I thought this was an interesting article. Does the US educational system do any better with gifted children than other countries? Or are US parents more willing to seek alternatives such as home schooling their kids if they don’t fit into the public school system?
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Perhaps you mean US parents with money and social capital to realize that other options exist and are accessible to them?
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Well for whatever reason the US has vastly more homeschooling (4M children according to Homeschooling international status and statistics - Wikipedia) though I’m not sure if that is linked to money and social capital - religious views seem like a more important driver to me.
Does that serve profoundly gifted children better than other countries? Do the US’s FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education) regulations help? Or do public educators struggle to deal with gifted kids just as much as in other countries?
We did need to find an alternative for one of our daughters (who has done very well since).
This article did indeed remind me of a great deal. I only have personal experience with the education system in two countries – Canada and the US. I would tend to think that both are sort of just okay for a gifted child. Neither is particularly great. Perhaps “survivable” is the term that I might use to describe either of them. Canada has the advantage that once a student makes it out of high school getting accepted to a top university in Canada becomes almost a non-issue, and affording to attend is usually not as bad as in the US.
One professor I know has said that he thinks that every exceptionally intelligent student that he had dealt with has suffered from depression at some point. I suspect that “every” might be a bit of an exaggeration, but that it is quite common. Now I am wondering whether having an education system that is a bad fit is part of this.
Many years ago one high school teacher in the US told us that our daughter should learn to hide the fact that she was very smart. Both daughters have warned me not to tell any of their friends what their grades are (although now that one is in a DVM program she is surrounded by students who are pretty much all just as smart, even if not all are quite as enthusiastic about reaching inside a cow).
I am not impressed by the way that the US education system deals with gifted children.
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There is one more issue that we might want to keep in mind (and which is a different issue compared to my last post).
Some very gifted people built the Internet. Some very gifted people came up with the cancer treatments that has kept some of us alive and well. Some very gifted people came up with the methods for very rapidly inserting a stent into an artery feeding the heart in order to end a heart attack before serious damage is done (in some cases before any damage is done).
I know very smart people who are working very hard to try to find a cure for sickle cell anemia. This is a horrible disease that inflicts young children who have done absolutely nothing at all to deserve it. We do not know yet whether or not they will succeed (or someone else will succeed).
It is possible for gifted children to grow up to do something that really helps a lot of people. We do not want to waste talent.
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Perhaps part of it. But surely a lack of relationships with peers (as cited in the article) is likely to be a bigger issue? I’d be interested to know if kids in the Davidson Academy (School for Profoundly Gifted Students | Davidson Academy Reno Campus) have better mental health than comparably bright kids in public schools?
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FAPE regulations are more often applied to students at the lower end of the bell curve than those at the upper end. Those above the curve will pass standardized tests without intervention.
Public schools are required to identify gifted students, they are not required to offer special programing. When programming is offered, it is geared more toward the needs of mildly and evenly advanced students than the asynchronous profoundly gifted. Entry to such programs rely as much on teacher recommendations as test scores. (Teachers rarely recommend students they view as trouble-makers nor those whose grades do not reflect their potential. Many gifted students do not do well in courses that bore them.)
In schools without separate programing, it is up to the individual teacher whether or not to provide extra instruction. In my experience, at best, the student will be allowed to self-study more advanced material while the rest of the class works on grade-level material. Grade-skipping may be offered. More often teachers will suggest that the parents seek alternate education, such as e-schooling where the students can move at their own pace, although, without the social interaction a brick and mortar public school provides.
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Gifted kids deal with a lot of people who make classist statements like DadTwoGirls quoted above. For whatever reason, people think that kids who perform above average in school are exempt from consideration about stereotyping or other overtly discriminatory practices and language because they aren’t intellectually or physically impaired.
This thread is likely to be a free-for-all with those ignorant stereotypes.
I’ve taught gifted students and have two myself (one more, relatively so, but both fit the gifted/ high ability category according to FAPE). I can’t speak for all kids who meet this definition, but I will say that including them in the general curriculum can be very challenging even for educators who are excellent at differentiation. It’s far easier for college professors, who don’t have to be concerned with progressing every student in a class to the next grade level, to do this.
What is a “comparably bright” kid? A child who doesn’t qualify for gifted education but does well in school?
My local public system uses FAPE for gifted evaluation in kindergarten. Parents have advocated for it aggressively at the local and state level. It’s as difficult to identify giftedness as it is to identify LDs in early elementary students. Teacher reports can identify its existence more reliably, but teachers will focus on the problem behaviors, not the causes, so parents must be attentive. My oldest was referred for testing by his teacher and it was first identified in PreK. I have not had my youngest tested because I don’t want to deal with the backlash and it’s not necessary. Mental health is far more impacted by environment than anything to do with ability directly, so if there was a way to test these two variables, I would not expect to see a pure relationship or even a discernible one. There are huge differences in gifted education nationally. It’s not really accurate to say “in America” as we don’t have a national education system.
Where I live, private schools do not have a signifantly higher proportion of gifted students relative to public schools, although they advertise as if they do. My youngest has been in a private school like this and it’s been good overall but I still have to supplement outside of school to keep him engaged. And I always am happy to help the teachers supplement if it starts to frustrate them. But we keep it on the DL so as not to cause a stir.
When my D was young the district cut the funding for the gifted program. Much of the gifted cohort left at some point. Some to homeschool, some to private school. I think academically we would have made it work to stay in the public school, but, socially it was a game changer for my D socially to be surrounded by more peers. She went from being one of four gifted students to being with 40+. It became cool to be smart and she bloomed.
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This is common for the intellectually gifted in general not just students. In my experience of the kids I personally know who are gifted, they seem to suffer from higher levels of “existential angst”. Having a strong peer group and a feeling of “fitting in” helps to mitigate against this.
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Absolutely. Many studies agree. That’s why it is important that gifted kids make sure the peer fit is right when they are choosing a college, an idea that is often not widely accepted on CC. Sure, it would be nice to have the fit in Middle and High school too but that is hard to find in many areas.
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Yes, that’s something our elementary teacher told us - that compared to the parents, many kids prefer NOT to “stand out”. So there is a fine balance of offering more challenging programs without highlighting it to the student body in general. Then, by high school, having parallel course pathways is normal.
However, the off-the-scale achiever in one academic area might be a very unbalanced achiever whose achievement in some other academic areas may be below the “average excellent” minimum across the board that is one of the usual baselines for admission to a highly selective college that posters here would say provides the needed peer group. Of course, even if that student’s achievement on other areas does meet the “average excellent” minimum across the board, that still may not assure admission to a highly selective college, most of which have additional admission priorities beyond the top academic achievers.
Outside of those highly selective colleges, the most likely place to find such a peer group for such a student is a large state flagship university, where a small percentage of a large number of students may still be enough to produce a reasonable size peer group, and where the departments have incentive to offer honors or otherwise more rigorous courses for the higher than typical achievers.
Of course, many students are more limited in college choice by parental financial constraints than their own college admission credentials. Such parental financial constraints may prevent the student from attending a college that many posters here would provide the desired peer group.
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I would add to that substance abuse problems - often starting as self-medication for anxiety and depression…
(I attended a gifted school - not a program within a school but whole specialized school - from grades 4 - 12 and while I am certainly no expert on gifted education, I have a lifetime worth of observation of my friends and other peers…And a very high percentage of my former classmates are in recovery…)
This. Less tolerance for mundane homework required to keep the 4.0 GPA, in classes of no interest. No willingness to “play the game”, pad the resume, and get ahead in the system. They just want to do what their mind is drawn to.
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The original article references a UK student who did get into an “elite” college, presumably Oxbridge. I think “very unbalanced” applicants are still welcome there, though of course that is not an affordable (or preferred) option for many Americans.
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There is a significant difference between children who are identified as gifted by FAPE and students who are qualified for admission to top-10 colleges and universities.
Motivation or the lack thereof starts to play as big a role as natural ability/giftedness as soon as mid-elementary school.
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Which is why such students maybe better served by a post-secondary education model different from what is typical in the US. Countries where there is less of an emphasis on general education and where admissions and the degree structure are far more tightly structured on studies in the major might better suit these types of students.
Cost and language barriers could be limiters in allowing them to access such an education however.
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I parented a highly/profoundly gifted 2E child, and was active in advocating for gifted education in elementary and middle schools, and so was somewhat familiar with issues of gifted education. The only reason that we tested her was so that we could start her in kindergarten early (the school district was REALLY tough about it). We were lucky in that our kid’s elementary school had a good gifted resources teacher, and that there were acceleration opportunities in middle school as well. Overall our school district was very willing to work with us and with our kid. In general, the parents of other gifted kids in the district also generally were happy with the elementary and secondary school districts. But I know that it’s unfortunately not the case for many, if not most, gifted kids.
I was (well still am, but no longer active) on a FB page for parents of PG kids. Aside from the many issues that come up, and it really does seem that, like some have pointed out, PG kids are more likely to be neurotypical in other ways as well. As I wrote, my kid is 2E, but her ADHD was masked pretty well by some other issues, and by the fact that she’s really smart.
It really should be like this, but unfortunately, it isn’t.
There is immense pressure on faculty at all levels, but especially young or non tenure track faculty, to not fail students. Aside from retention issues, “elite” colleges like keeping their failure rate low. So they also provide a large number of resources to help student advance, in fact, more than those provided by many high schools.
No, the issue is the assumption that peers for a gifted kid can only be found in private colleges that accept fewer than 15% of their applicants. That is what is not widely accepted.
When a parent claims, with total conviction, that there is no peers for really smart kids even at colleges like UIUC, UMN, Wisconsin, etc, then yes, many people here on CC will reject this claim.
As I wrote, I was on that PG parents FB page for a while. Some kids did end up attending “elite” colleges. However, a large number also attended colleges which many people on CC consider to be “not good enough” for smart kids. The kids did well at all the colleges at which they ended up. If they didn’t do well, it wasn’t generally because they did not have enough intellectual stimulation.
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I would venture to say that any state flagship with an honors program, or any institution with a high-achievement cohort (say, a cohort of 20 scholars getting full rides) will provide a pool of academically similar peers for students who are aiming for a Top X school. I say this as someone who attended public schools at a time when separate tracks were the norm, rather than inclusion, and I was in the top 2% track and I attended a big flagship.
I was not in the full-ride cohort, but literally all of my closest friends but one were (and the one had been a finalist). I have family who have attended SHYMP institutions. I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that high-caliber students exist at the flagships and that those same individuals could more than compete with students at Top X colleges. If a student can’t find his/her intellectual peers at an institution like I described above, they’re probably not looking.
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