Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion PG...incorrect nomenclature

This is just how the professor shows off her ignorance. I wouldn't give it another thought.

Our local university (seriously) didn't understand why there should be any difference between MY child (working +3 years ahead of agemates, minimum) and kids identified as garden-variety gifted by the state (basically, 90th percentile or higher on grade-level achievement testing)...

this was for a SUMMER GIFTED PROGRAM. They refused to consider placing her out of chronological age, in spite of the fact that she (aside FROM her age) was completely qualified for the program in every other way (that is, still handily scoring at the 99th percentile OUT of level).

So don't assume that "gifted experts" affiliated with a university are any such thing.

I was appalled to be told that there were "no real differences" between children who are 99.9th percentile (like mine-- and like many of the children here) and those at the 90th percentile.

That, in my mind, simply bespoke a profound ignorance on the subject. Even my then-8yo knew there was a huge difference, and she lived it every time she interacted with her "GT" peers.

Off-topic, but to finish out that anecdote, the University pulled an end-run with "our insurance policy says...." to keep my daughter OUT of the program for 4th-6th graders, and she had exactly ZERO interest in the "low level" activities intended for the 1st-3rd grade cohort that they would place her with.

Honestly, the problem with that program was that it was GT in name only. The nature of the activities for 1st through 3rd certainly wasn't very engaging in terms of enrichment for a 6-8yo PG student; many of the activities were things that my DD had been fascinated by at 3-5yo.

It's probably terrifying to some people.

So therefore, it can't exist.

Well, it was abundantly clear at the end of that conversation that this person had never observed such differences. Because she wasn't looking for them, see.

Please note that this person's title was "Director of ______" (the summer gifted program at the university in question).

At this point in time I should probably know better, but it does confound me that someone whose job revolves around the fact that kids in the 90th percentile are different and need more challenging work is also someone who does not understand that the kids in the 90th percentile of the 90th percentile are even more different and need even more challenging material.

--S.F.

As Miles Vorkosigan says, "Never argue nomenclature with a pedant. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant."

I'm pretty sure I would have at least thought about saying, at the "I survived" point, "well, my kid is obviously smarter than you."

Later, I would have spent hours stewing over how to phrase it more clandestinely so as to leave her wondering.


As I've explained to DS, when he is particularly frustrated at having no one like him to talk to -- 90th percentile is one in ten, 99th percentile is one in a hundred, 99.9th percentile is minimum one in a thousand, since they don't split it off any further. There are only 700 kids in your school, K-12. You're a mathy kid, what does that tell you?

It would be nice if the "professional educators" could do that math.

ETA: Exactly, SFrog -- 90th percentile of the 90th percentile. I'll have to remember that phrase.

Sounds like a fractal.

That's because it wasn't on the test.

We clearly need new tests.

To me that seems like the most annoying part... that the very director of the program doesn't know this!

We had a similar experience with a local summer TAG camp (and a quite expensive one at that). I kept pushing to get her into the 6-8th grade group as opposed to the 3-5th (her age put her in 5th grade). But their response was "well it's for TAG students already so it should be advanced enough." Of course she was bored and had covered most of the work in class (even the dissections).

The difference was during the last day "parent show and tell" I cornered the director of the program and explained my situation. She was very understanding and apologetic and I now have an age exemption on file for future classes. It doesn't help with everything (some of the hosting sites, campuses and such, have their own rules) but it allowed her to join a veterinary visit class for middle schoolers without any fuss.

As for the original topic, I think of DD as PG but technically she may not be. She topped out on the WISC IV, but we didn't go back and do the extended norms (didn't seem worth the cost as we'd learned what we needed to from the results we had). I think the names of the levels are less important than the acknowledgement that there are different levels (just as there are different levels of intellectual disability that can affect plans and accommodations).

One of the first things the tester asked in explaining DD's scores was "do you understand how standard deviation works?" We did. You'd expect people in the field to as well.

That pompous idiot's mind worked like the Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses in Hitchhiker's Guide.