Mcat2, my kids were all in competitive sports and there is a difference between low expectations because of income and race. My kids were consistently told they should not be in the harder group, AP class, etc-- and they all had gifted IQs and were reading by age four. In our school district, it is absolutely not about income. There is a serious problem with honors classes including average white kids and excluding gifted black and Hispanic kids. Some schools have tried to address the matter but there are often teachers or counselor a who have their own biases and may not even recognize them. But there’s another matter: once students get to high school, college and especially in the workplace, they are increasingly faced with opportunities which are at the discretion of a person in charge. So the principal chooses students for a certain board or the school chooses two students to nominate for something. What we found is that, generally speaking, unless there are clear-cut guidelines (students must have attained a certain level of schoolwork), there are a number of people in charge who choose people with whom they feel culturally comfortable and that often means someone of their own race. This is most common in a work environment because, in a diverse school, someone will eventually say, “Hey, why are no black kids being nominated?”
My kids’ public high school makes a point of hiring diverse administrators. I had no idea how important that was until my kids were in high school. It’s not only important for the students to see administrators/ leaders of their race, those administrators are often able to see beyond stereotypes and reach out to minority students.
I think that in high school (and also in college), because the bar of academic achievement level is set higher (i.e., many more challenging AP and IB classes), the achievement level of the student can help to tell which kid can handle more challenging courses. There is not much point to rely on the “IQ or IQ-like” test to differentiate a gifted student from a non-gifted student. The achievement level can tell them apart.
But even in the early elementary school, some teachers somehow could subjectively tell which kids may have academic potential in the future.
Not intend to turn this into a bragging thread, I would like to share this: When teacher thinks our child could be good at academics well before high school. Our child was not fluent in spoken English before he started on preschool. However, when he “graduated” from the preschool, his teacher already thought highly of him. She actually told us: Do you know what valedictorian means? If there is a valedictorian for the preschool, your child will be the one. His kindergarten teacher, second grade teacher and fourth grader teacher told us he was good at academic also. There was a spelling bee test for every kid. He was chosen to represent his elementary school – we did not prep our child for it when the school gave the test to all students. We even did not know this test before he won.
Another tidbit about his kindergarten teacher. I really did not know how this got started. Somehow his kindergarten teacher got into some “competition” with another kindergarten teacher (whose class room is next to our child’s class room) about whose students are more capable in academics. I later learned that it was the teacher in the next classroom who tried to “show off” how great one of her students was. When our child’s teacher wanted to show that she also had a very good student, she nominated our child to “dual” with the other teacher’s “best student.” At that time, it could be the case that the best student in the other classroom could be better than pur child, in my guess. (That kid’s mother had some gifted child education background and was very educated, while our child grew up in an environment that is not good for learning English.)
Later, that kid left the public school system and attended a prevate elementary school. We crossed our path again by accident. My child’s violin teacher happened to teach some music lesson at that private elementary school as well. Every Saturday, the violin teacher would give a free group lesson to all of her students (either the students who take the private lesson, or the students who take lessons at that private elementary school.) For this round of “competition”, our child definitely won. (Not a fair competition though: private lesson students are taught one-on-one – the best ones would be “groomed” for regional or state-wide competition after about 8+ years of more intensive lessons, while the lesson at that private elementary school is a group lesson, which is meant for the enrichment purpose only.)
Actually, that kid’s mother was our child’s English tutor for a very brief time. She did not need the money but somehow she was nice enough to take our child “under her wing” (we still paid her though.) She basically taught her child and our child simultaneously. Our child once told us that her child would keep asking his mother that he was “better” than our child. I do not think our child would lie to us about this at that age (first grade, or even kindergarten.) It is really not a healthy attitude the kids should have, I think.
There is another “story” about our child’s second year teacher. Somehow she decided to give our child “extra homework” after asking us whether it is fine for her to do this. She somehow thinks our child would benefit if she gave him some “more advanced” homework. She is Jewish and I heard her own children were excellent in academics. We really appreciate that she went extra miles (without us asking) to teach our child. I remember our child had a lot of written homework in that year.
I’d like to agree with this, and to tie it back to something I said (semifacetiously) earlier–it’s important to be smart, but it’s also important to SEEM smart. While I think teachers, administrators, etc., need to learn to look beyond cultural differences, I do think people who want to achieve in an environment in which they are part of a minority can do better if they examine ways that they can communicate better with the majority–this includes such things as speech and dress.
Note that there has been research on unconscious bias. Here is an article: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=80755
While the article is mostly about the applications of this research to policing, the same can apply to school teachers and administrators.
The article also mentions training that treats “bias as a common human condition to be recognized and managed, rather than as a deeply offensive personal sin, an approach that makes cops less defensive.”
I’ve learned that nobody, no matter your race, can expect school faculty to hold your or your child’s hand through anything. Five or so years ago it just clicked that nobody is worrying about my children on the way home from the school, you know. They’re all going to sleep fine whether my children fizzle out of college or end up at an Ivy. School faculty are there to collect a paycheck, period. Whether students get into Ivies or the flagship U, or fizzle out at the local commuter college, they won’t sink even a minute of their life dwelling on it. I guess my point is nobody really cares. Perhaps that sounds obvious, or maybe it sounds cynical, but it was eye-opening once I became awakened to that fact. I also started understanding and respecting helicopter parents that much more. It’s your child’s life, if you don’t take it extremely seriously, nobody else will.
This reminds me of this: the admission officer for our area (which covers our state and maybe a few other neighboring states, I think) happens to be an African American. I guess he feels cultrually comfortable with DS’s race. LOL.
@cpamum, When a parent helicopters a little bit too much, there will be no lack of fellow parents who will be quick to label such a parent as a helicopter parent, tiger mom/dad. And many may say such a parent could “damage” his/her offsprings psychologically. Well…moderation is the key, I guess. (Disclaimer: we were more like helicopter parents than non-helicopter parents before our child was in college.)
Trying to SEEM smart can be draining. I don’t think my son ever felt happy in school until he met his professors in college. I take that back, there was an Asian AP Calc teacher in HS that he really liked.
By the way, nobody gave our son an IQ test in High School before recommending him for alternative schooling. The decision was based on the fact that he attended elementary and middle schools that they considered low performing. The VP and counselor sat and explained to me/ us that he wouldn’t be able to close the gap. They actually said he would fall behind, fail and dropout of HS if he stayed.
^^ That. There’s plenty of work out there documenting the dangers of stereotype threat (including from positive stereotypes, not just negative ones), and the stress of trying to seem [insert adjective here] is one of the factors that play into it being so damaging.
You can learn to sound smart. That’s a matter of how you say what you do say and knowing when not to rattle off in ways that make you seem uninformed. I guess I see it as a life skill. It’s different than pretending, always trying to impress someone else, or over-extending. Eg, ask an intelligent question, not a dumb one.
And many people from various circumstances do learn this.
There is a serious problem with honors classes including average white kids and excluding gifted black and Hispanic kids.
Our school uses standardized test scores to assign kids to honors classes. Isn’t that how it is usually done? Or are people suggesting bias in the tests?
Bias (conscious or unconscious) in previous grade levels could ■■■■■■ the intellectual development of an otherwise gifted student of a biased-against group (whether by race, religion, SES, etc.) to the point that “objective” measures (e.g. previous grades, standardized tests) show the effect of such bias. On the other hand, more subjective means like teacher recommendations can just add another place where bias can affect the decision.
This thread has taken so many twists and turns. The top five or ten parenting activities that help to optimize growth, learning and being “smart” have been well covered. I still believe that for the level of smart that the OP is referring to there is something about young people that makes others take note, something that sets them apart, that kid who some teachers describe as their “once in a career student.” And whether or not a particular admissions committe can see that on paper, is not really the issue, it is what people take note of when they interact with that young individual. That kid usually comes into the world well equiped and most of the time (though not always–there will always be resilient outlyers) these kids are lucky enough to end up in environments that are enriched enough to move that innate potential in the right direction and keep it going. There is no way to separate the nature and nurture, both are so important in maintaining that “so darn smart” trajectory.
Kindasorta—school districts I’ve been involved with, it’s standardized test scores plus some sort of holistic, subjective fudge factor.
Even the “highly gifted” program in the district I live in, which is allegedly based entirely on test scores, involves a bit of subjectivity on the art of the administration in terms of which test’s results to use for any given student.
I am not at all sure that inclusion in a “gifted program” or scoring highly on an IQ test as a child means that a child will be “so smart” as a teen or adult, but fwiw -
Our district’s elementary gifted program in practice has a hard IQ cut-off, even though theoretically they are supposed to be holistic. Students are typically referred by teachers or tested privately at parent initiative, and must test every three years to maintain eligibility. Sometimes exasperated teachers refer students if it seems that they are asking too many difficult questions, or bored with the slow pace of instruction, or if they are getting very high grades. Often parents have a child tested if they are doing poorly in school yet seem very smart.
PA allows for gifted iep’s and having an iep gives a parent leverage in tweaking the curriculum to fit their child’s needs, provided the school has the resources. (My pet peeve is the inability of most upper-level elementary teachers to address the needs of students who are already working at the high school level or above.) A student who has an iep for a disability can have an additional gifted iep if tested IQ is in range, even though the disability iep in theory should be taking strengths as well as weaknesses into consideration.
Lopsided kids who might have verbal or math abilities, or creative ability far exceeding most students in the formal “gifted program” are sometimes excluded as a result of not meeting the FSIQ cut-off, or if admitted find that the program does not begin to address their needs in areas in which they have the most strength.
Admission to the higher tracks in middle school and high school however has little to do with IQ test results, but depends on teacher rec’s, scores on achievement tests, and grades in preceding classes, with IQ test results or other standardized tests sometimes taken into consideration. Students are also permitted to take part in a wide array of academic competitions without regard to IQ test results, although it is usually the students in the highest track who are made aware of opportunities.
Then how one gets the label “smart”? What it actually means, if IQ score is thrown out? How it was determined that the person is “smart”, what other measures are used. What is person consistently comments: “I am not smart, I am hard working” - isn’t realization that the harder you work the more you achieve “smart” all by itself? "Smart’ is way too subjective notion if IQ score is out of picture. One person could be “smart” for some and pretty “dumb” by others, depending their point of reference.
@MiamiDAP, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously used the phrase in discussing pornography, but I think it applies here also: “I know it when I see it.”