"Gifted and Talented" School Programs, Part 1

The Florida Department of Education is considering a plan to redefine "giftedness." As of now, your Floridian child isn't officially gifted unless he/she scores at least 130 on an I.Q. test. The new plan would lower that threshold to 120, expanding the giftedness pool from 3% to perhaps 10% of schoolkids.

Lots of issues here: What does "gifted" mean? Do these tests really identified the most promising students? Are "gifted" programs worthwhile? Are they fair?

Let's begin with what I.Q. tests measure and what they mean.

I.Q. tests are about a century old and are intended to measure a person's "general intelligence" as compared to other people in his/her age. The tests are calibrated so that a person of supposedly average intelligence will score 100.

Specifically I.Q. tests measure symbolic logic -- a person's ability to understand and manipulate symbols ranging from words to numbers to shapes. These tests do not measure emotional intelligence -- the ability to read and respond to one's emotions or the emotions of others. Nor do they measure  musical/rhythmic intelligence, body/kinesthetic intelligence, categorical intelligence (ability to distinguish between different categories and classifications), or existential/big-picture intelligence. You might say that I.Q. measures "book smart," but not "people smart" or "culture smart."

In many ways, I.Q. is an anachronism, but it persists for two main reasons. One is that cognitive scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists still find it a useful gauge of general intelligence, which seems to be by far the most heritable type of intelligence.

Secondly, it has proven to be a good predictor of overall life success -- who will do reasonably well in school and society, who will get and hold a good job, make a good amount of money, stay out of trouble, and so on. (Of course these are just population studies and percentages. It doesn't tell us for sure whether any particular individual with an I.Q. of 80 or 140 will do well or poorly in life.)

The great irony, though, is that I.Q. does not identify most "talents" or special abilities -- and absolutely does not enable us to predict who will grow up to become extraordinary scientists, musicians, teachers, leaders, or athletes. It predicts general success, but not greatness.

Does it make sense for schools to pay special attention to kids who are already generally on the right track? On the one hand, yes: As a society, we want to encourage general success, to help nudge along people who will be contributing the most as a class to our society and economy.

On the other hand, an I.Q.-based gifted program is problematic in two important ways. First, a program focused on the top 10% I.Q. scorers diverts resources from the people who need it most -- the 90% who aren't as likely to succeed and therefore could benefit the most from extra help.

Second, if we want our schools to truly nurture talent -- encourage great achievement from those with special potential, I.Q. is not the place to start. In fact, it may be the worst possible place.

Comments

[Grad Student]

Hello all,
I am a graduate student in special education. One focus of mine now is "gifted" education. I have been reading all the posts. Great insights. I agree most with Sad Mom. Gifted and talented programs are unfair to students of average ability. Of course, we want highly skilled children to be challenged and not languish in general education classrooms. Their abilities many times surpass the standard curriculum in place. When GT students are identified they enter a unique culture of education. The philosophies of gifted education are quite different than those of general education classrooms. So much that teachers of gifted students are asked to assess how does a gifted student learns best. Do they need more unstructured time in the classroom, is less light and noise, etc.? GT students can get mentors, do more field trips, and work hands on. General education students enter factory-type schools, where everything must look and sound the same. Would a GT student ever be asked to do those "cookie cutter" art projects? No, but general education students do jack-o-lanterns, turkeys, Valentine's hearts, every year. Gifted students should be accommodated, but so should general education students. If we want more equity between gifted programs and general education, classrooms should follow GT philosophies.

[David Shenk]

Thank you, Sad Mom for sharing that with us. The situation you're describing does sound excruciating. I'm frankly not sure yet what I think of the general idea of GT programs. I do hate that they leave people out -- people like your son who really want to be involved, who might get demoralized by not being included. But I've also heard from a lot of parents with precocious kids who are desperately grateful for the GT environments that truly challenge them.

What to say to your son? First, I'd tell him that you absolutely believe he's capable of doing anything he sets his mind to. The kids (and adults) who do the most impressive things in life are the ones who try the hardest.

It is sad that he can't have those special GT experiences that he wants to be a part of -- and maybe there's something you can do about that. Ask the principal and have your son lobby himself! But if you can't change that, you can tell him how arbitrary GT selection is -- that it all comes from a test that has no real meaning about his true potential. Make sure he knows that the great achievers in life -- Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, David Beckham, whoever his heroes are -- got there by working hard and setting high expectations of themselves and learning from their mistakes. Do whatever you can to encourage him to challenge himself.

I'm still working this part out in my book, so I hope to be able to say much more. I hope that's a little bit helpful. Let me know.

[Sad Mom]

I found this site out of distraught. After reading all of your elaborate posts, which by the way sound nice and make some great points, I thought, however, the words of my 11 yr old sums this matter best of all, "mom, don't you think I'm smart?" (my answer yes, of course, why would you ask that?)"I don't get to leave with the GT kids, they do so many cool things, they even have special field trips and there's a news program every Friday on our TVs and the announcers are all GT kids." To cut down a rather lengthy conversation I assured him that he is extremely smart. I then came home and got so disgusted at our schools systems, how can you tell children they're ungifted?

[Outside DC]

David:

I look forward to the book.

The issues you raise are real -- there are certainly kids who could benefit from and even excel in those G&T programs who don't qualify through standard testing for a variety of reasons: LDs, test anxiety, English not their first language, they were feeling sick that day, etc. So I am very sympathetic to the point you make that somehow programs speed up the introduction of new content, and that nurture intensive intellectual engagement at a level beyond mere proficiency, should be open to those who might not test smart, but want to try and to work hard to see how far they can go. In some ways, old-style tracking was kinder and more socially acceptable in its day than labeling some kids "gifted and talented" is today. And I say this as a parent of a very precocious high IQ kid. I have never told her she is "gifted" and I think that's a really suboptimal label.

I also think that the whole "G&T" controversy is at its worst in elementary school, because by middle and high school kids can choose (with parent and teacher input) from different levels of classes and they largely self-sort by both ability and motivation (an unmotivated smart kid is not going to take AP Chemistry or do an IB certificate)

There is an answer to the tracking/G&T dilemma that some schools are implementing, but that requires investment by teachers and administrators: flexible grouping. Usually it is done with math and spelling, but can be done in any subject. Example: each week the fourth grade takes a spelling pretest on Monday. Kids who score 80% or above get an "A" list of words, kids who score 50% get a "B" list of words and kids who score lower get a "C" list. Spelling activities during the week might also be differentiated (A kids could write a story with their words, B kids make a crossword, etc.) Each week the kids take a new pretest and are regrouped according to their performance. In math, pretests are given at the start of each unit (every 3-4 weeks). If you want to see one place where this flexible grouping is in place, look at math instruction in Fairfax County, VA -- home of the famous Thomas Jefferson Science and Tech high school.

With flexible groups, kids know, like they always know, who is in the "high" group and who is in the "low" group -- but those groups are not always of the same composition, and that allows for recognition of differing abilities and for the role of motivation and growth over time. Kids who are particularly keen on a certain topic in math, eg, might shine in one unit and then slip back to the median. Kids who want to work hard and read more might improve their vocabularies and move more often into the A spelling group. But the structure is flexible, so there is room for everyone to feel like they have a regular chance to aim high and hit the target. In schools where these systems are in place, teachers have a bit more work to do in handling pretests and then managing more than one learning group in the classroom -- but the payoff is high.

I also think that you should acknowledge in your writing that one reason these debates over nature/nurture are so intense is that this is America, where you can be ANYTHING you want to be -- that egalitarian ethic is so deeply ingrained in us that admitting we might have intellectual limits is very hard for us. The notion that our schools -- which are supposed to help make our childrens' American dreams come true -- might have limited resources and might have to set limits on access to special resources is something a lot of people choke on even more. But this is unique to the United States, and if you write on gifted education you might look to see how other countries handle the issue -- Australia, for example, does not have all these qualms we do.

[Educater]

I stumbled on this site by accident. Only recently have I been aware that programs of this nature exist.(This year I have returned to the schools as a substitute teacher.
My first question is-
How is it possible that these programs are ALLOWED to be labeled gifted and talented? As an educator, I choke on even calling it that. This seems very politically incorrect as well as wrong.
Would anyone happen to know the IQ's of Oprah, Donald Trump, the Dalai Lama (sp), Mother Theresa, Forbes, Rockefeller, etc?
This is only one of many issues I have with a program such as this.
Can you even imagine talking to your class room and saying, "Johnny, you are gifted and talented, you will now be going to this school/class to be with others like you. Class, the rest of you are not gifted and talented, you will stay here with me and I will try and educate the rest of you(all with different needs, abilities, learning styles, etc.)with the limited resources and time I have for you now that this amount has been reduced in order for Johnny to have "his needs" met!

[David Shenk]

Thanks, Amy, and to all you for a very stimulating round of comments. I need to acknowledge here that I really don't know a thing about the practical realities of gifted and talented programs. I'm eager for guidance. How are the really good ones designed? What should the criterion for entry be? Is there a way to set them up so that they have high standards and inspire kids to excel BUT don't exclude potential beneficiaries who may not have reached a certain testing cut-off? Finally, how do the resource issues shake out -- how much are we depriving the lower 95% so that the upper 5% can do better? And how do we work through the ethics of that?

[Amy]

Found your blog via Seth Roberts'. You have something great going on here. I just subscribed :)

I have to chime in on this one, as well.

The problem with lukewarm GT programs is that they hurt everyone.

They hurt the truly gifted kids, because they are "integrated" with kids who can in no way keep up with them (and probably don't even care that much). They learn all sorts of valuable lessons like contempt for adults and "the system" and other kids. They learn that politicking is so much more important than doing what's right for others, which is an important lesson, but a bitter one.

They hurt the kids who aren't truly gifted but are placed in the GT programs due to their parents' saber rattling -- because they are being praised and reassured in their yooniq taluntz, rather than challenged and made to work hard, so they don't learn to think for themselves or question anything. (I have many tales to tell that demonstrate this particular malady.) Or perhaps they go through the program always thinking they are not good enough, which is damaging in its own way.

They hurt the kids who aren't in the GT programs. When the GT programs are big, like they were in my school -- about 1/4 of the grade -- it makes it seem more likely to the non-GT kids that they had a chance to get in. The difference between these kids and the GT kids may simply come down to the fact that these kids' parents didn't know, or care, that they could force the issue. However, these kids have a lot going for them, as my 8th grade english teacher pointed out when she told us that the non-GT kids actually score higher on their standardized tests because (wait for it!) they've learned how to work problems out. And yet it seems like in cases the daily reminder that they are *not* in the program fosters a streak of anti-intellectualism (founded on feeling inferior). Go figure.

This triple-whammy of psychological damage produces adults with problems. Even I still sometimes feel the adverse effects of the "lessons" I learned in school.

[Eric]

I just discovered this blog via Jackson Fish Market, and plan to follow it very closely. The topic of gifted education in particular is very personal to me, as I was in such a program, and felt that it was invaluable to my development.

I think the downside of not having a gifted program is that those high-potential people never get challenged. They learn that they can coast and still succeed in school. They never learn to work hard. http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/ is a great article on how people who get praised for effort achieve more than those who get praised for their innate abilities (like IQ).

To handle that issue and the issue of people wanting in just for the prestige, it's important to make the gifted classes hard. Really hard. As in, parents complaining to the principal hard. The best class I took in high school was a gifted US History class where the teacher had us crying for mercy. But I got more out of that class than any other I took in high school. A few years later he was forced into retirement because the parents of his students said that he was too hard on them because they were "just high school students". I thought that was a pity.

[James]

"which seems to be by far the most heritable type of intelligence."

- I'd like to hear your defense of that statement. Aren't other types of intelligence also inherited?

[Matt]

Having spent my entire primary and secondary education in a public-school GT program, hopefully I can add something to the discussion.

The first thing to remember when it comes to deciding who does or does not qualify for a GT program is a)there are simple matters of administration that are relevant to determining a cutoff, and b)these things get very political and touchy at the local level

On the administrative side of things, the difference between a 3% cutoff and a 10% cutoff is a big deal. Take a 1000-person high school (250/grade). A top-3% cutoff will include 30 people, 7-8 per grade. Devoting serious attention and effort into a curriculum for 7 to 8 kids is something school administrations are going to be ferociously hostile towards, while a 10% cutoff means 25 people per grade, i.e. enough for a normal-sized classroom. It's much easier for administrators to run something that has normal class sizes. Using a 10% cutoff rather than a 3% cutoff will in practice divert proportionally far less resources.

On the political issues, there is always enormous pressure to be laxer rather than stricter on defining gifted (which will remain regardless of whether you call it "gifted" or something else)- when you label one group of kids gifted, you make an awful lot of parents resentful that their kid wasn't included. No administrator wants to deal with the fire-and-brimstone "WHY ISN'T MY KID GIFTED???" meeting with parents, so (at least in the case of my district) they tend to be lenient toward anyone whose parents threatens to raise hell, so the actual standards for entry into a GT program are a) passing the test, b) parental agitation. This actually turns out to be a pretty good system, since you pick up both the kids who ought to be in GT classes whose parents aren't terribly militant, and also a number of kids who might fit your more holistic view of gifted who do happen to have pushy parents. The kids who aren't really suited for the classes typically find their way out of them anyways (since we're doing sports comparisons, it's like a no-cut football program: If you really want in, they'll let you. The kids who can't deal with August two-a-days and realize they won't get playing time will slough off), so there's not much danger of overpopulation in this system.

The net result is that there is a high degree of self-selection (at least in my experience) in GT programs, particularly when they exist side-by-side with traditional Honors courses. I went to a large (~2000 students) high school, and there would typically be around 45-50 GT kids, and probably 80-100 Honors kids (I would guess that the overwhelming majority of both groups would have IQ's >115 -- roughly 95% of the graduating class would attend four-year colleges). While the very smartest kids would almost always be in GT classes (in my class, all 20 or so national merit finalists were), I would guess that the median GT student was not really all that smarter (IQ-wise) than the median Honors student. The difference was that the Honors kids were conventional, and the GT kids were not. GT kids typically disliked Honors classes, finding them somewhat oppressive (I certainly did), and Honors kids typically found GT classes chaotic. The great thing about the GT program, particularly in a large school, is that you're taking classes largely with the same people you've taken classes with for 3 or 5 or 7 years, so the level of social comfort is far higher, which results in a far higher level of class-involvement (teaching GT kids took a different kind of teacher as well- classes tended to be more a matter of directed chaos than structured learning. In Honors classes, I found the mental atmosphere to be stifling- while it was important to care about your grade, making any sort of effort that indicated you enjoyed learning for its own sake was seriously frowned upon. The pressure to sit-down-and-shut-up was terrible. This is my long way of answering your question "Are 'gifted' programs worthwhile? Are they fair?" with a yes on both counts.

"if we want our schools to truly nurture talent"

The simple fact of the matter is that public schools are by necessity bureaucratic meat-grinders. They are institutionally incapable of nurturing talent in the same way a parent can- we all love stories about how a teacher forms a special bond with a student, but the whole thing that makes those things special is that they are the exception, not the rule. Departments of Education deal in rules, and need some way to compare "giftedness" that can be boiled down to a single number. As abhorrent as that may seem to someone with your holistic view of giftedness, it remains an administrative necessity, and IQ is a better single measure than any other. No system will ever be able to identify all the people you would consider gifted or talented, but by having a larger cutoff, you make it far easier for one of them to get in, either because a parent agitates, or a teacher pulls some strings, or all the many ways in which bureaucratic rules get bent.

[Dave McDougall]

2 prefatory notes:
Like 'high iq doofus,' 'gifted' education was the only thing that kept me even a little bit interested in school for the first half of my education. Second, when I use 'genius' below I'm referring to high-level, paradigm-shift level accomplishment. Ability is just a means to get there.

I'm not sure I agree that IQ "may be the worst possible place" to begin the process of nuturing talent. While IQ does not predict future 'genius,' it's very unlikely that anyone can adequately predict extremely high level accomplishment since paradigm-shifters are so rare in any field. In some areas, high IQs are a prerequisite for the kind of understanding necessary to make a major cognitive leap (say, theoretical physics).

IQ may be only one kind of intelligence that forms a jumping-off point for greatness, but highly above-average ability in some way is a necessary part of greatness [for example, I'm neither quick nor strong nor coordinated enough to play a professional sport, in spite of my years of high level athletic training]. IQ is one category that we should use to screen potential 'geniuses' in order to let them reach their potential, but not the only one. "The worst possible place?" I'm not so sure.

My athletics experience brings up a good point - how does a society value the relative accomplishments of people with differing abilities? I was better than most at my given sport, but no amount of training could have made me Olympic-caliber. Is the Olympic-able athlete's achievement of more value than my own? What if I maximize my ability just as effectively as the Olympic athlete? This debate is in the strange position of weighing these achievements in the zero-sum financial stakes of education. Are we even qualified to make these moral decisions? In spite of our unqualifiedness, some decision is necessary and I lean in favor of developing those with higher abilities - in football or writing or astrophysics. Do I only think this because (some of) my abilities are at the very top of the scale?

[Tim Lundeen]

I am not following your reasoning here.

"First, a program focused on the top 10% I.Q. scorers diverts resources from the people who need it most -- the 90% who aren't as likely to succeed and therefore could benefit the most from extra help."

Aren't most of the critical changes that benefit us all made by people who score in the top 10% of the IQ scale? There certainly are some with lower IQ scores, but is very hard to find very many people with an IQ below 120 who really made a difference. The average IQ of Nobel prize winners is over 140 (see http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/dialogue.htm for an interesting analysis of this). Do you know what Bruce's IQ is? I would be surprised if he had an IQ below 120, actually.

So, why don't you want to give the people who are most likely to make a difference the tools to be the best they can be? The cost of doing this can be relatively modest, it doesn't have to hurt the people who need more attention to get up to average performance -- I don't see why we can't help both ends.

Isn't the cost to society of having bright kids turn off and drop out, or not perform to their ability, a concern to you?

It is true that the top 10% is more likely to succeed regardless, but this statement seems very callous. I know lots of bright kids who went through typical schools and had a really miserable experience. If they had been put on a gifted track and given the attention they needed to flourish, it would have been much happier for them, and for everyone.

"Second, if we want our schools to truly nurture talent -- encourage great achievement from those with special potential, I.Q. is not the place to start. In fact, it may be the worst possible place."

Why is this? My understanding is that IQ is highly correlated with g, and g is highly correlated with the structure of the brain. Somone with high g has a brain that works better than average (e.g., faster signal propagation, higher neural density, better brain metabolism, etc). It is quite rare for someone to be highly gifted at some profession where intellectual ability is required and have a low IQ.

So screening by IQ is in fact a good way to identify the kids who can use a more stimulating intellectual environment. You might miss some kids who could also benefit, but there could be mechanisms for moving them into the gifted programs, or parts of them, when they showed ability that wasn't reflected in the IQ tests. (For example, people with specific learning disabilities or dyslexias might be intellecually very capable but not get a high overall IQ score.) But the kids who get high IQs will definitely benefit from this program, compared to what they endure today.

The point of a school system is to help people maximize their talents. People with high levels of intellectual ability should be helped, along with everyone else.

Do you object to athletic programs that train people with high athletic skills to be better athletes? From the argument you make about IQ, I would have to assume that you want to do away with athletics as well. (For the record, I'm in favor of athletic programs along with gifted programs :-)

[high iq doofus]

I vaguely recall that China once had a program of identifying very high IQ children and sending them to a gifted school to develop their "talents". Unfortunately, few if any became the genius China had hoped for. John Hopkins has a similar program. I've known a few "geniuses" who graduated college very early thru that program. Perhaps you could track them down and see if high IQ mattered much for them.

FWIW, I think a high IQ gifted program is a good thing because the class can move faster and deeper into a subject. I was miserably bored in most classes, but the gifted and AP courses were barely tolerable because they went faster. I also took college math and engineering courses when I was 11-15, and those were exciting and fun. I didn't become a "superstar", but I picked up a science PhD fairly easily. So think these classes kept me interested in school.

[David Shenk]

Convinced? Now I'm nervous. Something's not right.

[peter]

Very good points; I'm convinced. I would consider keeping a footnoted and cited version for academic market? This could be big on college reading lists. Ken Wilbur did this with 'a brief history of everything' versus his totally footnoted 'Sex, ecology, spirituality.'

[David Shenk]

Thanks, Peter. I'm sensitive to those points, and am pretty aware of the subjectivity in science. Probably the most time-consuming part of my job when I write science-based books or articles is in trying to figure out the biases and politics of all the scientists involved. Like all other humans, they tend to run in crowds, be more far critical of their ideological opponents than their friends, etc, etc. (I don't know if you recall, but I tossed some pretty tough digs at scientists in The Forgetting, and in a Nation cover story (http://davidshenk.com/webimages/Money-ScienceTHENATION.PDF) I did on corporate funding of university science.

But remember, I'm in the business of writing to the lay public, in this blog and elsewhere, and that requires lots of short-hand. I don't use words like dualism, and I'll often use "scientists" to mean "a critical mass of scientists whose work I've read and have come to trust."

[Peter]

Hey David - interesting as usual. I wanted to put in a plug - I am sure you are thinking about this already - for not citing 'scientists' like they really know what they are talking about. Especially social scientists. I am a 'scientist' or becoming one, and have gotten immersed in my data analysis enough to have a real, visceral, concrete feel for the old saying about statistics. I have so much control over whether a variable emerges as significant or not in my analyses that I have been in a state of shock about it for around 6 months now. Any honest scientist knows how subjective our results are. The way we frame questions, what we fail to collect data on, our significance thresholds, what covariates we include or excluse from our models, the accuracy and design of our tests, selection bias, it just goes on and on. And the quest for fundign and tenure totally fucks with how people do that. I now read 'scientific' articles by people doing what I am doing and notice many, many things that they omit (much more often than comit) that really nobody who doesn't use our computer programs would ever have any chance at sorting out. And I don't even know half of what most people in my field do yet, so think of how much I don't notice. Add that to the fact that social scientists, as a group, are some of the most - how can I put this delicately - mind-blind people you will ever meet. Not one on one, but in terms of what they get funded to talk about and study. Combining this aspect of the culture of science and methdological minefields, and I think it really argues for scrutinizing the methodology sections of most of these studies and asking what they didn't include, didn't observe, didn't report, didn't analyze. NOt to mention all the negative studies that they shelved rather than published. Many omissions will be found and, worse, never found.

[David Shenk]

You're right, Gina, future greatness is the very complex product of many factors. The really cool thing about this project -- the reason I got involved in it -- is that while it does *seem* random, unknowable and invisible, a large group of scientists are now actually getting to know it -- to make it visible. It turns out not to be random at all, just very, very hard to pin down. But now they're beginning to do so, which I think is fascinating, and potentially very profound.

I will elaborate and try to defend that "may be the worst possible place" statement soon.

[Gina Duclayan]

Can you say more about why "it may be the worst possible place"? That's a pretty extreme statement.

Would measuring "people smarts" or "culture smarts" be any better an indicator of future greatness? Is it even possible to get an inkling of and thus encourage future greatness? Seems to me it's the product of a lot of random and unknowable factors...but I'm willing to hear different.

I kind of think of money shunted toward gifted and talented programs as analogous to money invested in extra-curricular sports activities at many schools. Do people think of the football team as drawing funds away from the less physically capable students, those who (like me in my youth) lose at tether ball, get smacked during dodge ball, and who are perpetually chosen last for the team. We were the ones who could have really used the help sports-wise, not the jocks.