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Joined: Oct 2011
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And this creates an achievement gap. Our system (at least here) is currently designed to minimize achievement gaps by keeping everyone at the same level, and not allowing anyone to work ahead. Indeed. Going back to the race car metaphor, it doesn't matter if you can do 200mph, because with all the other traffic, there's nowhere to go at that speed. And so, what we need are race tracks. What we often get instead is a fast lane, and slower traffic keeps wandering in where it doesn't belong.
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Indeed. Going back to the race car metaphor, it doesn't matter if you can do 200mph, because with all the other traffic, there's nowhere to go at that speed. Except that in some cases the 200mph car explodes, destroying itself and other cars because that's what happens when it runs too long at 25mph.
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And this creates an achievement gap. Our system (at least here) is currently designed to minimize achievement gaps by keeping everyone at the same level, and not allowing anyone to work ahead. Indeed. Going back to the race car metaphor, it doesn't matter if you can do 200mph, because with all the other traffic, there's nowhere to go at that speed. And so, what we need are race tracks. What we often get instead is a fast lane, and slower traffic keeps wandering in where it doesn't belong. YES!! 
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Jun 2010
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Indeed. Going back to the race car metaphor, it doesn't matter if you can do 200mph, because with all the other traffic, there's nowhere to go at that speed. Except that in some cases the 200mph car explodes, destroying itself and other cars because that's what happens when it runs too long at 25mph. ... and even when engineered to run reliably at such low speeds, a supercar may seize up when forced to comply with the restrictions of a public halting device.
Striving to increase my rate of flow, and fight forum gloopiness. 
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I agree-- particularly true in younger kids who have been hothoused by well-meaning (but Tigerish) parents.
What I think cannot be mistaken is the rate at which gifted children learn, or how rapidly they attain mastery.
I do not think that a child who is not gifted can, for example, go from basic decoding skills (e.g. Bob books) to late high school reading ability (no, not just decoding, but actual comprehension) in just a few weeks or months. Well, yes, but "gifted" (intentional scare quotes) is a pretty huge range. There are more "gifted" kids who couldn't go at twice the normal pace than those who could, due to the normal distribution. And even then the trajectory levels out. Yes, kid A went from 0 to sixth in reading in six months, but they're probably only reading eight or ninth grade by third grade, and kids who have been slow but steady and took three years to get there will appear about the same. Then look again at sixth grade and they're still probably going to be not that far apart.
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I don't agree with that. Some kids entering K have been taught, worked with, others don't know the alphabet. There is not necessarily a correlation with their innate ability.
I'm not saying they all even out, but it is true that by third grade as compared to K they have all had exposure, and instruction, and any effects of early interest or instruction will be gone. BUT. The OP's kid has a gifted-level IQ score. Surely that counts for quite a lot. If her child was simply an untested high achiever, that would be different. Ultramarina - that's what I meant... you can't coach a kid into a high IQ (looking back at my post I see that I didn't word it well). Tallulah are you referring to the hothoused kids? Because you'd be right about that, for sure. Meanwhile some untested high achievers are hothoused, and some have high IQ's. As for the ones who have tested high... is it even possible to get a false positive for giftedness? A false negative, sure.. there are many things that could suppress a score. No, not really, I'm speaking more from experience of watching my friends children (so I'm not going to offer specifics), but with an IQ spread of 30 points, all in the gifted range, the different trajectories were very apparent, (probably IQ based, I suppose, but then a child whose parent works with them before school is going to have a flatter trajectory) and you definitely saw them doing this evening out - starting with a huge range before school, due to their interests and parenting, then all the different trajectories, and settling to a range that is a lot smaller than before school, and not necessarily in the same order as before school. This is with reading, not math. I don't think there would necessarily be any correlation at all with IQ and hothousing, don't you think? So while the differences may be more subtle than "this three year old can read, and all these others can't," there is little doubt that the third grader who has been fully literate for YEARS will have experienced much more during that time than his/her newly literate classmates will have in the last 18 months. I definitely disagree with that. Not all knowledge comes through books, and an involved educated parent combined with a BBC addiction can do a lot. Kind of like people who teach their kids the letters instead of teaching them that if you dig just the right way you can make a moat around your sandcastle, or helping them break down sounds in words, or recount a story, or predict what happens next. IYKWIM, and I don't mean it combatively.
Last edited by Tallulah; 09/07/12 11:18 AM.
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I don't know if my son would have evened out by third grade if I had left him in our public school. When my son was almost through with kindergarten he had made what would normally be a passing score (but not the required 90% because of his handwriting) on an end of first grade test to see if he could skip first grade since he was already reading and comprehending at a 5th grade level, but the kindergarten teacher was recommending holding him back in a transitional first grade (year in between kindergarten and first grade) so that he could work on fine motor skills without OT even though he has a disability that affects fine motor skills. The principal, a relative of mine, arranged for me to talk to a first grade teacher at the school who was the mother of two gifted boys and was working toward a master's in special ed where she learned even more about gifted education. She looked at samples of my son's work. She had already heard about him. She told me that she thought he was probably highly gifted. Her advice was that I should put him in private school or homeschool him. I told her that I couldn't afford private school and didn't think I could homeschool my son. She gave me some teaching materials and made sure I understood that I would have to homeschool my son and that I should absolutely not under any circumstances let him go to that school.
She was right. We did homeschool. He did not even out.
Our wonderful small town school with the amazing football team that our relatives just love because their kids who are very good in football are treated like royalty, would not have been a good school for my son. The school has a bullying problem. Their ACT scores are below state average. Yet the relatives still believe it is a great school and don't want to hear otherwise. My son's piano teacher recently took her child out of this amazingly wonderful school because the focus is definitely not on academics and her smart kid did not fit in. People in our small town were giving her a hard time about it.
I had to learn to trust my gut feeling on what was best for my child. That was hard to do. Educational experts with years of experience were telling me very different things. I am grateful for message boards like this one because they often gave me better advice than the experts, but then I guess they are the real experts.
My son is now 14 and 2E with some sensory issues or overexcitabilities and dyspraxia and he is going through some difficult and distracting, painful physical issues now that make it impossible for him to enjoy most activities with kids his age, but he is still smarter than I am and he learns more quickly than I ever did if given the opportunity to learn the way he learns best.
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To be honest, I'm starting to think there's a lot more gestalt to IQ and potential than the tests can ever give us. I see a really vast range even in DD's magnet where the kids are all 130+. (Of course, I don't know anybody's individual score or their 2e issues--there seem to be quite a lot of 2e kids.)
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To be honest, I'm starting to think there's a lot more gestalt to IQ and potential than the tests can ever give us. I see a really vast range even in DD's magnet where the kids are all 130+. (Of course, I don't know anybody's individual score or their 2e issues--there seem to be quite a lot of 2e kids.) It's worth pointing out at this point that the differences between all of the groups below are pretty much the same: - MG (IQ 130) and PG (160) - MG and normal (100) - Normal and mild retardation (70) Sprinkle in personality and environment differences along with cognitive differences, and you'd expect to see a wide range.
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Joined: Jul 2011
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To be honest, I'm starting to think there's a lot more gestalt to IQ and potential than the tests can ever give us. I see a really vast range even in DD's magnet where the kids are all 130+. (Of course, I don't know anybody's individual score or their 2e issues--there seem to be quite a lot of 2e kids.) It's worth pointing out at this point that the differences between all of the groups below are pretty much the same: - MG (IQ 130) and PG (160) - MG and normal (100) - Normal and mild retardation (70) Sprinkle in personality and environment differences along with cognitive differences, and you'd expect to see a wide range. Across the entire lifetime or only across the K-JD age range?
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