Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Rich-Poor Divide Starts With Kindergarten

Deacongirl - I am on the iPad, so I'll have to try and find it later, but I've seen another study like what you mentioned, but it also showed that by high school the gains in the low income students had basically been erased, and they performed the same as their peers who had not attended preschool.

There are clearly a lot of factors that influence success in school - innate scholastic ability, available funds for tutoring/outside learning, parental support and expectations, and so on.

ETA- Here's one article about the success, or lack there of, in Head Start programs http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/jun/8/20050608-112533-9016r/

I've seen the criticisms of Head Start before--it seemed clear to me that the quality of the education was not sustained beyond pre-school. To me the take away wasn't that pre-school had no long-term impact--it was that appropriate interventions needed to continue beyond pre-school (see Harlem Children's Zone--yes, I am familiar with the criticisms of this one too...)

Val-I am on my iPad so I am not great with pasting and copying so sorry if it gets muddled .
I am not great at math but I know how to teach my kids how to learn. I am also resourceful and will find ways to help them when I am out of my comfort zone. I know I will get there sooner vs later with ds9. Yes I am well educated - formally and informally( parents) so I have a leg up on understanding how to find the resources- today Khan academy and others gives everyone access to additional coaching.
I also did not start reading in utero- however I know numbers of friends who did. I did read to them every day after they were born and start identifying numbers, letters, colors etc.... As early as I thought was right for each kid.

I agree that lower income pass on their education traditions too- that has a great impact on what happens to the kids. I understand what you are saying about how can they help their kids with work they don't understand- but the school is not responsible- if they get extra guidance then it is wonderful and an extra not an expectation. Most communities have options to get the extra help- but you have to want it.
There are a number of stories we have all heard about that demonstrates that kids can grow out of the lower economic strata but it generally has a background of a parent who was willing to do whatever it took to get the best for their kid. They understand the culture of educating their kids outside of the traditional basic education.

Ellipses- it totally frustrates me that special Ed gets more attention than gifted too but I can see how the schools have their hands tied right now and we have to be the resourceful ones- right or wrong. So I get the most I can for my kid at school and find outside sources for the rest. When he is ready to just do the accelerated classes instead of going to a normal school with his friends he will. I suspect around middle school when his quirks will not be so overlooked by his peers- until then we have a healthy balance. I think he will probably enter college early at the rate he is going- by a few years but he also wants to be a kid while he can- so I accept the schools for their limitations and spend countless hours researching, buying books and reading this site for options for him.

Yes, that's exactly it. Preschool is an important and necessary part of addressing the disparities, but we can't stop there.

Are you aware that not "everyone" has access to the internet at home or after school? That many poor students don't have an iPad or even an old desktop at home? And that many poor schools don't have enough computers available for their students to use them individually on a regular basis?

Relevant


Actually,the school *is* responsible. That was supposed to be the whole point of NCLB, which happens to now be the law of the land, as much as the methods chosen to measure and enforce that message may be flawed. Accessing "extra help" independently requires having the resources to take advantage of it (access to and money for transportation, time off work, ability to read the flyers advertising the extra help, ability to fill out the registration forms...). It is more of a challenge for some families at the bottom of the economic and literacy range to make things like this happen than many people from more comfortable circumstances appreciate. There is a reason why we hear stories about extraordinary parents and children who were able to escape these kinds of circumstances and excel: they are notable because they are rare.

My vision is of a nation where all children, including the highly and profoundly gifted, will be able to receive a "free and appropriate public education". I think it is important that we recognize the reasons why the current system is not working for everyone, so we can make changes that will benefit all children, including the gifted.

[quote=aculadyMy vision is of a nation where all children, including the highly and profoundly gifted, will be able to receive a "free and appropriate public education". I think it is important that we recognize the reasons why the current system is not working for everyone, so we can make changes that will benefit all children, including the gifted.
[/quote]

AMEN!

[This is in reply to epoh (#122832, today at 07:47 AM). Apologies to all for the length, but I think the role of evidence here is extremely important.]

It will help if we get clear on the claims we're arguing about.

Claim 1: Genetics has a strong influence on intelligence. I have not heard anyone here dispute this.

Claim 2: All other things equal, smart people will tend to be more upwardly mobile than less smart people. This also seems fairly uncontroversial. What is being disputed is how much influence this actually has in sorting people into socio-economic levels.

Claim 3: Factors that have nothing to do with a person's innate intelligence can exert a strong influence on the adult phenotype, resulting in people with low coping skills who will remain poor. This can occur even in people who might have a genetic predisposition to high intelligence. This is the claim I am making, and that you seem to be disagreeing with.

Okay, now let's look at the evidence.

Your first two sources are popularizations. If there are particular peer-reviewed studies cited in those books that you think speak to your claims, I'd be happy to take a look at them.

Your third source merely addresses Claim 1, which is not at issue here.

Your fourth source primarily shows that a chaotic family environment negatively affects school performance, which supports Claim 3. (It also has a secondary finding that there is a genetic predisposition that makes some people more vulnerable to that chaos.)

I'm not seeing any evidence in these sources for your claims that "it's not due to early access to pre-school, it's not due to race, it's not due to time spent reading with small children, or other 'early literacy' activities. All of those things have been show to have very limited impact on a child's education."

---------------

Now it's my turn. Evidence for Claim 3 includes the following. (I'm not going to do dig out all my references this evening, but please just ask if you'd like to see sources on any of these.)

- One of the strongest predictors of vocabulary in children is the complexity of the vocabulary that is addressed to them by adults before they reach school age. Unsurprisingly, that complexity of vocabulary of the adults varies dramatically by socio-economic status.

- Children who are expected by the teacher to improve a lot actually end up improving a lot, even when the teacher's expectations were experimentally manipulated (i.e. the experimenters lied to the teachers). And children they expect to stagnate end up stagnating.

- Racial stereotypes influence teachers' expectations of children. Stereotypes about SES influences teachers' expectations of children. (Don't think that's true? Just look at this thread.)

- There is a phenomenon called stereotype threat, where if you draw attention to a particular stereotype (women aren't good at math, black kids aren't good at academics, old people have poor memory), members of that group actually start performing worse than they otherwise would. Members of certain groups spend their whole lives being subtly and not so subtly disadvantaged by this phenomenon.

- Good nutrition in childhood not only affects body development, but also brain development. Even without actual food insecurity (which is more common that you might think) poorer children get poorer nutrition. Poor families often live in "food deserts," urban areas where there are no decent grocery stores for miles.

- Chronic stress has long-lasting negative effects on the brain.

- Serious levels of poverty are widespread in the United States. And yes, these are extremely stressful circumstances to grow up in.

- Less extreme poverty also has its hidden stressors. A family may have two cars (junkers, inherited from family members) that are neccessary to get the parents to their jobs, a cheapo pre-paid cell phone so they can contact their latchkey kids in case of emergency, and still get their electricity turned off on a regular basis because there's not enough money for the bills, and be one medical emergency away from bankruptcy.

(I hope I wouldn't need to provide evidence that school quality varies strongly by SES, or that low SES kids are more likely to be exposed to alcohol or drugs in utero, or that alcohol and drug exposure damages the developing brain, or that schools in poor neighborhoods have more violence which creates more stress.)

In short: smart genotype plus developmental disadvantages equals less-smart phenotype. Thus, smart genotype people may well remain in poverty generation after generation.

Especially if those smart people are at all 2e

Head Start is not far-reaching enough. Look into the results from the Perry Preschool project or the Abecedarian project.

This is a very interesting website:

http://evidencebasedprograms.org/wordpress/?page_id=11

"This site seeks to identify those social interventions shown in rigorous studies to produce sizable, sustained benefits to participants and/or society. The purpose is to enable policymakers and practitioners to readily distinguish the few interventions that are truly backed by rigorous evidence from the many that claim to be, so that they can use such knowledge to improve the lives of the people they serve. Although we support many types of research to develop and identify promising interventions, this site’s discussion is limited to the results of well-conducted randomized controlled trials, consistent with a recent National Academy of Sciences recommendation that evidence of effectiveness generally cannot be considered definitive without ultimate confirmation in such trials."

The problem is not that we have no idea how to improve things. The problem is that we lack the political will and don't want to spend the money.