Although my elementary school took me out of K and put me in 1st grade, so I was advanced a year throughout my education, school was mostly boring. I was a compliant child, though, so I did my work and then sat in my seat and read. My sixth grade teacher caught me reading between writing the words on a spelling test -- she thought I was cheating at first.
I got A's and B's in middle school and high school without doing any real work or learning any study skills to speak of. At that time students were allowed to take community college classes after their sophomore year in high school. I went to the local college that summer and took Algebra II in 6 weeks, got an A, and continued on to precalculus at the HS the next year. My senior year the HS had no math class for me to take (this was before the proliferation of AP courses), so they stuck me back in with the precalc class, gave me a calculus book, and said, "Study for the AP test." I did this on my own and scored a 4 on the test. Despite my self-acceleration in math, not one person at the high school took me aside and said, "You know, you're pretty good at math. Let's see what you can do with this to get into a good college." I didn't even fill out the scholarship application for the local grants and scholarships, because I thought I wasn't good enough -- I didn't have the long list of activities and community service that the more engaged students had.
I went to the local state college and still had plenty of time to read and work part-time while completing my classes with mostly As. The first time I finally ran into something that was very difficult for me to learn was in my third-year college math courses, and by then I had no idea how to approach learning something really difficult. I struggled to get B's.
Now I teach math at a community college. I have twin sons who are HG and 20 years old. Even though I advocated for them in their education, they were also not challenged enough in school -- although they handled it differently than I did, having completely different personalities. They just quit doing any work, starting in 8th grade, except in classes that interested them (music, drama), and graduated from HS by the skin of their teeth. They no longer have any interest in academic work, although they are highly curious about the world, and will delve into topics of interest on their own. They are using their abilities in creative work with music. They are looking for a higher education program that will foster this work, but not force them into what they see as meaningless (and boring) general education courses.
I know this is long, but I think it is pertinent to the discussion -- our family is an example of how the system has failed two generations of gifted students. (But we would count as successes for NCLB -- all of us got high scores on standardized tests and graduated from HS.)
