Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research "Learning With 'Stronger Peers' Yields No Boost"

Just glanced at this, but passing it along. Need to look at the actual study.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131211093926.htm

Yikes. I've always been suspect of educators who maintain the students need role models and that's why the gifted should not be advanced or placed in a clustered class.

However, this article's potential for misunderstanding worries me. I'm afraid its premise will be read as :there's no proven benefit for gifted education.

And if that were the case I would argue that it would be because very few gifted education settings really meet the needs of the students.

Well, but I think that IS what it suggests-- that if your reason for having a GT program is to "elevate" performance, then it's fundamentally a flawed program, because it has no demonstrable "impact" on students.

By extension, of course, it also suggests that (obviously) the argument used against ability grouping is deeply flawed.

But aren't GT programs about appropriate education for the children who need them, anyway? Hmmm-- yeah, I know-- not really, in a lot of instances. It's all about "measurable" gains now, but clearly this suggests that inappropriately high expectations are not really beneficial in and of themselves-- er-- at least not in elevating test performance.

I think this is like comparing two groups and asking "do vitamins make kids healthier?" by looking at illnesses and hospitalizations, however. In kids that NEED supplementation because of underlying medical conditions, the answer is unquestionably "YES" but in kids that just eat a lot of fast food, the answer is probably nowhere near as clear-cut as that. {sigh}

Yes, I see what you're saying.
There must have been a reason they chose to focus on the marginal students, but I couldn't really see what it was or what doing so serves...but now I understand it may mean gifted education is NOT doing what it should.

It is the kind of flawed logic that people often use about gifted programmes. Mostly they do extension which wouldn't increase scores in basic fields anyway. The fact the kids haven't dropped out, resorted to drugs to numb the boredom or killed themselves is actually quite a success. It is about appropriate education not test scores.

The linked article fails to make an important separation of two factors. Hopefully the actual research paper addresses this.

In a gifted/tracked class two things may happen.
(1) The peers are stronger.
(2) More advanced material is taught.

It is unsurprising if (1) has little or no effect. But surely (2) teaching more advanced material, should lead to more advanced learning, and higher test scores. I can think of various reasons why this may not be found in certain situations, but it is abysmal journalism that the difference between (1) and (2) was not addressed.

Yes!!!

Exactly-- and they aren't (well, except in the lottery magnet case) looking at students who probably have an unquestionable, clear-cut NEED for differentiated education to begin with.

89th percentile versus 91st... er...

not the same thing as 99th.

Looking at a group of kids in the 99th percentile that do (or do not) have access to appropriate education would be the really interesting study, but, as puffin notes, the endpoints that one would be looking for there look quite different, as well.

It's not about grade-level test scores.

Not for this cohort, I mean.

They chose marginal students because they wanted to compare like students in different environments.

So if, say, a school district has a G/T program in which a 120 IQ gets you in, they chose to study kids with a 122-120 (those that barely made the cut) and compare to those kids with a 117-199 (those that barely missed it). There's almost no difference in ability between the two groups, but one group got to sit with the best students in the school, and one didn't.

This study only says what happens for less-able students when placed with gifted peers. It says nothing about the gifted at all... it merely notes their effects on the other children around them.

DD8 provided a perfect example last night as to why she'd have little effect on a same-age learner, when she helped another 8yo with her reading. DD was too quick to give corrections whenever the other child stumbled, rather than letting the other child work it out on her own, and providing hints or suggestions. This prevented the other 8yo from learning as much as she could have otherwise, had she been working with an adult. Obviously, DD is no teacher... she's 8.

Thanks for your take on it, Dude. As always, insightful.

I believe that the point of the study was to see whether the curriculum had an effect on the children. It was not merely a question of whom they were placed with. The curricula themselves were different among the different groups. The curricula should have made a difference, but didn't. That is a massive failure. One group got a treatment, the other did not.

They did address the question of moving from the top of the class to the bottom of the class, and their conclusion was that the curriculum certainly did not overcome that, which is a huge problem. Those children are making big sacrifices--often leaving a social circle, sitting on a bus longer--to get an enriched curriculum. It's known they're giving up quite a bit. So if they're not getting anything from it, that is a problem.


That is not true.

They also looked at children who passed to G&T schools via lottery, and those who qualified but didn't get in through the lottery, controlling for initial test scores (which ranged well into the 99th percentile). This is in the LA Unified, which is huge and a mess. Lottery kids did not outperform their peers except in science.

I personally think this study is suggestive of a few things.

Firstly, it might simply be that a single year of acceleration is not enough to make a difference for math and LA scores. In our school district, they work one grade level ahead. But many children, at least until they hit Algebra, are at LEAST a grade level ahead, and I don't mean the profoundly gifted. I mean any child from an enriched background. Many school districts "spiral" and introduce concepts before making sure that every child totally gets them. The study would suggest that the gifted program is coming nowhere near these kids' capacities to enrich their learning.

I think that is totally plausible, considering that my daughter and most of her peers are about two years ahead in reading and math skills, but only 1% of them will get into the G&T program, which only works one grade level ahead, except in science and poly sci. (The assumption is that their critical thinking is advanced so they can do that.)


Well yeah. I mean if you're three standard deviations above the mean, or even one, you can PROBABLY handle a curriculum which is geared towards catching children up from four 'lost' years in which they had no enrichment at home.

But a second hypothesis might be that up to third grade, the lower-performing kids actually catch up, and the average classrooms see more accelerated learning, than they had been able to get to in K, 1, 2, when many of them are just trying to make up for the lost years of the poorer children. Plus you get a lot of learning-disabled kids out of the pool.

It seems to hold back the gifties too. My nephew in the NYC G&T program is having to learn jack this year because everyone is SO focused on getting the kids in attendance without strong academic aptitude through the state testing. They are being forced to work at the snail's pace of the slowest which is hardly what his parents signed up for.

My take-aways are theseand and
Possibly this is related to identifying gifted kids -vs- identifying kids for the gifted program. This is not just a difference of semantics; There is a clear distinction. Matching the program to the child -or- matching the child to the program.

Exactly!

Or in my unfortunate nephew's case, matching the program to children that shouldn't even be in the program.

this study doesn't say anything about the tests that were given. If it was a grade-level test, both of the groups would likely do well on it. But how do the kids placed in gifted programs do on ABOVE level testing? If you gave my DS a first grade level assessment he would probably make a couple of stupid calculation errors and score about the same as other "bright" children in the class who have had no advanced material given to them. But where the obvious difference would be is in ABOVE level testing, like if you gave the first graders a 3rd grade level test. DS would probably pass it or do fairly well, and the other children who looked similar to him on the first grade level assessment would probably flunk.

"this study doesn't say anything about the tests that were given."

The article doesn't but the study does--they're subject tests designed to assess the grade level at which the child is learning (i.e. which leave room to go above grade level).

This is evident in the science scores, in which G&T children did do way better.