Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Importance of having gifted peers

Sorry for the flood of new posts from me - It's neat to be in an (on-line) environment with parents in similar situations...

And speaking of peer issues...

I've been looking up various comparative test scores for the suburban public schools are kids are in and WILL be in (when H.S. comes) for some time. By most measures, they're moderately above average - good but not great.

Our district is large, with 4 high schools, and the one our kids are headed towards is the weakest, test-wise, of the 4.

Something inspired me to look at a different measure - National Merit Semifinalists. I was able to find lists online, compare them to rough school attendance, and...

The results are pretty ugly for our school. One NMSF in the last 3 years. There are roughly 297 kids per grade at our school, so the frequency (admittedly inexact with only 1 "hit") is close to 1 in 891.

At the other schools in the district, the frequency runs from about 1 in 47 to 1 in 121. At the best public H.S. in our area (not in our district), it's about 1 in 14, and at the best private school in our area about 1 in 4.3.

This is a dramatically larger spread than I would have guessed from looking at reported ACT averages.

Bottom line, it seems the average kid at our H.S. will be a perhaps moderately weaker than at some of these other schools, but the elite group will be MUCH smaller.

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Interestingly, within our district, despite the large difference in NMSF frequency across high schools, the general curriculum should be similar, funding levels and the like should be similar, and the G&T offerings and the like are similar. (There are some small difference that are more at the practical/implementation level.)

But this NMSF info makes me wonder a bit more about peer influences. According to my wife, aspirations of many parents at our school are to get their kids into our state flagship university (NOT a quasi-elite state U. like Cal, UVA, Mich.) Not surprisingly, we are aiming much higher...

Athletics seems a focus for many kids and parents, not so much on the academics.

That said, our kids have friends, and there are at least clusters of bright kids that our two older ones hang out with.

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Anyways, I realize intelligence and learning is not a process of osmosis. Having our kids at a school with a higher frequency of NMSF will not automatically improve our own kids' learning or make them NMSFs.

But, I also think being in an environment with a higher percentage of fairly elite students might help them internalize higher goals for themselves, would give them more gifted peers to interact with, and might at least subtly encourage the teachers of the challenge classes to aim higher with material and pacing.

It's kind of a "feel" thing, I guess, and like many, we're balancing a lot of trade-offs in education.

Thoughts?

Welcome to the board. Given your kids ages what triggered the sudden realization that something different might be needed?

As to gifted peers, the higher value would be in the chance that there may be kids like yours to make friends with similar interests and level of development. As to the context of ratios of NMSF, I'd think the most important academic influence would be on having enough students with a higher ability that teachers are more inclined to teach towards the top rather than the bottom or middle.

The other thing that you want to be aware of-- and we're in a small but high-achieving town with just two high schools, BOTH of which regularly produce NMSF's in fairly large numbers-- is that such proxies are often less about gifted children and more about ideally intelligent ones who have parents at the sweet spot in terms of support/push/expectations/involvement.

That can produce not only high achievement across a wide swathe of the student population... but also a LOT of helicopter/high-maintenance parents.

Unfortunately, if you have a kid who is the real deal (150+, not about 130 and ideally advantaged), you don't have a choice but to be an active advocate with the school to get basic educational needs sort of met... and if you're in a larger CROWD of parents making those phone calls, it is all too easy to get labeled "typical" parent who is after {insert topic du jour} for his/her special snowflake.

We've run into this the few times we've tried to do much of anything with our local schools. They have rigid rules intended to PREVENT parents from getting what our DD truly seems to need. If that makes sense. They actually mean well-- and a lot of it is intended to prevent parents from overzealously pushing their kids too hard. Which they do. The other thing that both of our local high schools are known for is not so awesome... mental health hospitalizations and suicides.

Lots of parents with terminal degrees, lots of bright kids, and lots of pressure can produce a profile of "high achievement" that it virtually indistinguishable from "loaded with MG+ kids."

Re: what triggered the realization

I've been concerned for a while (first concerns before my oldest entered Kindergarten) that our schools were not optimal. We've muddled through in various ways, and because the other options have their own drawbacks.

Recent concerns have been heightened in part as a result of some testing and discussion about subject acceleration that has not gone as well as I'd like.

Anyways, as I said, I thought our schools were at level X relative to stronger alternatives, where X was a moderately negative value. Further research (including looking into the NMSF situation), leads me to estimate that, at least within the subsection of gifted and highly motivated students, relative discrepancy may be larger than I'd thought...

Despite being one of the largest high schools in the state, our local high school consistently produces ZERO NMSF's.

We really like the small private elementary school nearby but we plan to move when our kids are older.