Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Schools Ask: Gifted or Just Well-Prepared? (NYC)

I think that there are different modes of intelligence.

So, you have different types of abilities, some of which are more obvious than others at the 99-point-whatever level.

JonLaw--yes, I agree....there are obviously some kids who are more gifted in math and others who are more verbal, for instance. This makes things tricky, because some of them are ready to write pages and pages while others need a lot of help with basic composition. Some could be working 3-4 grades ahead in math while others are probably best served by a compacted curriculum one grade ahead at most. Then there are quite a few outside the box kids who are obviously artistic, creative, and not as "schooly." The limitations of the magnet model are pretty obvious; yet it's the best option I can see for us right now. The best thing they've done is incorporate a ton of fairly open-ended special projects which the kids can customize to their interests and talents.

I think that is the failing, ultimately, of radical acceleration.

It does a lousy job of truly meeting gifted needs (since it doesn't account for asynchrony and pacing differences), and the greater the asynchrony, the more badly it seems to meet those needs.

Like ultramarina, though, as long as AP/Gifted is intended for 90th+ and not for 99th+ students, acceleration is the best we can do.

It just makes me mad that this is mostly true because actual differentiation isn't available for the kids that are most in need of it-- because honestly, I can see the logic behind the angst directed at gifted programs that cater to the not-quite-gifted...

because those kids are "ideally" intelligent, and realistically, most of them don't have unmet needs the way kids at the tails of the distribution do.

Our local district's answer to this is to suggest that "ALL of our coursework is directed at the gifted population" and note how many AP courses they offer. Well, of course. When you've identified 30% of the students as GT, then it makes sense to make it part of the regular curriculum. The problem is that if you don't set the bar any higher than 90th percentile (and, as noted by cricket, there are very definitely ways around even THAT cutoff if you happen to be an insider), the kids who are another couple of standard deviations out from the mean still don't have their needs met, and administrators can pat themselves on the back all they like... but it doesn't change the fact that much of what is happening under the guise of "gifted" instruction.... isn't. Because that would be mean, wouldn't it? To offer instruction to kids at the 80th-95th percentiles as though they were as able as the kid in that room who is 99.9th.

I realize that I'm on my soapbox about this... but I truly just wish that "gifted" programs would quit calling themselves that and start calling it something more stigmatizing/less desirable somehow. The kids that actually need the differentiation might actually get some that way.

This kind of arms race of helicopter parenting has pretty deleterious effects on HG+ students, after all. It leads to policies that reward parents with the greatest persistence and resources, not students with greatest ability.

Actually, I wish that gifted programs would just go away and be replaced with teaching aimed at an appropriate level. Note: this would require transparent standards so that teacher can't say, "Well, your five-year-old only got 93% on our end-of-first-grade math test and therefore she clearly isn't ready for second grade math."

How many gifted programs are even worthwhile? Last year, DS was in the gifted math program (15% of the class) and they spent a lot of time painting the basketball court. How many people here complain that the gifted "program" is a two-hour weekly pullout that's not available until fourth grade and that involves stuff that's relatively pointless compared to meaningful learning?

My DD's school offered two hours a day, and the result was a slapdash, haphazard approach to learning that was beginning to open some serious gaps in her education. We know a fifth grader who has been in this system for a few years, and her gaps are shocking.

Which is ironic when you consider one of the school's main arguments against acceleration was gaps.

It isn't just appropriate level, it is appropriate method and rate of instruction, too.

I wish the word pedagogical term acceleration actually meant acceleration. If a car is travelling a constant 100mph to a destination city 1200mph away and teleports instantaneously 200 miles towards the destination. Even though it's average rate of travel has increased, it has never accelerated. Even compacting misses the point. Though it seems like grade skipping and compacting can help.

Sometimes I think what my kids (ALL kids!) really need is a modernized one-room schoolhouse....

However, there are some real benefits to DD to being in the full-day gifted program. She's very happy socially, and has lost the unattractive vibe of "Why is everyone else so...slow?" that she was developing. I sometimes wonder about the long-term consequences of being segregated in this way, though.

Intelligence is considered so important that any term designating people as more or less intelligent will become controversial. Quoting the Wikipedia article on "imbecile":

Our district offers a self-contained gifted program to students scoring 99% on one or more of three general areas in their screening test (a matrix of the CogAT/ITBS) and outside testing is also accepted. The program is space limited, test scores are only a pre-req and a written application is required as part of the process. Our DS6 was tested in K last year, scored 99% in all three areas and was wait-listed for the program.

In district information, parent forum discussions and other info I have gathered, the program is characterized in descriptions and in name as an alternative program. An alternative for those students for whom the neighborhood school is not working. The program retention rate is extremely high and some parents comment that there is simply no other option, public or private, save homeschooling that is an option for their student. I do not have direct knowledge of the application review criteria and can only guess at this point. However, difficulty making age peer friends, behavioral and emotional issues, high asynchrony - the frustrations and challenges that many of the parents on this board face on a daily basis - very likely make up many of the reasons for interest in the program and are reflected in the applications that are accepted.

We are thankful that our DS is happy and doing well in our neighborhood school and, for now, it is our least worse option. We also are supporters of the self-contained program and hope that it can grow beyond it's current constraints so that it can serve a greater number of students.

(As an aside, this topic prompted me to post for the first time. The discussions on this board have been of great help to us -- Thank you!)

You mean as opposed to the recognition that you stand astride the world like a colossus and a supreme confidence in your own opinion to the exclusion of all those opinions outside of your own?

(I'm betting that I'm the only person who's ever yelled out in their sleep "The only opinion I care about is my own!" I woke up everybody in the house that time, too. Fortunately, I'm always able to go right back to sleep.)