Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy A sad realization last week....

My son started in the special education program. He had severe behavior issues and I am so grateful for every second of attention his special school district teachers gave him. It also helped him learn a great deal of patience and compassion when dealing with children who had a harder time with things that were easier for him. Now he's tested gifted, but I'll never forget those amazing people with SSD who helped my son and our family so much in the beginning.

Just a note, while his speech issue has stumped most teachers and even the speech therapist his SSD teacher can always get him to say the c or k sound. Even when we see her at the grocery store. ;-)

And as for the comment that SSD teachers have lower SAT scores. I just can't believe that knowing the wonderful compassionate & dedicated teachers I met. Perhaps I'm just fortunate in my school district who is committed to both gifted & special school options, but really I doubt it.

It is, unfortunately, true.

Irishmaggie, your experiences, however, would suggest that SAT scores alone are not a sufficient measure of who makes a good teacher. The qualities you mention, compassion, dedication, and I would add a huge amount of patience!, are also key characteristics, as well as the ability to explain things well to others, which does not necessarily go along with higher intelligence. We should be careful, I think, not to undervalue these characteristics by focusing too exclusively on SAT scores when measuring teacher skills.

I'd also note that average SAT scores for a given profession tell you very little about the intellectual acheivement of a given individual, and also note that it may be possible that some of the people who are drawn to special ed may be drawn there because they have struggled with learning challenges of their own, some of which can adversely impact performance on standardized performance measures without actually being an indication of lower intelligence, and so this could lower the average of the scores without necessarily indicating that special ed teachers are not as bright as teachers in other specialties.


So, the data have their limitations. But my personal experience with special ed teachers has led me to believe that there is a wide range of abilities represented in that profession, and I'm not entirely surprised that the mean of the profession's SAT curve is below the average for other teachers and for college graduates as a group.

On one hand I think a special Ed teacher would do better with gifted kids because, like Beckee said, (I think) "they worry more about shoring up the next skill that's missing than about the diagnosis (or presumably the syllabus). In other words they're likely more practical. On the other hand I like when I read about proving gifted kids with teachers that actually Really know their subject. That's just not an option in every area of the country.

That's inaccurate, and completely out of line.

How so?

Let's take the example of a young person who becomes a Physician.

They not only work long hours, heal the sick, take on pro bono cases, but they are then pushed into a very high tax bracket. And probably carry very high student loans. All that hard work and debt and worry for what? They even put off having kids until their late 30s. When they marry, they marry another doctor or similarly skilled high wage earner. Now they both get hit by the marriage penalty. Again, a stable family carrying an even higher load. Then, on top of that, they are demagogued as not paying their fair share.

What is fair about that?

Its not. And its not out of line.

This is what awaits those with high ability who strive and follow the rules.

Add in how they were probably ostracized in school, or worse, for being smart. How they were ignored by public schools or worse.

So why strive? Why give a flip or even try if you are smart and ambitious? A smart kid will figure this contradiction out pretty quick.

I think this is a major source of the angst a lot of GT kids feel. Society as a whole sends a very mixed message on whether it is good or not to be smart and ambitious.

The statement is inaccurate, or at the very least overgeneralized. My personal experience = husband with a PhD in high energy physics, highest tax bracket (through hard work, not inheritance), and an effective tax rate in the teens.

The current tax laws are not set up as some kind of punishment for high IQ, but they do punish hard work by taxing income earned for labor at a higher rate than the tax rate on investments. Argue about double taxation all you like, but the result is that as income gets over about 500K per year, the tax rate tends to begin to drop, and it continues to drop and drop and drop. The tax system is set up in such a way that those at the very low and very high end of the spectrum have very low rates of taxation, while the masses in the middle bear the bulk of the financial weight. And as someone who has been in just about every tax bracket during this lifetime, it disturbs me how effective those at the very high end of the financial spectrum have been at turning the anger of many in the middle class against those who have very little. Personally I believe that (very justified IMO) anger should really be aimed at those with the finances to control the puppet strings.

However, Austin, you are correct that physicians, who tend to earn less than 500K unless they're in cosmetic surgery, do get horribly screwed for all their hard work. Hopefully getting rich wasn't their main goal when choosing that career.

Hard work does not necessarily equal money, poor does not necessarily equal lazy, and genius IQ does not necessarily mean high tax rate.

If I thought high energy physics Ph.D. could obtain "highest tax bracket", I would have probably pursued that rather than a legal career. But we all make financial assumptions when strategically planning our career arcs.

In fact, that would probably be much easier for me than law, being that it was actually an area where I had actual talent.

In fact, given what I know now, I would basically never have made any of the major life choices I made. But that's life. You only tend to know how to make choices, or what those choices really mean, when it's too late.

Physicians are relatively secure due to the structure of their guild.

I'm naive but I really think personal happiness comes from pursuing the things you love, both personally and professionally. If you want to be a high energy PhD in physics, go for it! I love being a physician, so the long hours and all of that didn't bother me.
I do think that if you are ambitious and have some talent, as most gifted kids probably do, the sky is the limit!