Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Average IQ across different types of schools

Like chay, I have found that trying to find a classroom where the mean is as close as possible to my kids ability works best. I admit that I am very jaded about differentiation these days. There is, usually, one teacher. One mouth, two hands. Whenever there is direct instruction (and no matter how self paced and individual the curriculum is, you do need direct instruction at some point) the teacher can instruct at exactly ONE level at ONE time. And in order to max out their effectiveness, most of the time teachers will choose to teach to the zone proximal development of the average to above average cohort in their classroom. Then they may make some time for the (smaller) group below average, and some for the (even smaller) group well above average, and the lone HG+ kid....good luck with the two minutes per lesson.

This is what makes a good fit - if what happens most of the time in the classroom is exactly at the level of your kids zone of proximal development. Now for the HG+ kid, that's super hard to find, but the closer you get, the better it works.

Edited because I realized I haven't answered the OPs question yet -yes, I do think the demographics of the classroom make a difference. It is really noticeable whether one is 45, 30 or 15 IQ points from the mean. I have no idea what my own IQ score is, there was no testing in our system when I was young, but in my fairy low SES elementary the gap was probably something like 45 and I felt ....alien, completely on the wrong planet, KWIM? After my grade skip, it was more like boredom ranging from mind numbing to tolerable, and after tracking, when I suppose I was within 20 or 30 points of the mean, it was mostly tolerable boredom, sometimes a feeling of belonging, occasionally, in my weaker subjects, a feeling of challenge. The only real fit I have ever felt was a highly selective university where the mean is said to be 130.

We chose a high SES catholic elementary for DS9 with the express notion of trying for the difference to be between somewhere 15 and 30 - turned out it was probably still closer to 45, but better than 50 or 60! It is very hard to find appropriate challenge for the HG+ child, but a high SES composition in the class room can make the difference between tolerable and intolerable, even when differentiation (as usual) does not work out.