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Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 1,898
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I think this is what you're referring to: Contrary to the myth that "every parent thinks her child is gifted," (whether he or she is gifted, or not) parents are highly effective identifiers of high ability in their children (Robinson and Robinson 1992); indeed, they are significantly more accurate than teachers, who are rarely trained in how to identify and respond to gifted students and who may not notice high academic ability if they present the gifted child only with work set at the level and pace of the average child in the class (Jacobs 1971). Read more: Gifted and Talented Children - Identification Of Gifted Children - development http://family.jrank.org/pages/711/G...ation-Gifted-Children.html#ixzz0keXKL0IfThis Robinson & Robinson paper is much quoted in support of the "parents who think their DC are gifted are almost always right" meme, but has anyone here actually read the paper? I haven't been able to get hold of it, but the closest I can come to a description of what's actually in it is this quote from Miraca Gross ( http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10124.aspx) Robinson and Robinson (1992) reported that almost half of 550 young children aged 2-5, who were volunteered by their parents for a longitudinal study of high ability children, and who were subsequently tested, had IQs of 132 or higher. I don't doubt that this is, as she says, "statistically remarkable" given how rare IQs of 132+ are - but this still means that more than half of the children concerned did not have IQs over 132. This is hardly resounding support for the accuracy of parents' identification... I have seen several other sources for similar claims, but I haven't yet found one that stood up to even cursory examination. E.g. Gross's book cites a paper from Gifted Children Quarterly (vol 18 pp202-09) which does indeed say that parents were effective at identifying gifted children - in the sense that most children who turned out to be gifted had been identified as such by their parents; but unfortunately, more than half of all the children had been identified as such by their parents! (So you could say parents were effective, but not efficient. Teachers missed more gifties, but they nominated far fewer children overall.)
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Joined: Oct 2008
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Good points and here's the link to the book it's in. Our library doesn't have it but I'll try ILL: Robinson, N.M. and Robinson, H. (1992). The use of standardized tests with young gifted children. In P.N. Klein and A.J. Tannenbaum (eds). To be young and gifted (141-170). New Jersey: Ablex. http://www.amazon.com/Be-Young-Gifted-Pnina-Klein/dp/089391956XHere's the Ciha, Harris, Hoffman and Potter study you mentioned. http://gcq.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/18/3/191Yes, it shows that parents tend to overestimate their own child's ability but it also shows the kindergarten teachers were only 22% effective and missed identifying many of the gifted children. This may be why some places tend to err on the side of identifying a larger pool in order to avoid missing too many of the truly gifted kids at an early age. Parents are obviously not infallible but they still do a pretty good job, especially if you consider over-identifying a lesser evil than under-identifying. Other info on parent/teacher identification: "Research continually confirms that parents know their children best (Silverman, Chitwood, & Waters, 1986). For example, Jacobs (1971) found that parents could identify 61% of their gifted kindergarten children. By contrast, their teachers identified only 4.3% of these children." Consulting with parents. Since about 80% of the parent population can identify their children's giftedness by ages four or five, a short cut to finding these students is to consult with parents. They have spent hours every day with their children over a consecutive number of years, observing them closely and interacting with them in a variety of contexts. In most cases, this makes them the most realistic predictors of their children's abilities and needs. In 60 years of teaching, counseling, and assessing gifted children, I have met few parents who wrongly judged their children to be gifted. Even in cases where children failed to meet the cut-off score for giftedness on the intelligence scale, they exhibited other signs of high ability, and usually demonstrated giftedness in some areas assessed (Silverman,Chitwood & Waters, 1986; Silverman, 2008). In the last 30 years, the Gifted Development Center has assessed over 5,500 children from all over the globe, brought to us primarily on the basis of parent referral. At least 84% of the parents who perceive that their children fit 75% of the traits in our Characteristics of Giftedness Scale [http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/characgt.htm] test above 120 IQ (Silverman, Chitwood & Waters, 1986; Silverman, 2008). This percentage increases when we include the parents of twice exceptional children, whose composite IQ scores do not accurately reflect the full strength of their abilities. Over 95% of the parents had children who demonstrated peaks in the gifted range in some areas. In actuality, parents have proven to be reliable and accurate identifiers of giftedness in their children (Robinson,2008; Silverman & Miller, in press).
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I don't doubt that this is, as she says, "statistically remarkable" given how rare IQs of 132+ are - but this still means that more than half of the children concerned did not have IQs over 132. This is hardly resounding support for the accuracy of parents' identification...
I have seen several other sources for similar claims, but I haven't yet found one that stood up to even cursory examination. E.g. Gross's book cites a paper from Gifted Children Quarterly (vol 18 pp202-09) which does indeed say that parents were effective at identifying gifted children - in the sense that most children who turned out to be gifted had been identified as such by their parents; but unfortunately, more than half of all the children had been identified as such by their parents! (So you could say parents were effective, but not efficient. Teachers missed more gifties, but they nominated far fewer children overall.) Ok, I'm playing devil's advocate here.  But we don't know the distribution. Maybe the other half were right below the 132 mark. Also some of those kids could be 2E and don't have their IQs show up well with testing. There's probably at least some of those kids that had a bad day too. Also... testing between 2-5 is pretty inaccurate so I'd think that you'd probably have a big problem with kids that didn't comply with testing.
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If we can all agree that gifted is a person who is in the top few percentiles in terms of ability, then the schools that identify 15-25%+ of their kids as gifted (all of my local schools do this) are obviously identifying more kids as gifted than are actually gifted. ...most or all of the parents whose kids are in these TAG classes believe that their kids are very gifted. Some of the parents whose kids aren't in TAG also believe that their kids are gifted; maybe some of them are since our TAG programs seem to grab the high achievers more than the underachieving gifted kids. If 20%+ of my local parents believe that they have gifted kids, some of them are obviously not good at accurately identifying their kids as gifted, IMHO. You could also look at the parents' mistaken beliefs another way. The schools say that as many as 25% of kids are gifted. This would correspond to an IQ at the 75th percentile, or ~110. This is pretty close to the mean of 100, and another 25% of kids will fit into the range between 100 and 110. So if you look at it this way, and especially if the schools are using academic achievement to measure "giftedness," it's completely reasonable for up to half of parents to believe that their kids are gifted. So, it's not that the parents aren't good at identifying giftedness accurately. It actually sounds to me like they're making reasonable judgments using the definitions given to them. So this means that the problem is actually that the schools are using improper definitions of giftedness. Just my 2c. Val
Last edited by Val; 04/11/10 12:56 PM. Reason: Clarity
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Joined: Mar 2010
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So if you look at it this way, and especially if the schools are using academic achievement to measure "giftedness," it's completely reasonable for up to half of parents to believe that their kids are gifted.
So, it's not that the parents aren't good at identifying giftedness accurately. It actually sounds to me like they're making reasonable judgments using the definitions given to them. So this means that the problem is actually that the schools are using improper definitions of giftedness. This would be even more pronounced if the school is using benchmarks that are below the average level of the children in the school, and all the parents are being told their children are 'above average'
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She may well be referring to the parents that have their preschoolers tutored so that they can get into the GT program (which is not unheard of in our school.).....Maybe I'm just venting my frustration here, but I think many of these bizarre rules are the direct result of pushy parents who insist on the best for their kids and know how to manipulate the school system to their advantage (and do not necessarily have gifted kids.)
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