Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What IQ is considered Highly Gifted??

Yeah, I agree with you Gratified, and Dottie too. Our family hasn't been involved with DYS long enough to have a real grasp on what the population of kids can/are and can't/aren't doing. But I think it's also fair to point out that it's hard to assess that unless you have extended experience with a child. Some PG kids are very intense and their intelligence and ability is so pronounced you just can't deny it. I think some PG kids are more stealth, it's a mixed bag.

I do agree with you both about a range of performance demonstrated by the group of children who test in the PG range. I would have no idea where a group like Davidson should draw the line in terms of what number. I do like to think that even the kids with a score of 145 are so unique that they are likely to experience pitfalls even within educational gifted programming and with peers. With that in mind, I'm not so concerned that the DYS population has grown into a much larger group than it started as. That there will be a strata of performance gauged within this group of kids. It's not necessarily a bad thing because I think they are more likely to experience this kind of environment in real life. So that the super star kid who gets into DYS and suddenly isn't so special compared to the group. Or that truly unique kid whose abilities just blow everyone away, who is comfortably working and interacting with other kids who score in the PG range but aren't as *stunning* in comparison.

And Dottie, thanks for the welcome!! I've been pretty occupied lately but am happy to have a little time on my hands.

I agree--of course--that intelligence matters and that DYS has a range of kids.

But to say that unless a kid is in college at 10 (or 11 or 13 or whatever), he isn't PG seems too narrow a definition of PG. There's too much more involved and there are too many other ways to get a kid's needs met.

Also, I think gratified3's point about parental values is key. Personally, I am actively working to slow down my DS8's progress in ways that still meet his need to learn precisely because I would prefer that he not be going to college very, very young. I think that's absolutely right for other kids, but it's not right for him specifically. Could he do early college? Probably. Maybe not at 10, but certainly by 12 or 13. I could be giving him a lot more work than I do. But I choose not to. I don't want him to go that fast if I can help it! Does that mean he's not PG? He may not be, but not for that reason.

(I also realize that eema did not say that very early college was the *only* way to define PGness. I just feel like that's where this conversation takes us.)

Ultimately, I think this sort of ranking is rather pointless. ALL of these kids have needs that are hard to meet. Does it matter if my DS8 is PG or EG or HG? Nope. He has needs that require special attention. That's the salient point.

I think that it's difficult to rank a phenomenon that occurs along several dimensions, but it's important for people to recognize that there are levels of giftedness, and that educational needs are related to level.

Beautifully phrased Cathy.

Dottie,

My kids are home sick, so I have a little *unexpected* time on my hands also. I'm posting between games of Sorry and Othello with the little one, lol. I'll probably not be regular character but it's good to see how active this forum is. Everyone is as very respectful and eloquent as I remember from my more active days, which is great to see. It'll probably be fairly easy to tell when my kids are off on spring break, lol.

Again, the problem is that there really isn't any reliable, consistent way to "pull out the difference between HG[, EG] and PG."

The tests aren't made to distinguish that difference. The creators of the test actually discourage the use of the tests to try to distinguish between those levels! I like Ruf's work as one starting point, but that doesn't work for G3's kids (or many others). LDs can mask the difference between levels. Kids can be spiky, so one can be PG+ in math but not in reading/writing (or vice-versa). How does one tell all that apart? There's no tool that does it, and children are constantly changing. Even the best whole-child evalution is a snapshot.

This is a very complex issue, and the reason DYS has (wisely, IMHO) chosen not to TRY to distinguish between these levels is because it can't be done in any reliable way, and there's really no reason to do so. All these kids need special help to get their needs met, some to a greater degree than others, of course, but ALL need more. There are differences between levels, but there are even more differences within a level! Also, a laid-back PG kid (personality again!) might have needs more like a high-energy HG kid than another PG child. Why draw those lines? How does that help the kids?

I think it's the same issue that many people have with the "gifted" label itself. Ideally, all kids would have their unique educational needs met. Most of us are dealing with situations where that is not realistic. We need labels in order to have a way to talk about differences that are real. A linear progression (G, MG, HG, EG, PG) is a one-dimensional way of looking at something very complex--it's inherently limited. But it's becoming accepted educational parlance and it's better than nothing when we need a way to talk about our kids.

Maybe a good practice would be to qualify the labels to make them more precise-- my DD is verbally HG, but DS is borderline EG/PG and globally gifted. Both are gifted, but in very different ways and have different needs. I think if I describe them that way, you have some idea of their abilities and relative strengths and weaknesses.

The original question was about the relationship of IQ to the meaning of HG. I think it's clear from people's posts that we agree that HG means more than a certain IQ score, but that IQ scores can be used as a guideline or estimate of LOG.

I agree. I think labels can be useful tools for specific kids to get specific needs met. Your examples are good ones.

My issue was with trying to draw hard and fast lines in some theoretical sense. I don't think that's helpful, and I don't think there's reason to say that the evaluators were somehow not good at their jobs if they didn't distinguish between HG and PG. This is just not that easy! It's a process that develops over time, not a one-off testing that does it.

I can't remember where I got this, but I like the classification of mildly gifted = 97.5th percentile IQ, moderately gifted = 99th, highly gifted = 99.9th, exceptionally gifted = 99.99th, profoundly gifted = theoretically 99.999th, but practically unmeasurable. Cathy's point is good too, though - when it comes to differentiating levels of giftedness this high, more has to be taken into account than just IQ.

Those numbers sounds appealing, but given that even WISC IV normative samples are only a couple of thousand people (a quick google says 2200 in the US, less than that in several other countries), surely 99.99th is already practically unmeasurable? I'm admittedly not a statistician, but I don't see how you, for example, validate that your test can be relied upon to distinguish between two candidates one of whom is at the 99.90th and one at the 99.99th, if your norming sample had only 2 people in both those groups together!