<p>“It also takes a well-educated parent to get what is needed for a special ed child. To get service for a gifted/ld kid? You’d better be one fierce mama-bear.”</p>
<p>Acknowledged. Something I also have said many times, but some of it probably before you came to CC. </p>
<p>“I think we’re all pretty clear about the difference between high-achievers and “gifted” kids, epiphany.”</p>
<p>Well I think the point bore repeating, because I see it generally on CC still, & I wasn’t convinced with the “acceleration” comment, that lurkers & repliers may be misled. And whether acceleration is the only option in the public schools: that may or may not be true, but again, acceleration in itself is not the only issue. As with LD, a well-trained teacher in gifted ed can make a world of difference for such a pupil in the classroom. It’s amazing what can be accomplished (applied) with conscious understanding of such differences in the spectrum of learners. The best teacher of the gifted is the teacher who is also gifted, because the intuitive takes care of 50% of it, speeding the effort & providing a comfort zone for the learner (i.e., avenue of communication & perception). But even then, it would behoove the gifted teacher to become conscious of the varieties in all abilities & styles of learners, so that conscious application can occur.</p>
<p>“The grading at college is also relatively lax and rewards “many types of intelligence”, as it were.”</p>
<p>A completely unsupported statement if ever there was one. Yeah, lots of grade inflation at Princeton & Swarthmore & UChicago & Berkeley – all, LOL, rewarding “many types of intelligence.”</p>
<p>The few gifted educators I have met did not strike me as all that much brighter than their non-gifted educator counterparts. And yes, I agree that a developed quick mind understands a young quick mind better than anyone simply schooled in gifted pedagogy. I just think these are rare individuals. We didn’t find really bright teachers, in general, until high school.</p>
<p>It isn’t that I was disappointed that we had no silly gifted pull-out program (with all the parents clamoring for testing for <em>their</em> gifted child…as is apparently the rule in towns that have them…like the call for accommodations), because I really think most of these programs are completely bogus. </p>
<p>But I do think effort and training and state acknowledgement of differentiated instruction and advanced learning is paramount; not just acknowledgement of the lowest denominator of learners, but those at the other end of the spectrum too.</p>
<p>Support came in the very next sentence, which you omitted.</p>
<p>Have you found some support for your claims that the Princeton admissions study has devastating technical flaws? Meaning flaws that even the harshest critics of the study have so far not been able to locate? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Grade inflation has little to do with it. Given a large enough population, the influence of SAT would be detectable in inflated or uninflated grades. The point was that grading practices at American colleges obscure the true performance of students in ways that artificially reduce SAT correlation. It’s not that the instructors should be rearranging things for the sake of having their grades match the incoming SAT scores; it’s that a more honest appraisal of performance (without any interest in SAT) would disclose a much stronger correlation.</p>
<p>“Have you found some support for your claims that the Princeton admissions study has devastating technical flaws? Meaning flaws that even the harshest critics of the study have so far not been able to locate?”</p>
<p>volumes of it. Much of it has been articulated & supported here on CC for quite some time. Much of that argument has additionally cited outside references for that. This is O/T from this thread, which is not debating the merits of the SAT per se. What’s your problem? Do you think that the current Princeton admits are brain-impaired? Why don’t you call up Princeton & tell them that your admissions criteria are superior to theirs, and that you can judge by test scores how their students will do. Also tell them, while you’re at it, that they “relax their standards” for “different kinds of intelligence.” Then listen to them laugh for about an hour.</p>
You’ve proven my point – I am sure that if you were teaching at Columbia and met my Jewish daughter, it would never occur to you that her SAT scores were well below norm for the school. You are making assumptions based on race & ethnicity, not test scores.</p>
<p>“The few gifted educators I have met did not strike me as all that much brighter than their non-gifted educator counterparts.”</p>
<p>Then they weren’t really gifted if ‘they weren’t much brighter’. Those I have met do strike me as much brighter, and their success with gifteds of any age is demonstrably greater.</p>
<p>I should have phrased that “educators of the gifted”, not “gifted educators”, which implies that the educator him/herself was gifted.</p>
<p>Again, very intelligent educators (very earnest yes, very intelligent, no), in general, have not been the rule in my experience, included those of the gifted; however, I have only met educators of the gifted at conferences and such…not in my school system, which doesn’t believe in gifted ed, so I can’t speak widely of these individuals.</p>
<p>:) ^^phraseology much better in that first paragraph. However, I was speaking of those who are gifted. Granted that you may not find them abundantly. I used to find them quite abundantly, both in my training & beyond. (In fact, one of the things that propelled me into teaching was the quality of the intellect of those previous peers, & their orientation toward the mind. Many of them were really brilliant. Two of them taught contained classrooms of gifted students.) I find that to be less & less true, of late.</p>
<p>Learning about the gifted, while not being gifted oneself, is better than nothing, obviously. But the teaching is only halfway there because the understanding is artificial & somewhat mechanical, and further because the student is often surpassing the teacher’s ability to keep ahead of him or her.</p>
<p>“Learning about the gifted, while not being gifted oneself, is better than nothing, obviously. But the teaching is only halfway there because the understanding is artificial & somewhat mechanical, and further because the student is often surpassing the teacher’s ability to keep ahead of him or her.”</p>
<p>This is so true. And what’s more disturbing is that sometimes teachers are intimidated by gifted students in the classroom, become defensive, and take it out on them.</p>
<p>^^ also true. It’s very difficult for gifted adults to be attracted, or remain attracted to teaching, given not just the painful contradictions within the public systems, but because they need a critical mass of those like them to feel a sense of purpose & fulfillment in the job, & money alone would never provide that or compensate for it. </p>
<p>And it’s one reason that many teachers will not be disappointed if the system implodes from within, so that a vibrant product or approach(es) might replace it, which in turn may re-invite intellectually stimulating professionals back into the fold.</p>
<p>"A completely unsupported statement if ever there was one. Yeah, lots of grade inflation at Princeton & Swarthmore & UChicago & Berkeley – all, LOL, rewarding “many types of intelligence.”</p>
<p>I have no idea what is happening at the other colleges and universities mentioned above, but where is the data that there is grade inflation at Swarthmore?</p>
<p>For better or worse, lots of Swarthmore students see what grades other than “A” look like when they go there. It’s actually a bit of a shock, although they do well in grad school admissions because the lack of grade inflation there is well-known.</p>
<p>I don’t know how Swarthmore is with accomodations for LD. I think that more time for their exams would not necessarily be an answer. The amount of work involved for the courses may be a challenge for students with LD, but Swarthmore is pretty understanding place, so maybe it would work out.</p>
<p>I always chuckle at those references to Chicago’s grade inflation, because if you track the source down, it leads (through gradeinflation.com) to a single U. Miami internal report that has no source information. Not even a U. Chicago source, although U. Chicago’s own student rag picked up the same misleading information in an article not long ago! Keep in mind too that even if this questionable source were accurate, it reports an average GPA of just 3.26 in 1999. Compare that to the well known New England place where 90% graduated with honors the same year. I can also tell you that only a very small number of students at Chicago graduate with a GPA as high as 3.9, probably fewer than twenty a year (with normal poisson like fluctuations…)</p>
<p>In 1997, as a result of reports that 90% of Harvard students graduated with honors, Harvard did a survey of its graduating practices. It also raised the GPA bar for awarding honors, so that a much lower proportion of students now graduate with honors.</p>