Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Serving the Gifted book... Thoughts?

According to your logic a score on an IQ test should not convey much information either, because it too is affected by the variables you mention. In fact, even a child who usually gets adequate

- sleep
- exercise
- healthy food

might take an IQ test on a day when she recently had not gotten enough sleep or eaten much (maybe reduced appetite due to illness). School grades represent work done over an extended period of time and average out some environmental noise but of course not stable features of the environment. They also average in noise from variable and sometimes arbitrary grading standards of teachers.

Indeed. This is a feature of IQ tests that is well-supported by evidence.


School performance does not average out any "environmental noise" that is pervasive and omnipresent. If a child is regularly not getting the support they need from their environment, they will continue to underachieve.

For illumination purposes, I suggest you seek out an online forum where highly-involved and caring parents regularly discuss the lack of support in their schools and communities for gifted children, and all the negative consequences that can come from that, including underachievement. I'm sure you can find one somewhere.

And then consider what happens when parents are not highly-involved and caring.

Ah. So if we don't "blossom," we aren't smart anymore?

When do we make this determination, exactly? What if I'm 40- something (let's SAY) and haven't finished my novel yet (speaking HYPOTHETICALLY?)


Er, whoop de doo? I feel like we see this kind of lability all the time here. 10 points isn't a ton. I don't think WE take it as "Oh, now gifted!/ now not gifted" as much as we sensibly see that tests are imperfect and we need to look at the whole child and complete performance and other indicators. Why not think of it this way, instead of getting into this big thing about "Did you KNOW you can become UNGIFTED?? Huh, huh?" Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see his POV as being about developing the whole child, seeing potential, etc as much as I see someone trying to find a hook to sell a book with.

Someone who does well on an IQ test but never achieves anything may have been lucky on the day he took the IQ test and never have been that smart to begin with. He also may have had bad luck later on. Few people would find objectionable the related idea that someone who did poorly on an IQ test but later did brilliant work had his IQ understated by the test.

I take issue with the idea that one must be an "extraordinary achiever or performer," or one is therefore not gifted. Hogwash. There are a million reasons why one might not be such (LDs, poverty, abuse, racism, mental illness, bad luck, lack of desire to achieve in conventional ways, a wish to focus on other things...you yourself seem to think that gifted women's life focus should perhaps be on raising children). It doesn't mean the ability is gone.

It was also my understanding that the general wisdom was that one cannot "get lucky" on a long-form IQ test.

I think you have an oversimplified view of talent. Talent and the ability to achieve (in school or elsewhere) are far, far more than IQ. There are the factors Dude pointed out, but there are also personal goals, ability to get stuff done/sedulousness, and ability to fit in with others in a work environment who think very, very differently from the HG+ person.

Plus, while anyone with a high IQ can bomb an IQ test with ease, it's effectively impossible for someone with a lower IQ to get "lucky" and be able to remember 12 digits written at the end of 12 paragraphs that had to be read out loud, or draw the next pattern in a series of complex patterns, or get the analogy right if he doesn't know what the words mean. He might lucky on a couple questions, but not 30.

In the middle class suburb where I grew up, there were some kids in the gifted program in elementary school who were not taking mostly honors and AP classes in high school and who were not academic stars. They did not have big setbacks I knew of. There weren't dumb, and they went on to earn college degrees, but they did not present as "gifted" in high school.

Talent search programs typically allow you to qualify in
elementary school based on SCAT or Explore scores, but by middle school, good SAT and ACT scores are required to qualify.
Implicitly they are saying that early indications of giftedness need to confirmed by later results.

That you knew of.

Perhaps they had "checked out" of school by that point.

There is a difference between innate and unchangeable.

Some may agree with this and still hold that giftedness is innate; These are not disparate concepts.

Some may agree with this and still acknowledge that due to being an extreme minority (1-10% depending upon how one measures), gifted students (especially HG, EG, PG students) are an underserved population, and wish to focus on serving their needs. This does not preclude meeting the needs of all learners. By means of analogy, a group established to raise awareness of lung disease does not imply callousness or indifference to breast cancer or any other concern. Those in a lung disease awareness group ought not to have to apologize for their efforts, nor divert their attention to serving other causes out of an imposed sense of guilt or mistaken priority. Similarly, those advocating for an education which better meets the needs of gifted individuals ought not to have to apologize for their efforts or divert their attention to other causes out of an imposed sense of guilt or mistaken priority.

Flexible cluster grouping by readiness and ability, regardless of chronological age?

I hadn't encountered sedulousness until today, interesting concept, I might like to try it out some day.

How much of this discussion is real and how much is semantical?

And what the heck is potential? Potential to match person X's personal definition of success?

Since "gifted" has become overloaded, can we just go back to terms that people just seem to get like smart, really smart, and scary smart?