Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Old news that's new to me: Justin Chapman

The predominant system of neighborhood public schools also screens heavily for wealth. In our Massachusetts town, where there is little undeveloped land, when a parcel of land did become available and it became known that a real estate developer wanted to build an apartment complex there, the town
(1) calculated that the expected cost of educating the tenants' children would exceed the property tax paid on the apartment complex
(2) bought the land to be preserved as open space.
So our town effectively has a policy of keeping middle class people out. Most homes here cost in the upper 6 figures or more.

Massachusetts in general is a high cost-of-living state. Part of the success of our touted public schools is likely the pushing out of the non-affluent. If a private school screens for rich parents, it's behaving similarly to many towns in America.

Did you consider your middle child taking the PSAT as a 10th grader? Seems to becoming common. I am not sure why you would take it in 10th, to prep for the PSAT? What I understand is it doesn't count for national merit unless it's taken the junior year. My attitude is I don't see why a kid needs to take the PSAT at all anymore unless you think they have a shot at national merit. My kids have many options to take "non-official" practice tests, and many kids just take the SAT multiple times. I guess I don't see the reason to over emphasize these tests and to take them more often than necessary.

I probably should start a different thread for this.

Middle kid did take the PSAT in 9th and 10th - our district pays for all students to take it in 9th, 10th & 11th.

At first, she said she would prep for the SAT before taking it in 10th...but of course, she did not. One way in which it was helpful was for showcase tournaments. She had four showcases this summer for her sport, plus attended one of the premier recruiting camps. I think the SAT score was helpful for the better (academic) DIII coaches to see. Seems like everyone is a 4.0 student, so the SAT sets her apart. Plus, seems like there aren't as many bright kids in the team sports versus more individual sports (swimming, tennis, wrestling), but that would be an entire thread in itself.

I do think she can improve upon her SAT scores. The difference between without prep and with prep for my eldest was 70 points on CR and 40 points on math. Made a difference. And middle kid does have a shot at NMSF - her SAT score means she is about 3 points away from NMSF for our state (certainly worth the studying).

This is the part that bothers me most. I mean, I agree with you-- but what are you supposed to do, as a parent??

If you make a "gifted" program, the majority of people jockeying for entry are those who want the label for their kids... most of whom are bright-not-gifted, and most of whom are already ideally advantaged vis a vis SES and enrichment.

Okay, so that results in more demand than there are openings... which means...

that there are kids who NEED that program who are getting elbowed out by those who want the label... (and who are also often complaining about their kids' performance once they succeed in GETTING them in)... right.

So what to do? Ohhh-- make a "rigorous super-accelerated" program...

and the cycle begins anew. People whose kids have no need of the substance want the LABEL anyway. At least that is how it works around here.


There is NO way to construct an authentically different program that meets the needs of truly HG/HG+ learners without the twin sequelae of parents whose kids DO NOT belong there wanting the program to be changed (usually watered down or shifted to lower difficulty and more volume), and those same parents being willing to go to occasionally abusive lengths to FORCE compliance from their children who are not quite up to the task ahead of them.

Everyone KNOWS that there is something different about being smarter, and that better educational outcomes are (generally) related to it. The real problem is that far too many parents are communicating to their own children that being "average" is failure... as a human being, apparently. Everyone is living in Lake Wobegon, though.

The only real answer is to stop making seats in such programs so SCARCE to begin with. I think that most of us who post here would be perfectly happy without any label at all-- as long as the education that our kids were getting was actually suitable and appropriate. Right?

But that is a major digression from the larger underlying issue illustrated by the Chapman case, which is one of borderline parental pathology, quite frankly.

What I do not like is the quite obvious SURPRISE that adults who get to know my DD often express to me/us-- that we are quite discreet, private, and circumspect about her and what she is. She is functionally PG, and it is VERY obvious when you give her an opportunity to open up the throttle. We are not hovering, "helping" or doing much of anything else (save getting out of the way, much like a pit crew at NASCAR) once she has open road ahead of her. It's clear that we're in the minority by quite a healthy margin, however, judging by the responses of other adults.

That is a VERY disturbing thing to me. What distresses me about it isn't the personal facet, since that is merely annoying most of the time, and easily rectified by letting them give DD a shot. DH and I are pretty good advocates for that, so no problem there. What bothers me about it is that it signifies that the MAJORITY of "PG" children that these adults who work with youth are actually encountering... are hot-house plants who are bright-to-MG children that have been pressured and TigerParented all to heck. I find that horrifying. I also think that this is where things like Race to Nowhere are coming from. This is the toxic, unspoken side of "gifted" ed culture.

Don't believe me?

Check this out--

https://suite.io/alex-sharp/1qaj2cg

I bet I would have looked like "soccer mom on crack" to this author because I inquired about testing for DD, whether they would accept outside testing, whether they would take a GAI, etc. I was not satisfied with her mediocre CogAT score and thought it must be a gross underestimation of her abilities. What they don't understand is that the "regular" classroom programming is such a bad fit for gifted children, with almost no differentiation or acceleration of materials, that it really would be terrible if DD had not qualified. Even if kid is maybe 90th percentile, it's still not necessarily an appropriate place for them. Our district doesn't do anything significant unless a kid is in around the top two percent (of kids in the district). So what happens to the 8 or 15 percent who do not qualify but need something other than what the regular classroom provides? The schools do not see things that way, so any parent who "pushes" is potentially viewed as a pushy tiger parent demanding too much of their child.

I believe you and I'm sure the majority of her classmates would be bright-to-MG children whose parents have eyes on Ivy admission down the road and both schools' culture can be toxic to the detriment of student's emotional well-being and that too often leads to eating disorders, substance abuse, depression, anxiety disorder, and suicide.

These problems used to be associated with prodigies who were hothoused by their overbearing and ambitious parents (e.g. John Stewart Mill who had a mental breakdown) but it seems like these days, so many parents want their child to be a PG+ prodigy. Maybe they need to read a few historical biographies to find out how that usually turns out.

So where is Justin Chapman now? It's a relatively common name, so googling leads to several people. He and his mother seem to have taken a very low profile. He'd be a young adult now. Did he go to college?

And this is partly why I never had my son "tested" (IQ) until recently. It was a bit of (quiet) pride that my son tested well without any prep. But although this did get him into the top public gifted program in our area, and the top math track. Not testing or prepping him for these tests hasn't really helped him any. As he is now underperforming in high school, just exactly what I did worry about when he was younger.

I've been asked over & over again when my son was younger by his classmates parents what I "did" and I never had a good answer. We live in an area with a LOT of gifted as well as very bright hothoused kids. I see the same thing that Howler does.

You could ask him:
https://www.facebook.com/JustinChapmanBoyGenius
(and make your own judgement about whether it's really he who's behind the page, of course).

I suppose I was hoping for a web page that was not so, um, content-free.