Of course gifted students are there—the point is they are a much higher %age, and in some schools they even constitute a majority of peers, and that is a huge benefit to many gifted students(ie those that have felt some of the struggles outlined in the article and in posts above).
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But wouldn’t it be less of an issue in college, because college students self-sort in their course and major selection? The highest achievers in a given subject will choose the hardest and most advanced courses in their favorite subject, while other students who find that subject scary will avoid it completely or take as little as possible at the lowest level allowed to fulfill general education requirements.
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Some people seem to have a pretty liberal definition of “gifted”.
I agree with this, D’s cohort were all 4.0/35-36 ACT students. But gifted in the sense of the “once in a career” kid described in the original article? Or Will Hunting from the movie. Not at all.
Those kids are almost never going to find true peers. Maybe if they are lucky they’ll connect with one or two. But most likely not in the same subject and at the same college.
Maybe that doesn’t matter because most fairly smart kids (say top 1%) will find their peers in a reasonably selective environment. But once you get beyond the top 0.1% you are talking about fewer than 4000 kids per year in the whole US (not all of whom will be successful in high school). That’s not the majority of the class at any university (in theory it could be at Caltech but that’s still unlikely).
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Yes it does depend how gifted is defined. In some states it is 93%ile and above (on Wisc or similar) for public schools. The TIP programs have traditionally been 95th% to qualify. The Davidson institute defines moderately gifted as IQ 130-145(1+to 5% ), highly as 145+(1% or less; most tests hit the ceiling around that mark). So yes, there are plenty of colleges , beyond the “top20” people care so much about on CC, that have a large cohort or majority of moderately gifted kids, which roughly correlates with the top 2-5%. There are some colleges that have a majority in the top1% IQ. Depending on each gifted kid’s personality and adaptive skills, as well as level of giftedness, peers can matter greatly. I am not advocating top20 (or 10 or 30 or whatever cutoff is popular) is the only solution, I am just advocating for knowing your particular gifted child and where they fit, given all the other factors of who they are, but yet also considering their giftedness and the pool of similarly gifted kids at the school.
I am very leery of identifying kids as gifted. I think it is harmful to their development – both academic and emotional. Creates baggage. You should just let them do whatever level of academics are appropriate without labeling, fluidly. We were fortunate to find an elementary school (without consciously looking for something like this) where every kid is at a (different) table of 5 for each subject, and got individualized homework. Kids did not know what other kids got for homework. We had this luxury until we have to move the kid out at 3rd grade. From 6th grade onwards, kids were allowed to go and sit in a different grade classroom 2-3 grades ahead for math. It was felt to be not necessary in other subjects. Incidentally kids that were sitting in the upper grade classes were consistently the strongest kids in those classes. But they learnt to curb their enthusiasm to lift their hands all the time. Once you get to high school and college this ceases to be a problem. We were fortunate that the school created classes with 3-4 kids. I think 3 is the minimum you needed in non core subjects. One of my kids was in a class of 1 (allowed because it was a core class) for Chinese – incidentally because he was weaker than the class above. I think in some technical subjects a small group of kids created syllabus with a teacher as they went along – 10th grade and above – that was an educational exercise in itself. Kids are never “tested”. Testing is a problem. Because formal testing creates labeling.
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No, 130-145 is top 2%, 145+ is top 0.1%, see IQ and Educational Needs - Davidson Institute
Davidson’s admission cutoff has traditionally been top 0.1%.
My mistake —“mildy gifted” must be the next level I referenced. The exact cutoffs and details are not the point, and I too am leery of labels and all that. The only reason I know my own kids and the range of our school is because it is a test-entry school that uses IQ testing, and DH and I were in public gifted Ed that used IQ testing repeatedly. My point stands that it is reasonable to look for schools that are a fit with an appropriate academically similar peer cohort in addiction to personality/vibe fit. That’s what the article is about—finding the environment that suits the academically gifted kids which helps emotional thriving.
But as @AustenNut pointed out, you’ll find lots of top 2% kids at any public flagship and in most high schools, there are 80,000 each year: National Merit Commended is a decent proxy. It’s not hard to find your peers at that level.
However the US college system doesn’t really try to identify the 0.1% kids, especially if their abilities are unbalanced, let alone gather them all in one place. The original article is about how to address that level of talent and beyond.
Maybe the US system has a wider set of gifted and talented programs in elementary and high school. But arguably those programs tend to be swamped by (at best) moderately clever kids with pushy parents.
But sometimes that labeling is necessary in order to access appropriate education.
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Seems analogous to the trend of math acceleration where +2 or higher is now common, but some students struggle because they were pushed further ahead than they should have been, and high schools sometimes require a two year single variable calculus sequence instead of doing it in one year immediately after precalculus that was previously assumed that accelerated students could handle.
I understand your point and i agree. But i am referring to the true gifted: the true 2% or 1% or whatever——the ones who cruise through the 2+ math curriculum and every other challenging HS course—they are outliers and they can struggle in many systems. They do benefit from finding a college with intellectual peers. So do those who are gifted in Art or gifted writers who also may be out of place in school systems where they are outliers and can be seen as and treated as odd, as outlined bu the article and many studies that have been done on intellectual outliers.
This is an interesting point. As mentioned above, I attended a gifted school from 4th-12th grade. This was a public school with a fairly lengthy application process. It usually began with an elementary school teacher identifying top students in their class and then began extensive testing and interviews. I’m not sure how it is now, but acceptance was based primarily on scoring a minimum of 132 on the IQ test.
Of course not all children qualified and this was disappointing to many ambitious parents who viewed the school as “better” education rather than specialized education for those who need that specialization in order to thrive academically. Nonetheless, there was some bitterness compounded by the fact that, as mentioned above, it is a public school funded by taxpayer money.
The school at some point was pressured to allow families to pay for their own private testing, rather than having their children tested through the school provided specialists. And sure enough there emerged a psychologist who soon gained the reputation of a high enough score for a high enough payment.
And so some kids did essentially buy a spot at the school.
And the results were dismal. Everyone knew. All the teachers definitely knew (one of my teachers told me this years later - they ALWAYS knew which students had gotten into the school through this dubious private tester). And the kids often suspected. It was sometimes pretty obvious when a student was entirely out of place in the classes. Those students did not thrive, unfortunately, while I’m sure their parents were (somewhat) well-intentioned, they actually did a disservice to their children by forcing them into that educational environment that was not right for them.
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Does this occur at the elite college level with respect to students admitted with large “hook” effects (including essentially buying a spot through large donations)? Or do elite colleges usually have enough places for weaker students to hide?
That’s a really good question. I don’t know about children of major donors specifically, but if we expand the hook to recruited athletes, I can state my personal observations.
As I’ve talked about many times on CC, I was a GSI (and then a lecturer) for many years at Cal. There was one class in particular that I taught which was a large-ish (50 student) lecture class that satisfied one of the undergrad breadth requirements. So all kinds of students - including hooked students - took it because they needed to satisfy the requirements. Many of the hooked students in the class were noticeably weaker academically on average than non-hooked students. Obviously there were exceptions on both sides - hooked students who did excellent work, unhooked students who left you scratching your head. But on average they were definitely weaker - at least in this particular class.
So I would say, yes, it could indeed occur with SOME hooked students. Weaker students are able to hide to some degree (in the sense that they will still be able to pass their classes and get their degree), but I think most instructors can often make educated guesses on who was hooked and who wasn’t. But if the students end up with the same degree after four years, does it even matter on a practical level?
This.
I’ve posted this before:
“When I moved from teaching at Oxford to Harvard, I was puzzled. Based on my reading of midterm exam papers, a substantial proportion of my new students wouldn’t have got an interview at Oxford, never mind a place. It was explained to me that a substantial chunk of undergraduates were “legacies” — there because their parents were alumni, especially generous alumni — and another chunk were the beneficiaries of affirmative action or athletics programs. The admissions system was managed by professional administrators, not professors.
I soon learned how to deter the academically weaker brethren. By assigning a lot of reading and awarding some C grades, I was soon rid of them.”
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This is the problem with all this IQ testing nonsense. It is meaningless.
At our school, I remember that the school placed my son out of regular physics into honors physics. He did not want to do that, but wanted to do the AP instead. Based on his Calc BC grade (which is used as a general metric for mathematical ability) the school gave him and a group of 4 other kids the choice to just take the final Physics honors exam and getting over a 94 in the prior summer. He spent some 10-15 hours over the summer over the material, and he and his friends did that, and they were allowed to take AP E&M C in 11th grade. There is no confusion about whether you have the skills or not if you are being let into the next class. There is no possibility of under performing at that point. They joined the 12th grade class directly.
Testing should not be for IQ. It should be on material that the kid intends to skip. And the bar should be very high – equivalently to an A, rigorously graded. Then the system will be clean.
Gifted education really has nothing at all to do with “skipping material.” We took all the same high school classes - largely on the same schedule - as all other high school students in our district. We were not skipping any material as we followed the same sequence of classes in pretty much all core areas. It is the method of instruction that differs, often the depth of instruction, the level of challenge, the manner of explanation, the expectations for performance, the requirement for creative, original thinking in approaching the topic, some level of differentiation based on learning styles, and even psychosocial support structures. It’s not about skipping anything at all. It’s about appropriate instructional methodology and approach based on the ways different people learn.
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[Personal story removed.]
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I tend to think this is needless complication.
The upper level classes are taught fast, and with rigor.
The lower level classes (in this case regular and honors physics) are taught gently. Those two (in fact three) sets of classes suffice the needs of most of the class. Some kids get to normal physics, or even not at all by 12th grade. Some kids get to AP E&M, done more rigorously than the countrywide E&M syllabus by 10th or 11th grade. I am just giving an example. The whole spectrum of the class can fit within that range.
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