Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How do you all define gifted?

Oh thankyou! THIS is my children. None of whom are particularly academically precocious. But my EG/PG child in particularly, was observably different in the way you are describing from birth. The number of "wow" / "only she would do that" comments she had as a baby were constant.

I know this isn't the technical definition from any official standpoint, but I personally define gifted as a minimum of 99th percentile on a standardized test. Beyond that, there is a certain internal spark or drive that is also needed.

It is really a matter of perspective. In a university town where most the kids are very bright and have parents with phDs, it isn't unusual to have an entire 1st grade class scoring at LEAST 90th percentile on a (nationally) standardized test. So from that point of view, 99th percentile as the bare minimum to be considered gifted makes sense. Compared to a broader population, most of these kids might seem gifted, but within this little academic nerd world bubble they just seem average.

So, are you talking about an achievement test here? To play devil's advocate:

Would any kid who, say, hit the 99th percentile once on any achievement test be gifted? How about if he is in the 99th percentile locally but the local area is very low performing? What if he was in the 99th percentile once and then generally tracked around the 90th or 95th or even the 75th most of the time? What if he legitimately had a high average IQ (let's say 115), but was a hard worker and/or higher performer than that?

How about the opposite: What if he legitimately had a sky high IQ but was 2e and rarely or never achieved at the 99th percentile? Would that kid still be gifted?

Well, keep in mind that this is just my totally made-up and pretty arbitrary definition of gifted. I was answering the original question as asked.

Fortunately, it isn't my job to determine who is gifted or not so I don't really have to wrestle with the difficult questions. My "quick and dirty" answer is 99th percentile or above on a standardized test (including an IQ test). I would expect MOST truly gifted kids to have the 99th percentile in both academic tests AND IQ tests. But, I personally think the IQ tests are more important in determining giftedness than academic tests. As you say, a kid could just be an eager achiever and do well on academic tests but only have an average or above average IQ. I wouldn't consider them gifted.

2E kids are a totally different bag of chips, and not an area I'd even dare have an opinion on. I simply don't know enough about it. I would say, though, that the 99th percentile rule of thumb would still apply, but what kind of tests would be used is beyond me. Certainly, any kids that had an IQ that is above 99th percentile even if they scored poorly on academic tests I would consider gifted. Like I said, I think the IQ test is far more significant to telling us their intelligence than any academic achievement test. (If it was switched the the academic achievement test was high but the IQ was average I wouldn't say they were gifted.)

But, honestly, I gave the 99th percentile answer because it is an easy rule of thumb and one that I tend to have in the back of my mind. It isn't "real". It's just my not-too-well-formed opinion. I have no authority or even business in determining if any given child is gifted or not.

In truth, the definition of giftedness might be more like the definition of pornography... you know it when you see it. There are many intangible qualities that tests cannot capture adequately. And I personally think academic achievement means very little compared to IQ tests. Many PG kids struggle with school for a variety of reasons.

Oh, this reminded me of my son as a baby/toddler and I had to laugh! I never suspected he was anything other than normal, but I was always entertained by him. He was so alert and monitoring everything from the moment he could open his eyes. He attempted crawling once or twice, then like a week later could magically crawl with perfection.. same thing with walking.. he pulled himself up and edged along a table once or twice, then went back to crawling. About a month later, bam, he was walking like he'd been doing it for months. He was this way with puzzles, and legos and learning to read... you'd seem him try/struggle/attempt a few times, then nothing, then, like magic, he would master it in a single attempt.

(The specific thing that made me laugh was remembering when he decided he could walk - it was at airport security while I was attempting to put my shoes back on! Stinker let go of the table, and just walked off. The security people were giving me looks like "duh, watch your kid" and I was completely dumbfounded thinking "WTF! Since when can you walk kid??")

epoh, that's funny! Nice timing on his part, of course.

I also love the observation about pornography, and this was absolutely one of the first things that (admittedly snarkily) went through my head with this topic...

when you see it, you just know.

It's like defining "charisma" or "star power." You just know-- it's unmistakable once you've seen it firsthand.

This is interesting and probably true. I wonder, then, why educators and parents who have seen "gifted" still call a lot of other things gifted as well. For instance, I know dd13 and a few of her cohort are truly HG+ and they are very, very evidently quite different from the large majority of the GT ided kids with whom they attend school. On the other hand, I still know parents of a lot of other kids who differ dramatically from this cohort as well as educators who still call these dramatically different kids gifted as well.

Then again, I have had educators who are quite bright themselves be pretty upfront with me and tell me that the majority of the GT ided kids are high achievers, not gifted so maybe the ability to recognize the difference requires the individual to be very intelligent him/herself.

"Other classes could be set up as a tutorial, where students could spend most of the class in the library or computer lab, working on a project that interests them, and checking in with a teacher once a week."

Beckee,

Your description above reminded me of a student I once worked with while I was in school. It is like the Oxford tutorial system.
When I was in college I worked a summer with a student from Singapore. She said that she went to high school using the Oxford tutorial system. I always thought that would be just great. She did however mention the stress that most of your grade was based on finale exams, and the work that you did was for learning the material and not grading. I often have thought about it. and yes, this does sound nice.

I wanted to mention this example to suggest that maybe your described model of learning is not so impossible. Maybe it could be implemented on some very small scale at first (sort of a school within a school approach).

anyway just though I would mention this