Please excuse the intentionally provocative title but I wanted to get as many as possible to read this and share their thoughts.

Every gifted meet up or program that I have taken my DD10 to has had way more boys than girls. When I look at even the AMC8 I see that boys are excelling at a much higher rate than girls.

Even this site has way more 'ds' posts than 'dd' posts.

I have always believed that girls have the same potential as boys but the empirical evidence just is not to be seen any place that I have looked.

Is this an Oedipal thing where mothers are favouring boy children? Is this a male conspiracy? Is it cultural bias in that Asians definitely favour boy children and Asians tend to be over represented in any gathering of the gifted? I don't know and would appreciate help finding answers.

I am asking this because I am trying to find peers for my DD and it hasn't been easy. My DD has been lucky enough to connect with some gifted girls (even a couple of DDs from this site) but the pickings sure seem slimmer for girls.

Would any here like to share their thoughts and offer advice to help me find more success in finding peers for my DD within 1-2 hours drive?

If so, I would be glad to hear them and the advice.

PS

I am not and my DD is not a snob about being gifted in the slightest. I just want my DD to see that she doesn't have to be a bimbo and that there are actually more girls out there than she thinks who like to think deeply and quirkily.

As to empirical evidence: I would say the definitive data that there is no distinction in distribution of IQ based on sex would be the norms for cognitive (IQ tests) and achievement assessments, which are all sorted by age, but not sex, because the statistical analyses do not support separate male and female norms (at least for IQ <= 150, which should cover enough GT individuals, as numbers above that are too rare to affect the norm tables).

My data-free speculation is that GT girls may be more successful at masking/"passing", which reduces the likelihood that they will show up at GT-specific meetups. On the average, girls are also more likely to express their poor instructional fit with internalizing, non disruptive behaviors, while boys (as a generalization) tend to be more likely to express it with externalizing, disruptive behaviors, which increases their chances of being identified as -something-.

My own anecdotal observation is that girls who are smart are fine-- girls who are TOO SMART, on the other hand, tend to be not fine, socially speaking.

Girls are still (culturally-- and this is something that is also seen in transplanted cultures that otherwise produce gifted girls too) cautioned to be "modest" and "gracious" and "socially nice" rather than "bossy" or "aggressive" or other things that are seemingly okay for boys to be/do. Girls are taught, from a VERY young age, that making other people comfortable is THE job for them, socially. They learn it well. Gifted girls have learned to hide by the time schools go about identifying them.

I hesitate to use the hackneyed term "patriarchal" but that does seem to be what it is, at the root of it.

That's my take. I also think that parents are more inclined to see passionate/assertive imaginative or excitable play as a "boy" thing, generally. In girls, it's seen as possibly ADD, selfishness, or just "flighty." They also get shunned by gender-conformist female peers if they have more androgynous traits/interests (and most hg+ people do), and quickly learn that there is a tremendous social cost to being themselves.

If you happen to have a highly gifted girl, the best advice that I can give is to let her know that while dumbing down in social settings is a valid CHOICE, and that you respect that choice-- there are down sides, too. The fact is, though, when they reach adolescence, it's a lonely place, being a gifted girl. The girls don't like you much because you're one of the guys, and the guys LIKE you because you're one of them-- and because you have cute friends and insight into what will work in dating those cute friends. You, on the other hand, get to be a sideshow freak-- a tremendous amount of fun to be around, but far too scary to date, unless you happen to find a super-bright romantic partner who isn't threatened by the possibility that they aren't the smartest one in the couple...

Most bright people have something of their own ego tied to being competitive and bright. The brightest of them very often have it tied to being "the smartest" one. This makes the teen years rough ones for little porcupines, needless to say-- and girls are so, so good at going along to get along, and oh my GOSH, how many times have I watched my DD feign utter ignorance in front of a group of peers or friends. Sheesh.

Humor is a good tool for "matching" with potential friends and dating partners. For my DD, it's THE trait that she uses as a screening tool. It's that important to her. It is also a shorthand way of assessing processing speed and global ability, too. Handy, that.

What I find an interesting model among the first-generation immigrant families that we know is the N. Indian/Pakistani/Persian cultural tradition (and maybe it's unique to the area in which we live, or it's a feature of immigrant culture). In those families, the girls are often encouraged to be VERY assertive, VERY bright, and to not hide it for anyone. That is the community in which DD has found female peers in the largest numbers, by the way.

It's just plain hard. If you accelerate, then your girl is years younger than her high school/college classmates, looking down the road a bit. On the other hand, if you don't-- she's not going to fit in much better for being a decade beyond her peers intellectually (and possibly emotionally/developmentally). There is no good fit until adulthood. That's the reality. I have a 16yo who is (developmentally) unwilling to date or hang out with the 18-20yo peers in her college cohort-- because they are immature. Her attitude about the college party scene is that she doesn't need to experience it to know that some things are simply a colossally bad idea. Her peers don't really see things that way. She's all about consequences and can generally see them coming a mile away. They won't be on par with her in that respect until they are more like 25. Her friends tend to be seniors, the serious and driven high-achievers, and grad students. She is quite lonely, though college is by far the best that it's ever been-- she does HAVE friends, and doesn't feel like she has to hide how capable she is the majority of the time, anyway. She still does things that freak her peers out because most human beings cannot do them-- but mostly others accept it as quirky, rather than alarming.

Sorry that isn't more encouraging. Smart girls hang out with smart boys-- because there aren't groups of smart girls who are willing to BE smart. Nowhere is that more true than in middle school, incidentally.

Here since there are pretty much no services that select by IQ rather than achievement kids aren't really tested unless there are other problems. Boys seem to have other problems more frequestly.

As aeh noted, there doesn't seem to be evidence that boys are more likely to be gifted than girls.

Our experience has been that certain types (most?) gifted boys tend to be such absolutely abysmal fits for the typical classroom environment that their parents can either decide they are delinquents-in-the-making/give up or go searching for what is really going on and find out that their child is gifted. As HK pointed out, most girls fit better into classroom environments and thus, while they may be suffering or developing unproductive habits/beliefs about themselves, they are less likely to wreak the sort of havoc described above re: boys.

I would keep trying gifted programs, camps, etc... whatever her interests happen to be, follow those to the levels that might bring gifted female peers there as well. We have seen a fair number of girls at a university's weekend program, but I do think they tend to be more concentrated in the art and writing workshops. Be sure to let her know that, although it may seem she's alone in her giftedness among female peers, they are out there. They are just going to be harder to find. In my own 40 years, I've come across probably a few dozen gifted females with whom I've personally "connected." Most were flying under the radar, or showing up as "overachievers" in a few cases. The latter were not really overachieving, just showing enough giftedness to do well at whatever the program, class, etc.

The highly gifted program in my district is almost 2/3 boys. I actually looked up data on this subject a year or two ago and found that above a certain IQ level on the CogAT (the test our district uses to identify), boys with very high scores far outnumber girls on certain sections, especially the quantitative section. Our district requires 98th percentile or above. They don't care much about non-verbal, but they want a high quanititative and verbal. So a lot of girls are going to get crossed off the list for the highly gifted program, even if their achievement scores are really high. In fact the data from our district showed that the girls achievement data and grades are higher than the boys, but it's the boys who are more likely to be id'ed as gifted and given specialized instruction.

I don't know why those with very high scores on the CogAt quant and non-verbal sections are more likely to be boys but I'm surprised that no one has made a fuss about this in terms of gifted selection programs and how widely the test is used. A lot of districts eliminate people for services based on one piece of data like the CogAT.

I have to admit that our core solution to this problem has been mainly other stems on the family tree.

I agree with others that identification is more likely if there is a poor fit with the current school environment - and that girls, stereotypically, are socialised to fit in with their peers better.

There's probably also an innate selection bias based on gender stereotypes. Here's a (likely boring) anecdote. I have 2 DDs who are school age, both very high achieving. The eldest is very good at literacy based tasks and has won a scholarship place to a much sought after school; the school is renowned for its very strong academic results in the later years but possibly is less rigorous at junior level than her current school. She's very good at music and swims competitively and this school caters well for this.

The younger has also been promised a place soon. She is also very highly achieving but the one we had tested as she gets irritable when under stimulated and is mathy. She's been allowed to move at her own pace this year and has finished 3 years ahead in maths, it's a co-ed school but she's easily the school's best maths student. She's at the top of her year for English as well. However, her lovely teacher warned me that each year I'd need to advocate for her to be appropriately extended and that, with her personality, DD would fail to thrive if not extended.

There is a gifted school in the area that we've overall rejected due to its limited sport and extra-curricular activities. In addition, it doesn't do any better overall in its senior level academic results. It does, however, let students work at their own pace at junior school level, and I've been worried that this is what my second DD needs.

I thought it wouldn't hurt to know my options so called the gifted school recently. The (male - I think it's relevant) staff member in charge of admissions confirmed that she'd meet their criteria and asked about her strengths; I said she was very mathy, very good on computers and, according to her teacher, top of the year in science as well. He sort of chuckled and said, "Well, she's the sort of girl who really would have been better being a boy".

I was stunned. And we certainly WON'T be sending her there. And it makes me wonder how many girls are subtly discouraged from displaying maths based skills because they're girls.

I have 2 DYS, one DD and one DS. I will say, off-the-bat, that male social relationships seem infinitely easier than female relationships.

madeinuk, I wish that you lived closer, because my DD10 really likes your DD.

I was as shocked as you are, though, when the ELA G&T classes were formed in DD's 3rd grade...and DD was a girl among many, many boys in the class! Actually, I figured with an ELA class, the bias might actually be tipped in favor the girls (I knew of more girl early readers, it seemed, than boys). Students were selected for the class, however, based upon a slew of tests. The tests included IQ, CogAT, Iowa, and MAP (among other factors). Apparently, boys did much better than girls on these tests (as DD was one of the only girls).

In advanced math class, which is EXTREMELY boy-heavy (and I DON'T think that they should let in girls just to even it out!), DD is typically paired with boys in group-work.

One of the reasons we went ahead and had DD fully IQ tested at the age of 8 (rather than waiting) was that we'd heard that girls can start to "hide" if testing is done later. Seeing the social pressures that have already started, I am very glad that we had testing done when we did.

DD has always been EXTREMELY independent and self-directed. She is not particularly susceptible to social pressure (so far). I can easily see a more sensitive female feeling the pressure to "dumb-down" and pretend to be interested in things that she is not. So far, DD doesn't seem to even attempt to fake being interested in things that she is not...which has a downside. She has always had, as HK astutely points out, more androgynous traits/interests. Until recently, she also spent a fair amount of time with boys (seems we've hit an age where that is getting more complicated...). Still, DD's personality DEFINITELY places her at risk for being labeled "too assertive," or other unpleasant things (sigh).

I think that HK's assessment is spot on. I do not believe that there are truly more HG+ boys than girls. I do wonder a bit about the tests themselves that identify, but I think that the bigger factor is probably social pressure on girls.

Luckily, DD has a very large class at school and she seems to have found her "people." We are bracing ourselves for middle school.

I also feel that HK's assessment ring true, particularly for my own childhood. I will add that my ODS lays it out as obvious while YDD is quieter, in part because DS was so much more obvious and talkative, and he's older. It's taken a lot more encouragement to make her see that he's not "smarter than" her, they just express it in different ways that aren't always obvious. I feel like she's concerned about being like him -- he's always felt different, and he mostly embraces that, and I don't think she feels comfortable with standing out. I see her potential for masking as super high. So far, she still has a strong independent streak, and she plays with boys and girls rather than a girly group (she's not into girl drama, which there is in other circles I know about from mom-friends), but I am so torn about how to support her. I think she'd be better off home schooled, but she loves people so much -- classmates entertain her.

Looking back to last year (1st grade), before I knew better, I feel like I respected DD's teacher and I thought she would stay on top of DD's needs. The teacher's passion is reading, which is fine, though I found out later that she was giving a boy in class math extension work (upper level worksheet packet, which didn't appeal to DD, who prefers direct interaction) but not DD (despite pointing out to me how intuitive DD was) until I mentioned that DD had totally withdrawn. It seemed like quite a blind spot to me. We had a huge setback in her love of math.

DD didn't consider herself particularly strong at math, because she said that boy was the math wiz in class. She's finally confident in math again and considers it her favorite at school, but now literacy has dropped to least favorite, because this year's teacher gives her math support (thanks to the report that really stressed this), but DDs verbal abilities are under-supported.

I feel like at our school there are a lot of advanced readers early on, while the district overall centers on math in their gifted extension (meaning, they offer an accelerated path in math, but only enrichment and differentiation in other subjects, with AP ultimately in HS). Even at middle school level, there's no advanced literacy class. The best way to work at a higher reading level is to accelerate a grade-level.

So girls being strong at verbal abilities are going to get the short stick, really, in terms of nurturing their high abilities. If you were just treated as a top-group reader, with slightly deeper reading material for in-class instruction, instead of gifted in verbal abilities, you might not feel as confident in your giftedness as the math wiz. It's as if the high verbal abilities are second-tier appreciated.

Nodding my head as I read through this whole thread. We started down this path back in grade 1 because school was not going well for DS9. His behavior wasn't great and the school told us to test him for ADHD. We thought the root cause was boredom but agreed that there was something else going on so we tested to learn more and discovered the world of 2e. We then tried differentiation for 2 years before giving up and switching school boards to be in a full time gifted program which has been great for him. 2/3 of the class is boys.

DD7 is totally different. We knew she was smart and she was doing well in school. Teachers seem to love her, she is compliant (at least as much as any grade 2 kid is), does her work and for the most part likes it. This year we had a brief blip where she started to check out mentally but that seems to have been mostly resolved now that they started differentiating more for her.

We tested her this year because we figured she would likely also score high but to be totally honest we probably wouldn't have if we hadn't been dragged down this path by DS and read everything that we have over the past 3 years and experienced the school's inability to deal with him. DS's reaction to poor educational fit was something that was hard to ignore. Her's is much more subtle and if we weren't looking would easily be overlooked. Most teachers have no clue what either of them is actually capable of if they were appropriately challenged. I'm hoping that she can join her brother next year at the other school. She wants to move but didn't want to do it mid-year. Hopefully she'll be accepted....

A very seasoned administrator in a local gifted school tells me that the number of boy applicants for their sought after gifted program far outnumbers the number of girl applicants. They require an IQ score of 135+ to be eligible for the program. She says that they drop many gifted boys from the applicant list and select girls who do not reach that cutoff just because they need enough girl students to keep a 50/50 ratio of boys and girls in their school. When I asked her why this was the case, she said that around 1st-3rd grades, the very gifted boys who are severely under challenged (as is the case in many of the local schools in my area) start showing restlessness, inability to control their impulsiveness, inability to cope with boredom etc which show up as "behavior issues" in the classroom. So, the parents of these boys come to the conclusion that gifted programs are necessary far earlier than the parents of gifted girls. According to this administrator, most HG/PG girls learn to manage their behavior well in any classroom setting (early maturity?) and read a lot to compensate for the lack of challenging education and have much more self-control in the typical classroom. She said that many parents of gifted girls realize that their child needed more challenges much later because they do not exhibit unhappiness about the school situation often.
This is certainly hearsay and it sort of matches my own childhood experiences and so, I thought I would post it here. None of it is scientific, just the observations of a person who has held a particular job dealing with gifted elementary kids for 30 years or so.

OP: statistically, there are as many smart girls as boys - if you asked my DH, he would say that the girls we meet at places where gifted kids congregate are more gifted and thoughtful than my DS. My son is part of a competitive chess program and there are more girls than boys at the younger ages. There is a math circle that my son attends and there are more girls than boys in the elementary circle. I attended a presentation for the local round of the Intel Science Fair and the local Science and Tech Championships and there were a lot of girls presenting a lot of very advanced science and technology projects. Just thought that you might want to try these options locally to see if your DD can meet more girls like her.

FWIW, I don't believe there are more gifted boys than girls, or that tests necessarily favor boys over girls (instead I defer to ash's note that test norms typically are *not* given based on gender.

I do think that what I saw in our school district in elementary school indicated children who acted out in class or appeared to have behavior challenges were more often tested and therefore found eligible for our districts' gifted programs than children who did not act out in class based largely on teacher referral. I didn't see that necessarily result in a high ratio of boys to girls here but can see that might lead to what looks like gender bias at times.


Are boys excelling at a higher rate or participating at a higher rater? One thing that you might be seeing, depending on the types of "gifted" activities you're taking your dd too, is a subconscious parental bias toward certain activities for boys vs girls - not necessarily IQ-related, but activity-related. Our ds was very interested in robotics for awhile, for example, and we saw way more boys than girls participating in robotics. This doesn't mean boys are by nature "better" at robotics than girls, but does indicate that somewhere, either among parents who choose and drive back and forth, or among the children who participate themselves, there are more boys than girls interested in pursuing that interest at that age. I'm a scientist, my ds is a scientist, we've both enjoyed STEM-based hobbies and interests and given each of our children a chance to participate in STEM-type extracurriculars, and our girls have, overwhelmingly and consistently, chosen other types of activities instead... even though both are strong in math/science in academics and have career aspirations in math/science. The just aren't excited about hanging out with the kids who are into robotics and chess club etc. And yes, they've tried both!


I'm wondering where you've looked other than AMC8 which you've mentioned above?


I realize you're just looking for answers based on very natural questions based on your personal experience, and likely influenced based on where you live (just a guess).. but fwiw, I wouldn't make the above generalization - that's really all it is, and definitely is *not* true among Asians I know (either in favoring boys over girls or in being over-represented in gifted gatherings).


What's worked best for us in finding peers was to focus on what our children liked to do, rather than focus on finding gifted-specific programs.


You're touching on issues here that impact non-HG+ girls too.. not just high IQ girls, especially as they approach the teen years. I'm not mentioning that to discount the benefit of finding ability-peers, just noting that it's an issue many moms-of-girls face, and an issue that might not disappear just because you find ability-peers either. Hope that makes sense!

Best wishes,

polarbear

I have seen all the issues everyone has shared above in my DD's life - and my own (I spent most of my life with male friends, until I became a mother in my mid-30s).

No question that boys in the wrong environment are far more likely to wreak havoc in that environment; girls instead tend to tune out, shut down, or try to support the environment, such as by becoming the teacher's helper. Boys are much more likely to make their problem everyone's problem, and teachers are thus far more motivated to seek a solution. Girls put on the required public face and force their problems deep down inside - at least until they get home from school, where their families often see the damage and breakdown the schools never witness.

A good example of this in practice: our board uses CCAT (CoGat) or WISC to identify gifted students, which research shows should produce a 50/50 split. However, the major source of identification is teachers, so the gifted classes in our board are in fact 2/3 boys.

Girls really do learn terribly young that acting out is not tolerated for them, though it is expected in boys. Culturally, we push girls hard to compromise, fit in, help others and make them comfortable, and not make waves. There's some incredible disturbing research I'll try to track down in which teachers are given kids' profiles and asked for their opinion of the child's needs. With no change on the profile except a name, teachers were way more likely to identify a boy as likely gifted and needing more academic challenge, but a girl as a behaviour problem needing discipline. Ah - found it: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02783193.2011.580500

Honestly, it's not all on the teachers, either. I see in parents a tendency to expect the gifted girl to find a way to make it work, while they are more likely to seek a new environment for a gifted boy. Girls are expected to behave, and then they do behave, and then everybody, parents included, is less likely to see them as having severely unmet needs.

On the math side, I also watch, with great sadness, friends with a highly-gifted girl who loves Minecraft and coding as much as my DS, being pushed by parents into what they see as more appropriate pursuits. I do think many parents, in ways both subtle and overt, provide much stronger encouragement and support for boys in computer, engineering, science and math than boys. Mathiness in a girl is cute, and means she should do well in school. Mathiness in a boy tends to prompt a more proactive response, that results in parents taking them to math activities and contests at a young age. Most parents would be horrified, though, if you suggested they were doing this. Just like those playground studies that found parents swore they treated their kids the same, but in practice were way more likely to encourage boys but not girls to take risks and persevere at physically-hard challenges. I know I treat my DD very differently than her brother, and I am always worrying - am I responding to her total lack of interest in math - or have I inadvertently encouraged it? Even just thinking back to the noticeable differences in the toddler toy collections among friends houses when we all had our first babies... or the shockingly different ways people spoke to and handled my friends' mixed twins... the conditioning starts VERY young.

I agree that girls aren't encouraged as much as they might be, especially in conservative families and geographical areas. My sisters-in-law were certainly made to feel less bright than their brothers. As one example from my life, when I was making my 12th grade schedule, it had 3 AP classes including math, as well as advanced-level language. I forgot to add science. I took it to the guidance counselor, and he saw the hole in my schedule and asked if I should add another class. His suggestion was home economics. Being me, I responded, "Look at my schedule. Don't you think physics would be a better fit? But I should take home ec. because I'm a girl, and my destiny is to become a housewife, not a scientist, right?" He turned red. The senior student helping him said, "She's right!"

Yes, one can correctly say that these are just anecdotes. But we sure have a lot of anecdotes on this thread, and I sure have heard/seen a lot of anecdotes in my time. Like the old math or philosophy of science books I read that talk about MEN studying these subjects and never (or rarely) PEOPLE.


My understanding is that there has historically been more variance in male IQ scores compared to female scores. When I searched the web for this idea, I found a lot of old data that showed that males outnumbered females in the lower* (<1 or <2 SDs) and upper (>1 or 2 SDs) ranges. Some of this data went back to 1932. Then I found this interview, dated 2012. According to James Flynn, female IQs have been rising faster than male IQs in recent decades in developed nations. In the interview (and presumably in his book), he talks about the effect of circumstances on IQ --- on everyone, not just women. Groups that have historically not been given opportunities seem to gain more when their circumstances improve. This would include females, minorities, historically poor families, etc.

The problem, I think, is that people can use variance in scores to make prejudicial or distorted assumptions: I heard that more [insert group Z] are gifted than [insert group Q]. That [group Q kid] over there can't be as smart as her parental unit is claiming.





Hmm. Definitely an obnoxious remark. He might have been trying to be funny (and failing miserably). I understand how it would be, ahem, rather offputting. At the same time, I don't think I'd reject the school because of one lame remark. The unfortunate fact of this society is that sexism persists. All our daughters are going to have to deal with it, and IMO, turning away from a potentially good school because of one bad remark could send a message to a girl telling her to avoid science and engineering.

At the same time, I would have written a very pointed email to the principal of the school and maybe even to its board of directors asking why the director of admissions made such an obviously sexist/tone-deaf statement and if the school had a policy of discouraging girls from entering STEM fields. Standing up to this sort of thing is the only way to end it. that said, if the director was being sexist and if his attitude represents the school, I wouldn't be in a hurry to send my daughter there, either. There is "standing up to something" and then there is "sacrificing your kid's mental health pointlessly."

*My current understanding is that males still outnumber females in the lowest 3% of IQs, but that this is due to hereditary diseases that affect IQ. Overall, these conditions predominate in males. They include conditions like fragile X syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, and etc. I'm pretty sure than Down syndrome affects more males than females as well. I also know that one of the more common of the female-only diseases (Turner syndrome) doesn't affect IQ.

Val, you make a number of good points about the distribution of IQ, especially those having to do with genetic disorders and cultural expectations. It's still a fairly small difference, though, and mostly measurable only at the tails. And the cultural aspect appears to be lessening, at least in industrialized nations.

Even in the historical data you mention from 1932 Scotland, the gender difference is quite small at +2 SD, which is where we generally draw the GT line (though some use +1.7 SD). And it certainly isn't a ratio of 1:2. (More like 5:7.)

More recent meta-analyses have confirmed the use of combined norms for males and females on cognitive measures.

There have been some interesting speculative discussions about lower variance among females than among males, possibly having to do with two X chromosomes vs one X chromosome (though the discussions I've seen don't fully incorporate X inactivation).

Here's the paper I read earlier (and mentioned earlier on this thread) on the CogAT. Basically what this is saying is that there is a large difference between genders in terms of students with extreme scores, especially on the quantitative reasoning section. So the boys have an advantage if the goal of the school is to pick out students who are scoring above, say, the 96th or 98th percentile. I think there is also a gender difference on other sections of the CogAT but not as extreme. I didn't read this again, thoroughly, but I don't believe girls had an advantage in verbal ability.

CogAT is not an IQ test, it's a cognitive abilities test, but this is still significant because so many schools use this test, or similar tests, to identify students as gifted or not. So if the school programs are flooded with gifted boys, and not as many girls, and they are offering services only to students with very high scores, this could be one of the reasons why.

http://www.auburn.edu/~jml0035/index_files/Lohman_Lakin_BJEP09.pdf

I have a hard time believing that the boys are referred for gifted services by teachers more often due to them being disruptive in class, because most teachers seem to refer the perfect high-achievers, thinking they would be successful in a gifted program. A boy who is off-task and always needing re-direction or discipline, would probably just be seen as a troublemaker, and less likely to be successful with advanced work.

Good point Val, re rejecting the school based on a possibly off-the-cuff remark. We'd 99% decided on the other school though, which really promotes maths skills (in both girls and boys) and also focuses on problem solving and lateral thinking. It also celebrates the whole "maths geek" student which will suit her, I think, as she is quite popular but only has one or two close friends. The gifted school has a reputation for great academic results, but not much else, and actually doesn't really do any better than our preferred choice. I'm just worried about the next few years of junior school, as our preferred school seems to have a low key approach to differentiation and I don't want to have to be *that* mother (but I will!)

Back to the topic:; my personal feeling (based on only two DDs with different talents) is that kids who are very good at maths are harder to extend without additional, more formal, extension work. My DD who is good at literacy based tasks has been reasonably happy being asked to write in more detail and in greater depth, plus she's always reading at home, whereas it's much easier to hit the ceiling of the year's maths tasks. So, maybe the math kids are entering the G and T programs in greater numbers than the ones who have literacy skills?

I'm not convinced that girls are inherently less mathy than boys but maybe this is more likely to be socialised out of them?

blackcat, in our school district, the referrals to gifted programs essentially meant a student left the classroom they were in for either part of the day or to transfer full-time to a gifted public school program - hence a student referred for gifted testing was potentially a student leaving a teacher's classroom, hence the referrals for disruptive students. This really only happened in elementary school, heavily so the first few years. There were also students who'd been referred for team testing for SPED - due to behavior - not for gifted program testing, that tested as gifted, who might never have been identified if not for the ability testing through the SPED referral.

polarbear

While it's possible that the school balances for gender, it was always roughly equal at my children's GT magnet with a slight overrepresentation of boys. When I asked about that, one teacher suggested that more boys are twice exceptional and have trouble fitting in at regular school and end up at the magnet.

I also think this is true. The interesting part for me is that I have a male child who is obviously gifted but not disruptive (good at self-directed work) and teachers have been very quick to notice and enrich him. (He is not quiet with his abilities but will not dominate, either.) There have been comments about how he's not "like" other bright boys. I think he has gotten a lot of advantages due to being both male and having a well-developed superego.

I would say definitely not. The distribution in our GT program (more high ability than true GT) is not noticeably lop-sided although I have not had my children definitively count the number of boys versus girls. In the school setting through middle school, I actually think more girls tend to stand out as high achievers. However, when you narrow the area of giftedness to math, then there are more boys who "achieve" at the extreme right tail at least partly because more of them participate. DS' math coach who actually has hundreds of students this year including a few that are nationally competitive did mention to me that female participation decline in middle school for students in brick & mortar schools but not homeschoolers.

I am not sure how extreme your DD's abilities are so my experiences may not apply. I can't fathom your bimbo comment at all as I know many many of DS/DD's female schoolmates are not bimbo-like in the least, even if statistically only about 10 of them are gifted in the top 2% sense of the word. Perhaps the problem lies partly in your environment? I would venture to guess that you are in a rural district or a tiny district or one focused on sports? The other issue may be that your DD is not as gifted in the verbal areas, which is where a higher percentage of GT girls tend to focus their efforts? I don't have any real advice other than pursue extra-curricular activities (not just math) beyond the school level. It seems that high ability girls can be found at high level (county/state/national) band/orchestra/clubs/competition activities.