Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion A bone-headed NY Times editorial

I think it's wrong to effectively punish children for their parents being productive. And think of the logistics -- should an application to a public high school really require something like the parents' tax returns? To truly estimate "privilege" from household income you would need the income history since birth.

Smart people earn more, and since intelligence is highly heritable, rich people have children who are on average smarter than poor kids. Any regression of test scores on income is picking up this effect as well as the ability of affluent parents to provide a better environment. How do you separate these two effects?

Murray has deliberately avoided the topic in his books after co-authoring The Bell Curve, so that people would consider his other ideas.

Difficult, yes, but possible if there's a will to do it. They'd have to start by offering a standard curriculum city-wide in the lower grades and providing schools or programs for gifted kids in each neighborhood, and they'd have to provide seats for every kid who scores in, say, the top two or three percent for that neighborhood. Just by guaranteeing seats, you ease some of the competition strain. You might also ease other strains, too.

Then they'd have to be very secretive about the contents of the exams. CTY takes this approach with its SCAT exam, and so do the people who make the Miller Analogies test. You can get enough information about each exam to understand the format of the test, but nothing else, really. They don't really release previous exams, and this cuts down A LOT on how much you can prep for these tests. I believe that it's generally agreed that you can't really prepare for an IQ test either (apart from learning tricks to remember number sequences?).

But again, I think what they really need to do is provide a seat for any child who qualifies. Not to mention that they also need to pay attention to the ones who were close, but didn't qualify.

The standard IQ tests such as the WISC and Stanford-Binet exhibit large group differences, and the NAACP lawsuit is prompted by large group differences in admissions to NYC exam schools. So your suggestion above to use g-loaded tests that are difficult to prepare for -- effectively IQ tests -- would not solve the "problem".

That was only part of my suggested solution. The other part was to establish schools or programs for gifted students in each neighborhood. This would also cure problems related to commuting long distances to get to one of a very few schools.

Regardless of whether or not you believe that IQ varies among different ethnic groups, it's irrefutable that there's always going to be a top 2% or 3% in any group. Kids in this group need their own instruction compared to the group they're in, regardless of the scores of some other group on the far side of a gigantic city.

The real problem in NYC is that a large percentage of the regular public schools are apparently completely terrible and are failing to actually teach children. This leave parents with only a few options - private school (most cannot afford), a charter school (way, way more students than spots) or try and get your kid into a gifted magnet.

Until the 'regular' school system starts doing it job, the 'problem' in NYC will continue.

Why is no one responding to this? It seems like an important criticism to me. I don't know what this test is like, but if what it's looking at is, for instance, skills that can be easily prepped for if you have the bucks, but that are quickly forgotten and don't predict anything meaningful...well, I'd say that's problematic. Wouldn't you?

Whatever can be said about the SAT, it's been shown to predict college success pretty well, IIRC.

This is true, but I don't know what it has to do with this particular issue.

You still should't be tossing the people with IQs (or whatever intelligence-learning thingy you use) of 120 into the same place as people with IQs of 150.

It's dumb to deal with ethnicities and races because they don't really exist as bright lines.

We need to be looking to individual families.

Again, Apple. Fall. Tree.

When I'm dealing with families with a solid history of mental retardation, I'm much more likely to take a case of their brother, cousin, etc., because I know that there's a good chance that I will get mental retardation out of *that* case without too much effort.

Not because of their race, but because of their family tree.

(And if not that, I can at least score some really low adaptive function. Winning! $$$$)

I had wonderful SAT scores and eventually gave up in college, resulting in C's, D's, and F's.

We really need to start giving scholarships to people who would actually benefit from them.

Some of this might have to do with coping and social skills deficits, which was apparently my problem.

Sample SHSAT exams appear in the Specialized High Schools Student Handbook http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/1F19F679-EAAB-4372-A6C7-E89E951E8C6C/0/201213SHSHandbook.pdf . The SHSAT does not look so different from the SAT.