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I have a friend who spend time coaching her DS in math so that he'd hid the 97% benchmark for the district gifted test. This despite the fact that it wouldn't gain him much benefit (the GT program is nonexistent here). In my mind, coaching for IQ is unethical and serves neither the parent or child (coaching for achievement tests is fine, obviously, because you are supposed to be able to study for an achievement test). Yet, how can you blame a parent, when education is generally so bad that every advantage is important to just get your kids to a decent baseline?

At the same time, I couldn't get my DD any meaningful differentiation in the same district despite her 99.9% scores because she didn't look like a high achiever. Yes she looked like an extremely bored underachiever with confidence issues, but you'd think they'd have some sympathy since they were the ones who caused that problem to begin with.

Note, I'd always understood 125 to be the sweet spot in terms of IQ. Lower and it becomes more difficult to pursue certain intellectual goals, higher and you raise the risk of social isolation and underachievement.

I agree with you again. I personally value hard work more than "talent". So it's fine with me to value high achievers over high IQs when resources are distributed. But the point should really be to accommodate each student's need and unique learning abilities and styles, instead of having a few cookie cutters, each for a loosely defined group. Is IQ 119 really that different from 121? Or 142 and 145? Or is this IQ 140 the same as another IQ 140? Yet a line is drawn somewhere and each group is given a cookie cutter.

I'm not sure I get the hard distinction some people have made between high achievers and gifted students. It seems difficult and not very interesting to tease apart what part of good performance is due to good study habits etc. vs innate ability. I think the ability to focus and apply is just as interesting as raw intelligence and certainly not something that is opposed to it.

Well, for one reason it's an question of developmental arc over a lifetime.

If your arc is steeper than others' the ability difference will grow over time, regardless of application because of the underlying cognitive capacity.

In addition, there is the question of whether arcs flatten at the lower levels as age increases.

This is where you get into the question of "overexcitibilies", "positive disintegration", and other things that exist but are not clearly understood.

Oh agreed, that's why in an earlier post I stated that a certified GT teacher "Should" be able to differentiate for individual students, that's what they're TRAINED to do, so to once again attempt to give all students within a lumped group of GT students the same work / focus is silly and they should know better. If a school's GT program is giving them all the same work and services, that's a very poor reflection on their training. At the HS when my sons go / went to school, if the school doesn't offer a course of study in the area of interest, they'll FIND you another place to take it (Community college, AP online, etc.) and if that doesn't work out, she's been known to write from scratch curriculum for one student.

My personal opinion is that looking at IQ can be very informative when the kid is young--because little kids usually don't achieve much anyways, even the really smart ones. But as they get older, I'd rather look at achievement which is a combination of talent and how the kids are using their talent. And of course this is only when we talked about intellectual achievements. There are many types of other achievements that are equally important to the society and rewarding to the individual that don't require a high IQ.

There's a HUGE difference, though, between rate of learning between those groups, as Jon and Val and I have pointed out-- and this difference is quite detrimental to the kids at the highest end of the ability distribution.

I see this every day, in that my DD's coursework and her classmates (who are truly trying their hardest) just/can't/go/there with her... it's maddening, because what my DD could be getting out of the learning environment is being muzzled fairly assertively by "but your classmates can't learn that yet, so put a sock in it," rather than "this is really interesting..."

So they are depriving my DD of what COULD be. As non-PC as this makes me, I look at that situation and think "maybe they should be doing something that is more in keeping with their innate ability, then."


The gap widens. It just does. If it didn't, then "third grade" would happen to everyone-- eventually. But it clearly does not.

I agree with this. I think the ability to work hard is also somewhat hardwired. I have always been jealous of those who have the motivation and stamina to work hard everyday.

The problem with any of the achievement testing is that if it is not hard enough, then it is impossible to differentiate the students at the top. Then you ended up a GT program that cannot move too fast or even need a remedial class as some of the schools find out when they start to use a broader more subjective admission process.

I also don't believe only HG or PG students belong in the very top of colleges. If we are talking about graduate degrees in theoretical physics, then sure. But not a bachelor degree in most fields.

I guess I wouldn't feel so embittered if this didn't effectively create a ceiling for HG to PG people, rather than a floor for the hard-working-but-'just'-bright.


That's TigerParenting for you, though.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.