Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education The poor neglected gifted child

By that standard, my kids earn a living wage, then. Each of them gets around $200 - $300 per year in gifts and as payment for doing extra chores. They can pretty much buy anything their little hearts desire, within reason (DS13 was dismayed to learn recently that he couldn't afford the drone they sell at Barnes and Noble).

The solution must just be to ensure that no one ever moves out of the parental home.

The problem is intertemporal discounting and the fact that political will exists on a 4 year cycle. There's no will politically to develop a coherent human capital investment strategy because revenue generating ability isn't linked one-to-one with voter head counts.

I agree that the opportunity costs aren't being fully considered--not even close. There is a large fiscal multiplier on disruptive innovation, the kind that is disproportionately in the hands of the most cognitively able. But it's easy to argue away because those gains will only be realized a generation or more away, while the cost of social assistance is more palatable and imminent.

There are perverse risk appetites at play. That society chooses time and again to bankroll the least able students tells me we're an excessively risk averse society when it comes to education. We don't trust today's most able students to provide a greater opportunity set in the future. Yet we continue to borrow heavily against the future assuming the next generation will pick up the tab absent disruptive innovations. It's lunacy.

I'd rather see the most assistance given where low economic privilege and high cognitive ability intersect. Nobody should be penalized because their parents are poor. Similarly, nobody should be doubly penalized for coming from an economically disadvantaged family and being cognitively well endowed in an unsupportive education system. Ironically, grade skipping is cheap. Go figure.

I should add that when I say "revenue generating ability", I mean an individual's ability to both earn his/her own income and create opportunities for others to do so, either through creating new technologies or markets, jobs, engaging in mentorship that enhances future generations' productivity, etc...

Or-- workhouses!!

Totally agree that helping kids who are struggling is the RIGHT thing to do, but pretending like every child is going to be at grade level if you just spend enough also seems unrealistic. There have to be lines of achievement below which kids shouldn't be allowed to fall without kicking into some SERIOUS interventions, but that should be the same for the other side of things. (gifted children)

Thankfully the author does note that the simplest of interventions for the gifted such as skipping a grade do seem to result in solid returns on feelings of challenge, and life achievement. It would have been nice to see the author challenge the studies that show if you identify leaders you are then identifying non-leaders.

I think the point about selecting for music and sports is a good one and a bad one. On one hand, people tend to accept that not everyone is going to be a sports god or a rock star. Not many people get to do that.
But chemist seems much more mundane; should most folks be able to obtain that? Maybe. Maybe not. I guess part of the problem is that there continues to be a debate over whether it is a. natural talent or b. superior opportunities that move any first grader up through a phd program.

I read an article the other day, 'tips for college students' and the professor writing the article starts right in on how "there isn't something called 'intellect' which is stuffed in your head... " the point being, that students need to study. But really, intelligence isn't a thing?
Hm. Wish I could find the link, but you get the point. This is a person teaching at a college, supposedly, and the idea that some students learn things more quickly is not true (to him).

This may work well in areas with sufficient population density to fill a school with HG+ pupils. In others areas, a school-within-a-school, or flexible multi-age cluster grouping by ability and readiness may serve students well without risking claims of "tracking" (Lots of ideas for ideal educational setting at this recent thread .)

Statisically there are probably not enough kids in my city to do more than one class of combined year one to six. Two classes if they are less than standard size maybe.

Well, we actually need to start before K. This is why Obama is pushing pre-K, to the dismay of the right and the left and so on and so forth. The research is fairly strong, but it has to be really, really good pre-K, not cookie-cutter, with trained teachers teaching a complex curriculum with care, sensitivity, and community support, and unfortunately that probably doesn't scale at all well. Still, states like OK and FL that have instituted universal pre-K have seen some gains.

There's interesting work being done with interventions to get parents to just TALK to their babies more. They use a device to measure words spoken. You get feedback quickly so you try harder. People really do want their kids to succeed. Many don't really know what this would entail.

Some may say this is ideal: free, accessible to all, while providing a bond between parent and child.

Here is a less optimistic take on pre-K from someone who has studied it a lot:

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2014/02/26-does-prek-work-whitehurst
Does Pre-k Work? It Depends How Picky You Are
by Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst
Brookings
February 26, 2014

...

Not one of the studies that has suggested long-term positive impacts of center-based early childhood programs has been based on a well-implemented and appropriately analyzed randomized trial, and nearly all have serious limitations in external validity. In contrast, the only two studies in the list with both high internal and external validity (Head Start Impact and Tennessee) find null or negative impacts, and all of the studies that point to very small, null, or negative effects have high external validity. In general, a finding of meaningful long-term outcomes of an early childhood intervention is more likely when the program is old, or small, or a multi-year intervention, and evaluated with something other than a well-implemented RCT. In contrast, as the program being evaluated becomes closer to universal pre-k for four-year-olds and the evaluation design is an RCT, the outcomes beyond the pre-k year diminish to nothing.

I conclude that the best available evidence raises serious doubts that a large public investment in the expansion of pre-k for four-year-olds will have the long-term effects that advocates tout.