The other side of high achievement

<p>Op,
I am a parent of kids with very high scoring standardized test scores. Most other parents will not ask what ur kid’s score was because it’s akin to asking someone their weight or income. </p>

<p>However, it’s harder for the kids because other kids usually do not feel uncomfortable asking about each other’s scores. It’s probably better to teach your kid to say that she scored “pretty well” and leave it at that. Score talk at school will increase the gossip and competitiveness. </p>

<p>As for wanting to brag, I think that this is perfectly reasonable desire and cc is a great place to do so. I think that it is awesome that your D got a 30 on her 8th grade ACT!!</p>

<p>While it’s okay to tell someone something your kid has done if they ask (like if they doing a program or extracurricular, where they are going to college, what they doing after graduation etc), I think it is beyond obnoxious to brag about your kid’s test scores. I grew up in a community where this is common and also got an approximately equivalent score on the old SAT (1600 with no writing) to your daughter in seventh grade. My parents did not go around town telling people this. When people asked they would say I was in a special math program and say what I was doing for the summer. I have observed other parents bragging about their kids (often indirectly). To the other person, it either feels like the parent is being competitive, looks down on their child, or is insecure and trying to live through their child. The same goes for any type of bragging (between kids as well).</p>

<p>You will learn as your daughter grows older that people mature an grow and that the students with the high test scores in seventh grade are not always the best and most successful students, especially after they graduate college! For me, it is really nice to see a lot of students, who may not have appeared to be the best in middle and high school, really shine in discover their intelligence in college.</p>

<p>A 30 on the ACT in 8th grade is outstanding, however it is important to recognize that many of these students do not go on to be the tippy top of the class in high school. Some do and others do not. It’s a very long 4 years. </p>

<p>For a lot of the kids who score high but are not good students it may be the emphasis on test scores at an early age that holds them back. I knew students who were like this and didn’t do well in my high school (a very rigorous school) because they thought they were too smart to need to study. This backfired on them when it came time to apply to college. For students who went to easier high schools, this thing would be delayed until college. Some of these kids did well in intro courses and looked down upon other students as being “try hards”. However, when junior year rolled around, they weren’t so confident. Many discovered that some of the people they thought were “try hards” were actually smarter than them.</p>

<p>Remember the research about how it can harm students when you tell them they are smart?
<a href=“The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine - Nymag”>http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/&lt;/a&gt;
One reason not to share fabulous test scores because it can change the way others look at and interact with your child, and that may not be helpful to your child.</p>

<p>I only shared my daughter’s SAT score here on CC, with a lot of strangers who don’t know who I am. I would never have done that with anyone I knew IRL. It’s too much pressure for her, and could cause unneeded jealousy from people who would otherwise wish her well.</p>

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<p>We had some IQ testing done on D2 and shared the results with her kindergarten teacher prior to the start of the year. The kindergarten teacher blabbed this info (including specific score) to several other teachers (even upper school teachers, K-12 school) and even at least one parent (whom I knew because D1 had a kid in her kid’s grade, and is someone I would NEVER have shared this type of info with). I was furious. This did follow D2 – one upper school teacher commented to me on it when D2 was in 9th grade. People don’t forget… I don’t know if it was damaging to her or not, but it sure ticked me off at the K teacher. And the other thing to note is that if you tell people, they may gossip, so the info may spread further than you expect it to.</p>

<p>My D15 has a history of doing very well on standardized tests. D14, not so much. But D14’s HS gpa is higher in similar classes. D14 is a poster child for holistic admissions, accepted to her dream school. </p>

<p>It’s hard to say which kid is under more pressure, the one with a gpa that’s higher than would be expected given her ACT scores, or the one with a gpa that’s much lower than would be expected. </p>

<p>@poeme I haven’t heard of “try hards.” At your school it was ok to get good grades, but wasn’t cool to have to work for them? At my school, ages ago, all kids who got good grades were called “stoods.” The tease was a derogatory form of “student” applied to anyone with good grades regardless of the perceived effort involved. I do remember suddenly having to study in high school.</p>

<p>Why is it OK to extol athletic abilities and accomplishments but not academic ones?</p>

<p>Things like SAT and ACT scores and letter grades are private. Now, if a student wins an essay contest, or is named spelling bee champion, or advances in the Intel competition, then sure, go brag about it as much as you would if your kid won a state championship. </p>

<p>Why is it OK to extol athletic abilities and accomplishments but not academic ones?
Post edited by J’adoube at 12:52AM
1Like Helpful · </p>

<p>I have wondered this many times myself. My DS is a 3 sport athlete that prefers NOT to get the highest score (or at least not be public about it) because it seems it is 1 label to a person. You can be an athlete or a smart kid but not both even in his high school that emphasizes involvement in lots of ECs AND academic achievement. It seems to be the social order of high school more than anything else. Do we as grown ups still buy in to some of that? Why do my coworkers ask about every save on the soccer field and it is ok to tell them but sharing test scores would be bragging? I agree it is perceived as such and we will be selective about sharing that information as I don’t think I will have answers to all of this ever :-). </p>

<p>Regardless, the real mystery are the teachers that announce test scores to the classroom. A child that has the class 4th bell should not find out their score from someone that had the same class 1st bell! This really sets up some weird peer pressure to NOT do well. </p>

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<p>Because not being an athlete is not as life-limiting as being dumb is</p>

<p>I would counsel modesty whether it is sports or academics. Nobody likes the braggart athlete either. </p>

<p>But there are some kinds of achievement that get published and others that don’t. NMF get their names in the paper. Fastest runners in a meet do, too. The guy who can lift the most weight in practice on one day may get talked about, but his name won’t be published. Getting a high ACT score may be talked about, but it is unlikely to be published. (I have seen kids get perfect scores and have their stories written up in the local paper, however.)</p>

<p>Our kids went to an independent school where there are letters for academic activities like debate, quiz bowl, speech, etc. And the school promoted it when a kid had a strong performance at state in one of those, and I think they genuinely were treated as well as the good athletes are. </p>

<p>I think one of the differences about test scores, though, is that pretty much every high school students takes the SAT or ACT. And so they are on the same playing field as a kid who scores really well. And that makes people envious if they can’t do the same (easy to like the top performer in football OR debate if you don’t have to compete head to head with them – but in this case, you have to). </p>

<p>Also, as others have mentioned, it is much more stressful if your kid stumbles academically, or is not strong in some academic subject if people know they have great scores. My kid with great test scores is godawful at foreign languages (as her dad and I, and her sister are – family trait). It is less pressure for her to have to just compete with the work and her classmates in that subject, not adding the pressure of everything thinking she is brilliant on top of that. </p>

<p>A score is just a measure of where they were in one place in time.
I don’t see it as an acommplishment, in & of itself.
It’s what they do with it that matters.</p>

<p>emeraldkity4, yessss!!! One of the funny things about scores it that some people use them to measure things that the score didn’t test. . . scores are a very, very limited take on high achievement.</p>

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<p>If there was any sort of bragging about SAT scores at my public magnet when I attended, it was almost always done by the students themselves as most of us commuted far enough from home that parents weren’t much of a factor.</p>

<p>Also, the bragging dynamic was a bit different than what I’ve heard from most mainstream high schools as at my public magnet, having a reasonably above-average score(more than 1350 or better on the pre-1995 SAT) was so common that all it confirmed was that one “belonged” in the school. </p>

<p>Instead of bragging about one’s scores as a form of tooting one’s horn, the dynamic was more avoiding discussing them if one scored “below average” as that would prompt the jerky top quarter classmates and even a few teachers into openly wondering “How did you make it in here” and some comments about “not being really smart”. </p>

<p>It also doesn’t help that kids with 2.0 HS GPAs and 1300+ pre-1995 SATs were commonplace enough that it wouldn’t have been considered noteworthy or unusual for those familiar with high schools like ours. </p>

<p>One consequence of this dynamic was there were several subgroups within my public magnet who made it a point to completely reject the “HYPSMCC or bust” or caring about metrics like GPA/SAT. </p>

<p>A few would go so far as to go in the completely opposite direction by deliberately lying to classmates about having much lower GPA/SAT scores than what was actually achieved or aspiring to become something slackerish like a beachbum in California rather than going off to an elite or respectable or elite college. </p>

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<p>This happened to me as a child. For some reason my mom had me tested when I was five or six years old. The score was high. Don’t get me wrong, I’m smart enough. But there must have been some magic dust in my Cheerios the morning of that test because my scores were extremely high. Much higher than would be reasonably expected. That score followed not just me, but my sister around for years and years. My sister, who is probably smarter than I am and certainly has better people-skills than I do, came to define herself as the “not-so-smart” sister because of the comparisons that were made throughout elementary school and even into high school. I always found that very distressing. And it has led to a general mistrust of scores based on a single testing event on my part. </p>

<p>Thank you @emeraldkity4!! A 30 on the ACT as a 7th grader isn’t an accomplishment - it’s a assessment at one particular point in time. The child who got the 17 isn’t a less able person and that’s the problem with announcing these scores. EK is right - it’s not the score that matters - it’s what they do with their ability to achieve those scores.</p>

<p><a href=“The Wrong Way to Treat Child Geniuses - WSJ”>http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-wrong-way-to-treat-child-geniuses-1401484790&lt;/a&gt; is a good column on the high stat child. It’s great to have high stats but the world’s achievements are not limited to those with high stats. “Most child prodigies are highly successful—but most highly successful people weren’t child prodigies.”</p>

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<p>I love that quote!</p>