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.
