<p>jym, I read that WISC III and IV could not be compared easily, just as you stated. I read that there are differences in IQ scores between the 2 tests. I suppose this means that some subjects have wide swings between the 2 tests. Isn’t this just a little bit scary if one is trying to look at data, such as the one from UDEL, or making up programs in schools to teach kids based on their ability to learn (which is determined in part by an IQ test)? Suddenly the educators may see a student as less able to learn at grade level, or having more ability than they had before, and then increasing expectations. This is still the same subject/student, just with different numbers attached to them, b/c the IQ test given has changed. It does not make much sense to me.</p>
<p>“It’s wonderful for those kids with the high IQs, but what about those who have the attention span, work ethic and discipline to do the work, but do not make that cut off?”</p>
<p>When gifted programs really are for gifted kids (meaning kids who are not only intelligent, but love to challenge themselves to find creative ways of doing things that interest them, and also are internally motivated to do intellectual things that interest them), then the programs really aren’t that interesting to students who aren’t gifted in those subjects. Indeed, the programs can be very frustrating.</p>
<p>The bright, but not gifted student may be excited when they find the right answer to a problem even if they find the answer easily. Getting work in which they can find the right answer may make them happy. Being expected to find a new way or a creative way to find the right answer may seem like a waste of time to them. The gifted student may get excited by finding a creative way of finding the answer. They may be bored or lack the motivation to find the right answer if it seems to them to be easy.</p>
<p>What motivates them is the difference between the 2 students. Both may have the attention span, work ethic and discipline to do work that motivates them.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the world has a need for both types of people, and both types of people can be very successful depending on one’s definition of success. In fact, the person who is motivated to find the quickest, easiest way of finding the right answer may be more successful in many careers than is the person who’s spending lots of time looking for the creative way to find a solution.</p>
<p>If measured intellect distributes along a bell curve then surely it must be evident that a child with a 129 IQ has most if not all the attributes of the child with a 130 or 135 IQ. The attributes of a gifted individual are not anomalies not otherwise found in the rest of the population-- any more than the attributes of ADD or dyslexia or Asperger syndrome are solely seen in the populations with these diagnoses.</p>
<p>If my kids and their friends who did not get exposed to gifted education and seemed to do well, I have no desire to look for what they missed. Here is what they got: they befriended and learned to value the attributes of kids with lower IQ’s, with learning differences, with motivational issues, and with basically harder school lives than they had-often these kids were great athletes or very social or whatever; they learned to enlist the support of teachers (by themselves) when they felt the need to extend their understanding and learning; they came to appreciate the many ways that most of the people they knew had skills that were better than theirs sometimes. In the long run, I suspect this will hold them in much better stead than hours spent in a self contained group of similar learners. They added on debate, MUN, theater, music etc and explored a range of their intellectuality. Did their school have a critical mass of ‘gifted’ kids permeating the population, well- since most of the parents of the kids have graduate level educations, I would guess so.</p>
<p>One parent in our HS is making noises about “gifted” kids not being served at the HS level. When this school offers tons of AP classes, plus high-level art, music, & drama classes, plus ECs such as math club & debate, I am at a loss to understand what her problem is. I suspect she is used to her child being labeled “gifted” and now she is not special enough to stand out at the HS level. Or something. </p>
<p>And as has been stated, there are all sorts of ways to measure intelligence.</p>
<p>
cpt~</p>
<p>Excellent post, as usual! 
There is something disturbing to me about having a specific numerical cutoff for gifted program placement, especially when that number can vary by state or program. From my own observations of those who went through the program from elementary through h.s. with my oldest son, I can honestly say that I was surprised at some of the ones who were tested into the program vs. some of the ones who didn’t make the cutoff…definitely not what would appear obvious by school performance and general h.s. success/achievement.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>NSM~
The gifted program in our district, with placement based solely on an IQ number, is not like the one you describe above. There are usually many kids left in general ed. who outperform many of the “gifted” kids. </p>
<p>I remember a talk given to us parents once by the elementary gifted teacher. She kept remarking over and over about “Gifted kids this…” and “Gifted kids that…” I remember thinking, how can you classify an entire group of kids in any one way? 
I let my son know from the beginning that I would NEVER accept “boredom” as an excuse for bad behavior and that he’d better darn well find a way to occupy himself in school if he finished work before the rest of the kids. He always managed to do this. </p>
<p>I have seen the RARE gifted kid whose abilities so outstripped everyone else that he truly NEEDED different types of instruction. My son had one such friend in his GTC class, but that is the only one I recall, and even so, my son outperformed him in both standardized test scores and GPA, so I do think that gifted kids can, for the most part, get their needs met within a challenging general ed. curriculum that includes Honors and AP classes (or an IB program) with creative teachers.</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>About the Specificity of Needs Issue:</p>
<p>When my son was in first grade we lived in a Texas school district where everyone is above average and the children are streamed into gifted classes beginning at first grade. My son was a precocious reader with an excellent fund of knowledge and the teacher urged me to get him tested. I knew we were leaving at the end of the school year- so the imploring that “If you don’t get him in in first grade it gets harder later on” didn’t matter to me. Mostly, I thought it might be fun for him.</p>
<p>He took the test, he qualified, he was pulled out 5 afternoons/week for 2 hours for ‘extended learning.’ At the end of the year his report card raved about how valuable his contributions were, how he was such an effective critical thinker, yada yada.</p>
<p>When we moved we were given his school records to transport. The envelope was open so I looked! He was given an IQ test that was scored in a very straight forward manner and the numbers were right in front of me…he scored a 157. </p>
<p>I was shocked. I was his mother, I test kids for a living, he did not have a 157 IQ…but this was why, in fact, he had qualified for as much pull out as he had (there were various tiers of pull out)…</p>
<p>I looked at the numbers, and guess what… a math error had been made!! How about that. True number not to be revealed, but still plenty for the ‘regular gifted’ program…</p>
<p>Had my son suddenly become less gifted, less critical in his thinking, less a contributor, less worthy, less likely to benefit…less anything??</p>
<p>No, but the teacher did need to learn to add, and more importantly to learn to check her work!!! I wonder what would have happened had we stayed in that school district. What if in fact a boy with a sub 150 had proven himself a fine member of that lofty club…imagine the turmoil.</p>
<p><em>lol</em> anitaw, and point well taken. We have a similar type of story…</p>
<p>My oldest D is a very bright girl who lacks the (rather extreme) motivation of her older brother. She was not chosen for “enrichment” pull-out in first or second grade, but in third grade, after her standardized achievement test scores came back very high, her teacher said, “WOW!”…maybe she needs the enrichment, so she began the “extended learner” program.</p>
<p>Now, get this…for the entire time that she attended this program (three years), her motivation increased and her grades were exemplary–imagine that…I mean, she was <em>told</em> she was gifted, so she figured she’d better damn well act the part. <em>lol</em> BUT…when she was tested for permanent placement in the fifth grade, she missed it by a hair.</p>
<p>Her grades have never been the same since…they’re GOOD, yes, but seeing as how she was no longer “gifted,” she figured she didn’t have to emulate that behavior any longer! ;)</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>Usually the cutoff scores for admission into gifted programs are slightly higher than it is for later years, because often, as berurah’s child experienced, the scores change and a child may no longer meet criteria for admission. Without getting into boring statistical discussions, suffice it to say that the variations in performance and developmental rates are greater at the younger ages. So if a child is accepted into the program with a score at the 96%ile in 1st grade, their score may only hit the 93rd %ile in the 3rd grade, and they no longer qualify for the program. So here, before they modified the admission criteria to include things like creativity and motivation, you had to score in the 98th %ile at the younger age to qualify so you would be less likely to “fall out” on retest, and no longer meet criteria to stay in the program.</p>
<p>Now mind you, I think cutoff scores for admission into these programs is silly. If you were to take a test 2 days in a row you’d get slightly different scores. The numbers are not “absolute”. They are how you scored on that day. They can be affected by mood, energy, sleep, and whether or not you had a cold. Lots of things affect test-retest variability. But the places that use cutoffs use them, typically, because of limited space in a program. It doesn’t mean that you are “gifted” one day and not the next. It just means that you did or didn’t meet criteria for admission into an enrichment program. If this is not the message the schools are giving the kids, that is a true injustice to the kids.</p>
<p>I repeat-- I dislike the notion of “cutoffs” scores, to say that you score in, say the top 5% of students for acceptance into a particular program. That said, I am anxiously awaiting s’s PSAT scores.</p>
<p>Berurah’s D story is similar to studies where teachers are told certain students are “gifted” when actually they have been chosen randomly. The students who are given extra attention and expected to do well–do well! </p>
<p>Duh.</p>
<p>Anita, we have no gifted education here either (MA has exactly $0 allocated…that’s right…zero…for gifted ed). </p>
<p>It doesn’t really bother me in the slightest (except for having to pay out of pocket for all kinds of enriching experiences), since most “gifted programs” (and I use that term loosely) have arbitrary cut-offs, and offer enrichment in areas from which many students could benefit (yes, not just the IQ 130, as opposed to IQ 125 kid). </p>
<p>I have never been impressed much by public school efforts in gifted education, and I think offers kids exactly as Berurah describes: a chance for the identified kids to think they are ultra special, and for the unselected kids to feel like schlubs, especially when those un-selected kids may not differ from the selected kids all that much at all numbers wise. </p>
<p>We should do a much better job of differentiating instruction, but gifted ed, as it stands now, falls way short.</p>
<p>In post #120, a link was given to a piece of work by a woman named Linda Gottfredson. That material looks to be the material used by my daughter’s teacher to explain the IQ/career connection we’ve been discussing.</p>
<p>Upon googling this woman to find out more about her work, I came upon some rather disturbing information. Here is a link to one of her pieces. If this work truly reflects her beliefs, then I would have even stronger objections to <em>any</em> of her material being presented in a definitive way to my D’s class. An excerpt:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.eugenics.net/papers/Gottfredson.htm[/url]”>http://www.eugenics.net/papers/Gottfredson.htm</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Google the Pioneer Fund…pretty interesting.</p>
<p>Yes. Amazingly, nearly one half of my daughter’s class is classified as gifted. This is the 8 year old we’re talking about here. Not quite one half, actually-- the numbers were something like 36 out of 78 kids tested gifted if memory serves. They take some sort of abstract test which determines this. I recall that when her older sister tested a few years ago, about one third were determined to be gifted. </p>
<p>I’m interested in your comments on these numbers! I don’t know what to make of labeling so many children as gifted . . .</p>
<p>“Not quite one half, actually-- the numbers were something like 36 out of 78 kids tested gifted if memory serves. They take some sort of abstract test which determines this.”</p>
<p>The test is probably a very rough estimate since it’s only looking at one possible characteristic of giftedness. Any group test is not going to be as accurate as an individually administered test like the the WISC. </p>
<p>Depending on where you live and/or what school your D goes to however, it could be possible that half the class is gifted. If your D is in a school where there are lots of kids of people like professors, doctors, lawyers and engineers, there’s a very good chance that a much higher proportion than normal could be correctly estimated as having gifted intelligence due to their having inherited it from their parents.</p>
<p>I think that about 1/4 of the kids in my Ss’ elementary school – the public school that we are zoned for – were identified as gifted. The school had a high proportion of kids of university professors, lawyers and doctors.</p>
<p>Kids with those kind of parents also are likely to have grown up in enriched environments with things like books, parents who talk to them, etc., and that would have helped them demonstrate their intelligence on a test.</p>
<p>Kids with those kind of parents also are likely to have grown up in enriched environments with things like books, parents who talk to them, etc., and that would have helped them demonstrate their intelligence on a test.</p>
<p>This is why I am- note the present tense- so frustrated with the way our district runs the gifted program.
While they “attempt” to be diverse, supposedly using the top percentage of each ethnic group to place into the “enriched” classrooms, they still are heavily weighted towards those that have professional parents.( who are also higher socio-economic group and mainly Caucasian or Asian)
Since the more talented teachers, also gravitate towards these classrooms, it leaves the less fortunate students both by birth and intellect- SOL. :(</p>
<p>Frankly I am amazed that my daughter tested upwards of 160, considering her premature birth & that neither of her parents had attended college ( and I didn’t make it through high school)- however- while she did teach herself to read at 3, I don’t think that if she had attended your garden variety public school, she would have been distinguisable, from anyone else whose parents didn’t do much but take to the library.</p>
<p>I also taught myself to read, before I entered kindergarten, but the thing about kids, especially bright kids, is they often are very good at figuring out what others want from them. In my classrooms, teachers didn’t want me to ask questions they didn’t know the answer to, they didn’t want me to be done with my work before everyone else, and they didn’t want me to stick out in any way.
So I didn’t.</p>
<p>I think many students have capabilities much greater than they are able to show in K-12 school. Some will make it to college, some like Bill Gates wont finish college and wont really need to. Many will be hampered by lack of knowledge of how many students are truly gifted at the same time they have learning difficulties.
Many in the education field, still don’t understand and accept this, even though its common knowledge that Einstein, Edison,Churchhill, Disney etal, all had learning disabilties, despite their achievments.</p>
<p>My younger daughter despite being very bright, “received” special ed services for several years in public school. She is now in honors and AP classrooms. I expect that she will attend college, and probably even an advanced degree.
However, if I had listened to some of her teachers, she wouldn’t even be trying more challenging classes.
How many parents are discouraged from encouraging their children by those who should know better.
Im not going to say that “every child is gifted” but there are a lot of children who can acheive a lot more, if the adults around them expect it.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-77608144.html[/url]”>http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-77608144.html</a></p>
<p>“Im not going to say that “every child is gifted” but there are a lot of children who can acheive a lot more, if the adults around them expect it.”</p>
<p>I agree.</p>
<p>Along the same lines, I think that so many students in low income and high minority public schools end up in special education and on nonacademic tracks because that’s what the teachers and administrators expect of them. Since many such students come from homes in which the parents lack even secondary school education and the homes lack things like books, the students need more help and support in developing their natural intelligence. Instead of getting that, however, to many are written off as being capable of normal academic achievement.</p>
<p>One of the things that I really appreciate about her current school, is that if kids want to try AP classes they can.
In some schools, you have to be on a certain “track” to take AP.</p>
<p>Since she had great difficulties in math ( exacerbated by the way they teach it in schools), she was in below grade level math both in 9th & 10th grade- & she along with many of her friends, took a math course in summer school so they could be caught up by 11th ( and take chemistry- which was the college track lab class in 11th)</p>
<p>However at the same time, several of those same friends in those classes also took honors and AP classes in other subjects, with her.</p>
<p>When she had difficulty in those accelerated courses, because of her learning disabilties, the counselor & school pysch wanted her to drop the courses and take “regular” courses.</p>
<p>( Even though the main class that she had difficulty in was math & she already was taking a below grade level class)</p>
<p>I refused for her to transfer to a lower class- before giving her the support that her 504 provided had even been tried.
( and also because I knew that she didn’t want to change)</p>
<p>Her teachers stepped up, to aid her with her difficulties, and she finished the classes with a high B average.
But how many parents would be uncomfortable saying “no” to those who supposedly knew “what was good for students”?</p>
<p>Probably quite a few unfortunately, and those students would miss out on not only more challenging work, but in learning that there were teachers who were happy to have them in their classes, and would help them excel.</p>
<p>Incidentally- this past summer, when my daughter and her friends attempted to get to grade level by taking a summer school math course- ( at a school that is mostly minority- as were all her friends she was taking it with), they were told several days after the schedule had started, that their class had been canceled & not given any information about alternatives.
My daughter immediately called me & I immediately called the district to complain & began myself to find them another class in another school- which I did.( I was shocked to hear that the district knew nothing about the cancelation of several classes)
But I feel, that my familiarity with the district- the fact that we all have cellphones is what got those kids the class they needed, soon enough to make a difference.
If I had had to wait, until she got home to find out that her class was canceled- and then waited for a district person to call me ( none ever did, without me calling first)she would have never gotten her math class.</p>
<p>Districts don’t make it easy for parents-but it really shouldn’t be this difficult.</p>
<p>
In the early years, children from homes which provide “background knowledge” in the way of a variety of experiences and general enrichment (reading to/with your kids, puzzles, creative play, etc.) will test well and appear very high functioning. Some of them will continue to be throughout the school years, but the impact of early enrichment tends to “wear off” in favor of natural ability by third grade or so, so the distribution within any class tends to level off by then. I think that if true “giftedness” were being assessed, the numbers would be much lower, mstee.</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>NSM,we have had a conundrum in our district for years, because our students of color have scored significantly more poorly than the district average on state tests, despite enormous efforts in tutoring, special classes, other supports. </p>
<p>Although I don’t doubt what you say is true, at least in my district I really do see the administrators and teachers bending over backwards to expect MORE of these kids, not less, and yet the results have still been poor.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, on parent night it was abundantly clear that there were NO parents of color in my son’s AP classes.</p>
<p>Allmusic
getting parents involved, especially minority parents is a very complex and frustrating issue
The incident with the summer school that I noted above for instance, would be taken by some of my minority friends, to be race related & proof that the schools and district, didn’t want their kids to succeed.
Since I have run into many incidents like that myself- and I am far from minority, I just see it as incompetence- so possibly that is why I wasn’t deterred from trying to fix it.
We do have minority parents involved in the school, but really we need many more, and from my viewpoint, it hasn’t been too effective to get white parents to try and get minority parents to participate. ( for the numbers that I would like to see anyway)-I would like to see more parents like myself participate- whose kids werent in the district gifted program, who aren’t professionals, to let more parents know of the opportunties for all kids, not just the “privledged”.</p>
<p>Our largest suburb actually has more minorities than the city ( 32% compared to 31%- although the district is almost reversed- 40% Caucasian- while the city is 70%)
, and as I think a higher percentage of Caucasians attend public school, that means the schools are more diverse as well.
I know lots of minorities in the city, who are very involved with their kids education to the point that they have moved or placed them in private schools.
I can’t blame them- certainly-
We have thought about moving for years ourselves.
It is so difficult to effect change in the school, because- your kids can’t wait for 10 or 20 years while the district gets their act together.</p>