Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion NYT opinion: No (rich) child left behind

See, I still see this as a Venn diagram which is being conflated to represent ONE group.

There are those with very high cognitive ability...

and there are those with "elite" educations.

Yes, there is significant overlap in the two groups. But they are not identical.

C'mon... how smart do you actually have to be to get a 2300+ score on the SAT your fourth or fifth time out, at 18 years old, after four years of daily tutoring for that test?

Apparently smarter than people like these:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57348498/the-perfect-score-cheating-on-the-sat/

I'm guessing that yes, if you look at PERFECT scorers, then yeah, those people are probably all MG+. But the top 2% of scorers? I'm guessing that a fair number of those people are instead in the IQ >120 range, which is a far cry from "the intellectual elite."

There is also the fact that there are many OTHER correlations to be made re: "the elite" as well. Not-so-savory correlations. take a look at how many executives would qualify as having serious personality disorders--



Board, Belinda Jane; Fritzon, Katarina (2005). "Disordered personalities at work". Psychology Crime and Law 11: 17

This startling finding is (apparently) even MORE striking when examining high level executives in finance and politics, many of whom apparently could readily be diagnosed as sociopathic using clinical criteria. (Again, I've seen studies, just no time this morning to dig them out.)

Anyway. I think that conflating the two groups (elite education + success and elite cognitive ability) is merely correlation fallacy on some level.

Yes, OF COURSE one must be more than average levels of bright and motivated to achieve that kind of success (material and status based)-- but "genius"? What are we calling "elite" there? Probably not as helpful as other traits, honestly.

Where are all of the introverts in that model of gifted people running the world? Those introverts sure aren't CEO's. And yet introversion is actually slightly MORE common among HG+ people.

(I'm pulling this from Linda Silverman-- too rushed this mornign to look up the original references, though I know they exist)

But I can also see how that is incompatible with traits which are absolutely essential to the competitive, driving mindset necessary for success as defined upstream in this thread.

Again, the sorting is ABSOLUTELY not a perfect proxy for "elite schools = higher IQ." The assumption is that everyone who COULD go there would, first and foremost, which is untrue. People of high cognitive ability choose all kinds of colleges for all kinds of irrational and rational reasons-- not the least of which is that many introverted HG+ persons do NOT see a life of interpersonally competitive professional interactions as "rewarding" in any way, shape, or form. Secondly, recall that the SAT averages really are only that-- and without a standard deviation associated, are virtually meaningless. What percentage of people at Harvard scored below that average, hmmm? Right. HALF. And maybe a few of them well below it. We simply don't know. It's entirely possible that the population of Generic Prestigious Institute is actually composed of two distinct groups--

a) kinda bright, but economically highly advantaged and therefore paying FULL freight... so lower test scores are entirely acceptable, and

b) VERY VERY bright, but requires a bunch of financial assistance because of low SES of family.

Basically that would be the two extremes. The latter group is going to skew the average higher, and the upper limit, of course, is "perfect" SAT scores, which a good many-- maybe even "most" of them are entirely capable of on a reasonably good outing. Then there are all of those somewhere in between, most of whom skew high on testing-- but as noted before, those with highest SES have the most advantages in securing the kinds of GPA's and test scores that show to absolute BEST effect whatever raw cognitive ability that they actually possess.

So circle back to my initial hypothesis. The SAT just isn't that hard. Nor is high school material. It's just hard for most people. ANYONE with cognitive ability in the 120+ range ought to be able to look more or less identical using those measures, providing that they were highly motivated.

Given that, I'd also argue that that may be the real sorting mechanism at work in elite admissions-- motivation.

It should come as NO surprise that the "elite" are highly motivated people. That they are disproportionately 'driven' types, personality-wise. I can see why it would be nice to believe that those running things are "earning" those positions through their superiority rather than through uneven advantage or selection based on some personality traits and not others, but I think personally that such a conclusion isn't entirely defensible given the evidence at hand.

Ultramarina, I'm aware of those findings but I've never understood - are the experts thinking that the poor tend to talk less because they are so overworked and focused on the next meal or because they just have less to say, don't have as much knowledge to pass on based on their own educational experience, or something else? Is this something people can be taught to do more of or are a lot of the conversations held by the affluent business people about topics that people without a decent education would struggle more with.

I am thinking about all of this as a person who grew up around poverty in an advantaged home and when I see the difference between how my husband, who has no experience with children but is highly educated, talks to our child and to see friends I've known forever talk to their children, I think it could be simply that people who know more pass on more. I think that it's likely that that when you fail kids today in terms of their education it probably gets passed on for generations because of this. I'm really interested in this subject, it seems so important.

I can agree that this is true. To what extent the effect is one versus the other is not at all clear, however.

If it is mostly the former, then that is a problem (societally). Given rising wage disparity, it's a very real concern, however, that such a thing is becoming more and more true... or at least that it is the case that relatively few children of the lower 2/3rds of the SES can seem competitive with the children of the top 1% of it. Not because of innate cognitive differences (which would be fine, if true) but because of a lack of opportunity and measuring methods that are only proxies for high cognitive ability.

That is, if EVERYONE were IQ tested using the same unimpeachable tool-- one which could not be "coached" or "studied for" and which ACTUALLY reflected whatever it is that we can consider truly "high cognitive potential" and not some imperfect proxy of that elusive trait-- THEN we could make these kinds of comparisons and know precisely the contribution of other factors.

But we definitely do not have that situation; not even remotely.

It seems to me that high educational attainment COULD represent some underlying (heritable) trait-- such as curiosity, verbal learning style, etc.

High educational attainment, of course, is also a loose proxy for higher SES, too.

But maybe the underlying mechanism is about language enrichment in the birth-to-four age range. That would explain outliers in both the high and low SES groups (that is, impoverished but highly educated immigrant groups with VERy high achieving children, and the occasional 'Superior Snooty-Highhorse the seventh' legacy kid with high sense of entitlement as a defining characteristic).

That's entirely consistent with the premise in the original editorial I posted.

Another thing that I wonder-- and this is another thing that correlates highly with SES and with language, probably-- is childcare environments.

That is, do children who have parents or other caregivers in very low child-to-adult ratios wind up better off? They do, right? So what kinds of childcare settings are mostly available for people at the lowest end of the SES? Not that kind. They have childcare settings for infants and toddlers that mostly resemble feedlots for human children. Not very enriched in the ways that apparently matter most-- hearing a wide variety of language used by real people around them.


ETA: Oh, and the other thing that occurs to me now that I hit post--

the curve may be obscuring this trend if I'm right because above a certain point in the SES, it is possible for one parent to forgo income in order to parent full-time. In highly educated parent-couples, that is a real zinger, because you're cutting the income of the household effectively by over 1/3, and in some cases by half.

That means that there are households in the middle two quartiles who are there by CHOICE, not by circumstance, and for most purposes, we don't really belong there, but in the upper quartile instead.


Skews things, that. It'd be really interesting to see what emerges when you tease apart HOUSEHOLD income with 'major earner' incomes.

Hmm.

I'm not sure the topics have been shown to matter very muc. BUt yes, people can be taught to do more of it. Here's another NYT editorial about THIS research: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/ Allow me to say that I find the accomapnying illustration rather vomit-inducing. I can't tell if it's supposed to be satirical!



One thing I always find fascinating is the vast gap between what different people know about what you are "supposed" to do with your baby and child. This comes up a lot with my friends, who find it repulsive and abhorrent that my state's public pre-K system teaches colors, letters, counting, etc. "They all know that already! It's drilling and killing! The children should be playing!" Yes, well--they should be playing a lot of the time, but the thing is, while you have been teaching your kids this stuff since they were born and they DO already know it, some kids have not gotten this foundation and need to catch up. I know it may seem impossible, but it really is true. Likewise, some people really do not talk to their babies and toddlers much other than to tell them to stop, put that down, etc. Not because they are bad parents. They may just not have gotten the cultural message that one is supposed to do this. My SIL is from China and was living with my parents when she had her first child--my mother has told me that she did have to tell her to talk to the baby. You also engage with children less and talk to them less when you are depressed, and depression is more common among people who are poor and struggling.



Actually, depending on SES, children may be better off in daycare. Daycare really hasn't been shown to be negative. It seems to be neutral as a whole, with positive effects for children whose home environments aren't great and a few slightly negative socioeotional effects for UMC children with good home environments. On the whole, however, you don't find studies that prove that daycare harms children, at all. Obviously, an abusive daycare is bad.

Wai agrees with you that the SAT should be made harder so that it can better identify the brightest high school students.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstein/201207/the-sat-is-too-easy
The SAT Is Too Easy
Why selective colleges should require the GRE
Psychology Today
July 29, 2012

That's an interesting point.

Regarding the language development topic and the relevance to achievement, I am wary of the fundamental importance. In light of the adoption studies that have been performed, we know to expect the importance of environment to be exaggerated in childhood.

Also, I read through the page that ultramarina linked, and I noticed discussion about low SES families that were highly talkative, and high SES ones that weren't. It made me wonder: did they give the parents IQ tests?

Good question, DAD22. I don't know. I'd like to see the original research.

Right-- and the consequent weighting of enriching, interesting, and unusual extracurriculars that is currently going on vastly favors those at the highest levels of SES. Because those are the students who CAN do things like spend a summer interning (at their own expense) in the Galapagos, or similar things. As opposed to working at a dead-end fast food job over the summer because that's what you need/are able to do based on transportation, costs, and family obligations. Note that I'm not faulting those parents who CAN and DO give their kids such glorious opportunities for doing so. I'm faulting a system that weighs those things as a part of determining which students have the best merit.


This certainly means that the system as it currently stands isn't as meritocratic as it probably should be, which is why I'm a bit suspicious of conclusions based upon who winds up in highly selective colleges.

The kids least likely to wind up there are in the VERY lowest levels of the SES, but also those who are above the poverty line, but not by much. The reason is that for the one group, they simply can't imagine the ocean because they've never known anyone who has seen it, but in the second group, they know it's there, but they also know that $$ will never allow them to attend, and things like Questbridge also don't exist for those kids because their family incomes are just slightly too high.

It's a weird patchwork of factors that favors a low SES "sweet spot" for some lucky (very) high ability kids.

But here is why colleges love the SAT. It isn't that it measures cognitive ability, for which it is generally not that great an indicator in the late-high-school cohort.

It's because it predicts first year RETENTION so well.

Now, retention is a big issue because colleges do NOT want high attrition rates. They have a vested interest in graduating each and every student that they admit.

That's not the same thing as selecting for the "best" students. Not at all.

Because some of the "best" students come with baggage that prevents them from succeeding in collegiate settings. That baggage could be disability, could be socioeconomic, could be (and often is) about lack of family supports. Colleges don't really care what the reasons are-- they just want to be able to sort out which kids are going to be back for years 2-4 (5, 6).

The SAT is a pretty superb tool for doing just that. Those who make great scores may not be the "very brightest" but those scores do indicate that they are either possessed of many OTHER advantages that lead to college success (family supports, etc) or they are incredibly bright and incredibly determined.

From a college's perspective, those two groups are completely equivalent-- at the undergraduate level, I mean. Both are quite low-risk.