<p>The reason people think that taking the SAT in 7th grade can be a helpful measure of giftedness is because the kids typically would not have learned the material on the test in school. So doing well depends more on knowledge rather than test taking strategies than in junior year of high school.</p>
<p>My experience with gifted education is doing summer programs for three years, taking math at the high school in middle school, and in high school being in all the highest level courses. Since the high school is incredibly competitve, people are placed by teacher recommendations and test scores and movement between levels is mostly downwards. There are four levels, special ed, then another two, and then the top level considered as honors, but actually significantly more exclusive than most other high schools.
In theory (how it actually is in practice is a different story), I think the high school system is good for intelligent students, except there should be more ways for kids to move up a level. This system really benefitted the smartest kids since the top level courses were taught to the top of the class, most of whom were incredibly smart given the composition of the district and rigorous nature of the school.</p>
<p>I think I would have benefitted from a system like this in middle school more than I benefitted from being pulled out of the general class. If everyone is leveled, then it is probably most beneficial to the kids at the top as they do not feel they are being singled out. However, I think others would argue that this system undermines the confidence of students in the lower levels whatever that means.</p>
<p>I personally don’t think it helps gifted kids to completely segregate their education from everyone else by having a detached gifted class. I think it’s not good for social development. Most people you encounter in life are not going to be gifted, you need to learn how to deal with that and realize that intelligence is not the only measure of one’s character. I also disagree with people saying that gifted kids must always be challenged. Some day, everyone enters the real world and must learn to function in the circumstances they are given. If a kid can only produce good work when challenged, that’s not going to help them in the long run. Part of being truly intelligent is creating your own puzzles to think about, not just waiting for them to be presented to you.</p>
<p>One of my kids was invited to apply to CTY based on her score on one of the subtests of a standardized test. When we got the letter we laughed, because while smart, she is decidedly average to above average for her peer group and she was being plenty challenged by the curriculum at her private school. Had we been less sophisticated education consumers perhaps we would have pursued further testing, but as it was we passed.</p>
<p>“I personally don’t think it helps gifted kids to completely segregate their education from everyone else by having a detached gifted class. I think it’s not good for social development. Most people you encounter in life are not going to be gifted, you need to learn how to deal with that and realize that intelligence is not the only measure of one’s character. I also disagree with people saying that gifted kids must always be challenged. Some day, everyone enters the real world and must learn to function in the circumstances they are given. If a kid can only produce good work when challenged, that’s not going to help them in the long run. Part of being truly intelligent is creating your own puzzles to think about, not just waiting for them to be presented to you.”. (don’t know how to quote)</p>
<p>I disagree with this. Firstly, most really gifted kids already know they think differently. Being placed into a separate classroom is not the first time that this concept will occur to them. It is often the first time that they (if they are moderately gifted since that’s the level most gifted classrooms target) will actually get to learn anything at anywhere near the pace and depth of which they are capable. And aren’t schools supposed to be about learning anyway? “Social development” does not have to be the domain of the school system. That happens at home, in parks, at little league games, etc. At least give these kids someplace in their lives where they don’t have to moderate their abilities. </p>
<p>Now if we are talking extremely gifted students then those gifted classrooms won’t really help there either.</p>
<p>It really bugs me when Olympic caliber athletes think they should train on high quality equipment with expert coaches and access to a high end peer group/competitors. Why can’t they play on my town’s recreational sports league and devise their own “elite” opportunities? What’s wrong with the town ice rink, soccer field, tennis courts? After all, they’re going to spend most of their lives playing on these crappy facilities and NOT at a special Olympic training facility… better get used to the low end competition now.</p>
<p>Here’s a former child “genius” who opines that differentiating the truly highly gifted from the mere mortals may not be as beneficial as perceived. He uses a similar argument to Poeme. Further, he makes the point that society loses a lot of potential because the “ordinary” will assume that they never achieve success in particular fields (mathematics) because they were not tagged as gifted. That is sad.</p>
<p>I don’t think he is making the argument against gifted education accommodations. I think it could be read as just the opposite. I agree wholeheartedly with him that no one should be discouraged from studying something just because there are others that started studying it younger and can learn it much faster. Keeping those extreme kids in the same class would do just that though, wouldn’t it? It would be constant “proof” to those more normal learning kids that they aren’t as good as that person so why bother. </p>
<p>I also agree that those comments that gifted kids will solve all the world’s problems are nonsense. </p>
<p>I believe that everyone should be able to have the same chance to learn in school. Limiting someone’s education so that they can get used to mediocrity and frustration, or for their social development, is ridiculous. </p>
<p>Sometimes on CC, it seems like we are worried about the self esteem of everyone EXCEPT the high scoring student. Whatever you think about holistic admissions for colleges, why shouldn’t, for instance, a kind of awkward kid who may not have a lot going for him in plenty of areas of life be able to be proud of himself for scoring well on the SATs, rather than be made to understand at once that it is an arbitrary and meaningless achievement that says nothing at all about his intelligence and should be attributed purely to social class, genetics, and his identity as a dull, passionless “grind” ? It doesn’t end there, either: at every turn you’ll find plenty of people to tell us that various other academic accomplishments don’t mean much either.</p>
<p>In my hometown, the average family income is over 100K. The average SAT score last year was 1150 out of 1600. Just because most really high scoring students wouldn’t have done as well had they gone to lesser schools and come from less affluent families doesn’t mean every affluent suburbanite does great on the SAT. Some combination of intelligence and effort still makes a difference.</p>
<p>Of course the SAT doesn’t test raw intelligence. A lot of people would argue that IQ tests don’t do a great job of testing raw intelligence either. But that’s precisely the problem. There’s no easy way of determining who the “smartest” person is. We should still value accomplishments that require certain types of intelligence and not demand that a kid practically win a Nobel Prize before we’ll grudgingly admit that he’s actually smart. </p>
<p>Not that that means you should be advertising your SAT score, which is crass, although I’m not sure it needs to be a military secret either. </p>
<p>“why shouldn’t, for instance, a kind of awkward kid who may not have a lot going for him in plenty of areas of life be able to be proud of himself for scoring well on the SATs”</p>
<p>I agree with you, and I’m pretty sure they are proud despite any messages to the contrary. At least, I was proud when I was a high-scoring awkward kid without much going for me in other areas. All the CC skeptics in the world don’t outweigh the reinforcing power of a national system that tests all the kids, ranks them by percentile, and tells you you’re at the top. It’s human nature to feel proud when you see that in black and white. It was a darn nice pat on the back.</p>
<p>Reacting like that in my extended family and in peer contexts…especially HS and among boys/young men would be regarded as a manifestation of a “sore loser” and a “whiner” and treated/judged accordingly. </p>
<p>It is he/she who would be given a talking to from parents, older relatives, and older peers in school/playground. One aspect of character development we were expected to learn was knowing how to accept being outmatched by others with some degree of grace. It’s also something GOOD sports coaches teach their players. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Also, if one grew up in a neighborhood where the majority of one’s peers don’t value education and intellectual pursuits and worse, resent those who do to the point of violence, separation of the above-average intellectual achievers and gifted could literally be a lifesaver for them. </p>
<p>Several HS classmates along with yours truly would have ended up in some of the most crime ridden neighborhood HSs in NYC if we had not been admitted to our public magnet. </p>
<p>Later on, I encountered some college students who went straight to college after spending several years as HS dropouts. Most of their stories seemed to be they dropped out despite having high SAT scores(1300+ pre-1995) because they were targeted for violent bullying by peers and teachers/admins for being above-average academic achievers/gifted, the local school systems had nothing/refused to provide them the enrichment programs they needed, and their families were too poor in the local community to move or advocate effectively for their kids. </p>
<p>Being at a college which allowed them to take as many advanced courses without many bureaucratic obstacles, where there was a critical mass of peers like them, and supportive faculty was a great boon…especially compared with their abysmal K-12 experiences. </p>
<p>@pleasantvalley, I didn’t say that there should be no segregation among students with different abilities. I said that I benefitted from being in the highest level classes in high school. However, I do think that gifted kids need to in some way not be completely elevated and segregated from the rest of the students. There needs to be the ability to move up into these classes if a student shows they belong there.</p>
<p>I was in a special math program at my very rigorous high school. I started by going to the high school for math in middle school. Many years later, I think this program made it harder for me to interact with other kids at middle school since I was away at the high school in the morning. It also gave me a sort of label that made me stand out. In the long run, being an extra year ahead in math in high school was not something that mattered. You can become as advanced as you want in college. </p>
<p>Life is not a race. It seems that the most child prodigies who skipped grades and the most brilliant students who went the ordinary route end up in the same place. Honestly when I visited the open houses for the PhD programs I was considering (Harvard an Stanford among others), everyone I met had gone to college at the same as everyone else. This is Harvard we are talking about, where you would expect these kids to be!</p>
<p>When my kids took Stanley Kaplan for the SAT’s in their sophomore years, there were kids as young as twelve in their SAT prep class. Their parents were prepping them for the CTY exam, and several of them took Stanley Kaplan twice. Most of these kids were from Tiger Mom type families and didn’t actually want to be at Stanley Kaplan on Saturday afternoon. Anything has the potential to be corrupted, but to claim that the CTY exam is somehow an indicator of ‘real’ giftedness is false, unless you think having your kids take Stanley Kaplan twice in preparation for the Duke or CTY testing is not happening – which I assure you it is.</p>
<p>The vast majority of the kids taking the tests for talent search don’t prep, I think. My kid did a few practice questions to see what it was like the first time she took it. She spent a whole hour (literally one hour) with a prep book looking at math questions before her second time. She never did particularly well on the math anyway, CR was her strong suit. There are surely a few tiger moms sending kids to prep classes on the coasts, but I bet there were pretty much none in our Midwestern city. The kids who are truly gifted can sniff out the grinders in a heartbeat anyway when they meet other kids (at least my kid can). So if that kid got themselves into a program like SET or into the CTY online group or off to Davidson THINK, they wouldn’t actually fit in very well.</p>
<p>My kid took the SAT in 8th grade as part of the Johns Hopkins program. The middle school school sent home the information as part of the program she was already in. I did not ask her to take the test; she decided on her own to do it and I do not remember her exact scores ( nor does this matter). She did not prep and walked out with a big smile while all the juniors walked out exhausted. We both knew it just did not matter. </p>
<p>Sometimes a test is “easier” when the results do not really matter for much (not high stakes) and students approach it as a sort of game, especially if it is similar to other “games” they have been playing for years. At our high school there are always a few students who do much better on the PSAT when they take it during their sophomore year than when they take it to try to achieve NMF status as juniors, because it doesn’t really “count” for sophomores. </p>
<p>There are also students who seem to teachers to learn much faster than “gifted” peers, who will freeze up when they are being given an IQ test and cannot qualify for a gifted program that has a strict cut-off until they learn how to take IQ tests. </p>
<p>That said, I think it is great that OP’s D was able to do well on an ACT taken in 8th grade,whether or not she had to practice ahead of time, just not so sure that I would spread the news. I do think it is good that OP’s D has learned that with practice, she can indeed get a high score on this sort of test. </p>
Are you even sure that it is a good idea to come here to brag? This kind of problem won’t disappear just because people move from the real world to the online virtual world.</p>
<p>Is it likely more “acceptable” to vent (if you happen to have something bothering you or your family) than to brag here?</p>
<p>What happens if your child, along with other students from your school and others in the district or state, is invited in seventh grade to a chess tournament and he wins (he has the highest score of all the players)? The students are invited because they have achieved a certain level of play and all have had the preparation that playing and studying the game provides.How do you keep the other players from feeling bad because they didn’t win? Should each one get a trophy for participation? They all know they are good players otherwise they wouldn’t be invited. How is this different from the Duke TIP?</p>
<p>My D took the SAT for CTY in 7th grade and ended up with a scholarship to study ancient Greek at an away camp at Franklin & Marshall, as well as scholarships to study Mandarin online for two summers. She loved it and it gave her a chance to get instruction in the area of her passions that was completely unavailable in our rural community. It was good for us.</p>
<p>She also was a NMF and the school did post her name on their changing sign. She was pretty uncomfortable with this and we were glad when it came down. </p>
<p>Your mom should stop – the parent of the kid who got a 26 feels bad, and the parent of the kid who got a 34 is rolling their eyes. There really isn’t an upside to sharing it. </p>
<p>Neither of these reactions makes any sense. A 34 should recognize that 31 is a pretty decent score, and a 26 should not be surprised that some people got more. </p>