is fixed, now.

Capitalism is fixed, now.

Oh, wait-- was that a complete thought? Thought it might have been a typo and was waiting for the edit and ending to that sentence. Bated breath, even.



ETA: just to clarify, though-- I thought that socialism was synonymous with "evil incarnate."

I guess losses and socialism, though... lesser of two evils, right?

Now I must think of some way to recover and go back on topic. At least plausibly so.

Of course it's a complete thought.

Ben Bernake has fixed the problem.

The stock market is going up again, isn't it?

So capitalism is working and people can be happy and do happy things that make happiness again so that...

So that, uh, um, er...

Well, no matter.

The Fed is absolutely amazing!

Awesome!

Superlative!

Even, dare I say it?

Gifted!

Must be because of superior, well-monetized parenting.

THERE. Finally. I was really worried about staying on topic.

Thank you, Jon.

I guess even superior parenting doesn't always produce lovely results, though. Perhaps socialized losses are the underachieving sibling.

However, if you don't flood your progeny with massive amounts of liquidity, aren't you essentially guaranteeing failure?

And, while you might not succeed in raising a (truly intrinsically valuable) power child, you need to do whatever is in your power to avoid what we could term a "terminal unsuccess catastrophe".

Basically, you are putting a floor under junior so that he doesn't fall into the middle class.

A recent study has found that beyond a certain level, parental transfers to college students can hurt their grades:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...tal-support-college-results-lower-grades
Spoiled Children
January 14, 2013 - 3:00am
Inside Higher Education
By Scott Jaschik

It's problematic because scale. Imagine the damage each economic actor can inflict on the environment and economy in terms of explosive yield:

1 worker = 1 firecracker
1 small business = 1 stick dynamite
1 large business = 1 pound C4
1 publicly-traded corporation = 1 bunker buster
1 global corporation = 1 nuclear bomb

And now you know why 2007 looked so much like economic nuclear winter.

end rant

I came across this Washington Post article a couple weeks ago. It says that extreme introverts tend to flounder in leadership positions, but extreme extroverts are also unsuccessful. Apparently, extroverts talk too much and listen too little. Who knew? The article goes on to say that good leaders need to be somewhere in the middle: ambiverts. It also says that most people, in general, actually are ambiverts; on a scale of 1-7, 1 being most introverted and 7 being most extroverted, most people score a 3 or 4.

I would imagine that extremely introverted HG adults would avoid high-profile leadership positions. But more moderately introverted HG adults might find the work to be challenging and intrinsically rewarding enough to tolerate the less-enjoyable social aspects of those jobs.

In my personal experience, I have seen a few HG introverts take up leadership positions simply because they were sick of being managed by less competent people. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

This is somewhat tangential, but I have also seen that some introverted HG adults have spending habits that look like conspicuous consumption. But really, disposable income + discriminating taste = nice things. Those nice things are purchased for personal enjoyment, not for the purposes of impressing other people. For some well-off people, it can actually be rather embarrassing to realize that other people watch what you buy / covet what you have.

Were you trying to illustrate Ayn Rand's shocking ignorance of US history?

LOL.

To get back (way back) to the original subject at hand: I just read some reserach about parental investment in children from the 1970s to 2009 or so. While the study authors do make a bit of a fuss about--oh, look, look, wealthy parents are spending proportionally more and LOOK, the rich-poor achievement gap has widened at the same time this has happened, I will again note that this is HIGHLY SPECULATIVE. They're just noting two things that have happened at the same time. So what? We all know about that kind of error.

Furthermore, this particular paper shows that wealthy parents are spending more on early childhood care (daycare) and higher education (college)--AND they are forking over more money to their ADULT children. Yes. You read me right. The wealthy parents who are making their kids so fantastically successful? They're giving their 20-somethings money. Not my personal metric of success. Meanwhile, spending in the 6-12 age range was fairly low. So, basically, daycare and college are expensive, and rich people spend even more on these things. Not surprising.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13524-012-0146-4 (paywall, probably)

This isn't the paper cited in the NYT piece, but it uses a big dataset.

If you give your children money, for example, to buy a house, then they don't go into debt because interest payments are not flowing to financial institutions.

So, you maintain more inter-generational wealth.

Some of the subsidies given to 20-somethings are intended to boost their careers and not merely finance consumption.

My wife is a doctor, as are her siblings. They finished their medical training in another country without any debt, and she has informed me that our children should not take loans even for professional school. I've explained to her that in the U.S. people typically don't rely on their parents for law/business/medical school, but you try arguing with a Tiger Mother .

Yes, I know that some of the money being given to 20-somethings (the paper emphasized "mid-20s") goes to education. But I'm still not terribly impressed with the outcome of your tiger-momming if you're still signing checks for your 25-year-old. Nobody was giving me a dime at 25.

Intergenerational wealth transfer is how wealth is maintained across generations.

Uh huh. What's your point? I'll inherit money when my parents pass away, presuming they don't end up needing nursing home care that eats it all up. They didn't give me money when I was 25, though, because they expected me to be figuring out how to make it myself.

Currently, the amount of an estate above $5.25 million is subject to a 40% federal estate tax and possibly a state-level estate tax. Each parent can give $14,000 annually to a child without eating into the lifetime gift tax limit, and there is no limit on gifts used for education. So it makes sense for rich Tiger Parents to give their adult children $28K per year if those children are responsible.

What you see as a failure of Tiger Mothering may be in part intelligent estate planning. JonLaw understands this.

My point is that the intergenerational wealth transfer maintains advantages of the wealthier people.

You, personally, presumably aren't trying to build and maintain significant amounts of *family* wealth over generations, so it's not relevant to you.

Other families are doing this, which means that they are being provided with subsidies that will increase the durability and success of the *family* in the future.

It's an individualist vs. collectivist issue.

I'm familiar with the gift tax and the estate tax, thanks.

My spouse actually believes in the same model, for whatever that is worth.

I suspect that this is primarily because he is too out of touch to understand the quantities of money that we are now discussing there, but that's just me.

Neither of us paid for graduate school-- graduate school paid US; STEM fields are awesome that way, incidentally.