Conversation on HCC - Part One

Let's talk about giftedness first.   (Note that this thread is not about HCC so any comments about it will be deleted.  I will once again state that no one will be allowed to name-call or sneer at someone's children.)

To start, after decades of thinking about this issue, here are some conclusions I have come to about how some parents think about giftedness.

Let's just start with the idea that ALL children have gifts to share - leadership, empathy, artistry, humor - many good things.  But...

-You can have a child who is musically or athletically gifted and people don't blink but, say your child is academically gifted, and it is as if you are saying your child is better than other children. I don't know why that is but people get very defensive, almost as if they believe that if someone says their child is gifted, that means you are saying their child is dumb.  Not true but that seems to be a sometimes reaction.

- There are those who think there are only profoundly gifted people and the rest are just "bright", "had help/advantages" and "will be all right, no matter what."

-Many people believe there are gifted students but some of those also believe those students do not need/deserve a separate classroom.  There are many reasons for that.

•  They will not be socialized properly by not being with many types of students.  At my sons' elementary schools, they took half the grade-level Gen Ed classrooms and matched them with the gifted classroom students for PE and music.  That way, every single kid in their grade-level probably had some interaction with all the students in their grade-level.  It can be done.
• Kids learn from each other.  This is true and all kids have gifts to pass onto other children.  But that happens in the gifted classroom as well.  (And, no one's child is there to "teach" another child.)
• Taking bright learners out of the class hurts a class.  But remember, all kids have gifts including leadership and so those who are natural leaders will likely rise to the occasion.
• Teachers and principals don't like it.  They don't like it because the brightest kids drive classroom discussion and interest.  The teachers and administrators fear the loss of those kids from their classrooms.

• As well, with the advent of NCLB and now ESSA, there are test scores to be considered for both teacher and school. Take out those bright learners and your average goes down.  That also means actively discouraging parents from applying or hiding that info.  Not good.

Seattle Schools has an extremely poor record on gifted education, with parents glad just for anything.  This is not to say that those who ran/run Advanced Learning don't care.   They do but it's not any kind of priority for this district even as the program misses the many, many gifted students of color.

Whining about equity should not be enough for this district nor should foot-dragging on reform (which is precisely what is happening now).  And there are real things that can be done as we will explore in Part Two.  For now, here's info about gifted children.

Levels of Giftedness from 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options by Dr. Deborah Ruf

Five Levels of Giftedness: The Scores & a Summary of What They Mean

Level One:  Moderately Gifted to Gifted

• IQ scores of 120-129 represent the 90th-98th percentiles
• what most of us think of as bright
• make up a large proportion of students in gifted programs
• like being read to before age one
• can do simple addition and subtraction before age four
• reading 2-3 years beyond grade level by age seven
• parents realize children are not being challenged and contact someone for help between grades two and four

Level Two:  Highly Gifted

• IQ scores of 130-135 represent approximately 98th – 99th percentiles
• can pay attention while being read to by five to nine months
• can count to 5 (or higher) by age two
• know many sight words and may be reading by age four
• master most kindergarten skills by age four
• are independent on the computer by age four and a half
• are impatient with the repetition and slow pace of school by age six to seven

Level Three:  Exceptionally Gifted

• IQ scores of 136-140 represent approximately 98th – 99th percentiles
• independently look at and turn pages of books before ten months
• question Santa or the tooth fairy by age three or four
• rarely go through any stage of phonetically sounding out words
• intense interest in mazes between ages four and five
• spontaneously read (with or without instruction) before kindergarten
• read 2-5 years beyond grade level by age six

Level Four:  Exceptionally to Profoundly Gifted

• IQ scores of 141+ represent the 99th percentile
• books are a favorite interest by three to four months
• knows the entire alphabet by fifteen to twenty-two months
• at four or five years can perform many academic and intellectual functions of an eight-year-old
• reading for pleasure and information by age five
• can play adult level card games and board games by age five and a half
• most are capable of completing all academic work through 8th grade by 3rd or 4th grade
• these are the kids that attend college at ages ten, eleven, and twelve

Level Five:  Exceptionally to Profoundly Gifted

• IQ scores of 141+ represent the 99th percentile
• knows numbers, letters, colors, and shapes before they can talk
• can speak in full, complex sentences by fifteen months
• have kindergarten skills by age two
• spontaneously reads, understand fairly complex math problems, and has existential concerns by ages four to five (with or without instruction)
• frequently one parent must postpone their career to advocate for their child’s education

From the gifted website, Hogies:

Children of IQ 133 appear in the population at a ratio of approximately 1:40. 
In general, an elementary school teacher could expect to encounter a child like that every couple years.

Children of IQ 169 appear in the population at a ratio of less than 1:100,000. If an elementary school teacher taught 30 students each year in a professional career of 40 years, the odds against her having such a child in her class are more than 80:1.

Teachers of hearing impaired and intellectually handicapped children have avoided the temptation to treat their clientele as if they were a homogeneous group. Until some 10 years ago, however, educators and psychologists working with intellectually gifted students were trapped in precisely this mind-set.  Fortunately, this perception is breaking down, and educators with a special interest in the gifted and talented are beginning to acknowledge the need to recognize degrees, as well as types, of intellectual giftedness. Our next task is to raise the awareness of classroom teachers and school administrators.

An exceptionally good piece from NPR's education reporting, Who Are The 'Gifted And Talented' And What Do They Need?

1. How do you define giftedness?

"There's research that these other things like motivation and grit can take you to the same exact academic outcomes as someone with a higher IQ but without those things," says Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist who studies intelligence and creativity at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the book Ungifted. "That's a really important finding that is just totally ignored. Our country has a narrow view of what counts as merit."

Of course, as the definitions get broader, the measurements get more subjective and thus, perhaps, less useful. Some centers for gifted children put out checklists of "giftedness" so broad that any proud parent would be hard-pressed not to recognize her child. Things like: "Has a vivid imagination." "Good sense of humor." "Highly sensitive."

1(a). How many students should be designated gifted?

It can be useful for education policy purposes to think about giftedness as it relates to the rest of the special education spectrum. Silverman argues that just as children with IQ scores two full standard deviations below the norm need special classrooms and extra resources, those who score two standard deviations above the norm need the same. By her lights, the population we should be focusing on is the top 2.5 percent to 3 percent of achievers, not the top 5 to 10 percent.

Scott Peters disagrees. He's a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who prepares teachers for gifted certifications. He says the question that every teacher and every school should be asking is, "How will we serve the students who already know what I'm covering today?"

2. How do you identify gifted students?

Research shows that screening every child, rather than relying on nominations, produces far more equitable outcomes.

Tests have their problems, too, says Kaufman. IQ and other standardized tests produce results that can be skewed by background cultural knowledge, language learner status and racial and social privilege. Even nonverbal tasks like puzzles are influenced by class and cultural background.

Experts worry that identifying children only at the outset of school can be a problem, because abilities change over time, and the practice favors students who have an enriched environment at home.

Experts prefer the use of multiple criteria and multiple opportunities. Portfolios or auditions, interviews or narrative profiles may be part of the process.

 3. How do you best serve gifted students?

Peters says many districts focus their resources on identifying gifted or advanced learners, while offering little or nothing to serve them.

While this emphasis on diagnosis over treatment might seem paradoxical, it's compliant with the law:
In most states the law governs the identification of gifted students. But only 27 percent of districts surveyed in 2013 report a state law about how to group these students, whether in a self-contained program, or pulled out into a resource room for a single subject or offered differentiation within a classroom. And almost no states have laws mandating anything about the curriculum for gifted students.

Helping gifted students may or may not take many more resources. But it does require a shift in mindset to the idea that "every child deserves to be challenged," as Ron Turiello says.

That's why, paradoxically, many of the gifted education experts I interviewed didn't like the label "gifted." "In a perfect world, every student would have an IEP," says Kaufman.

"The whole NCLB era, and really back to the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the 1960s, was about getting kids to grade level, to minimal proficiency," says Peters. "There seems to be a change in belief now — that you need to show growth in every student."

From the Gifted Development Center, a 30-year center for gifted children located in Westminster, California.

The Gifted Development Center has been in operation since June, 1979, and we have assessed over 6000 children in the last 30 years. By concentrating totally on the gifted population, we have acquired a considerable amount of knowledge about the development of giftedness. In 1994-1995, three noted researchers spent post-doctoral internships assisting us in coding our clinical data to enable statistical analysis: Drs. Frank Falk and Nancy Miller of the University of Akron, and Dr. Karen Rogers of the University of St. Thomas. Here are some of the highlights of what we have learned so far (partial):

1. Parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness in their children: 84% of 1,000 children whose parents felt that they exhibited 3/4 of the traits in our Characteristics of Giftedness Scale tested in the superior or gifted range. Over 95% demonstrated giftedness in at least one area, but were asynchronous in their development, and their weaknesses depressed their composite IQ scores.
2. Giftedness can be observed in the first three years by rapid progression through the developmental milestones.
3. When parents fail to recognize a child’s gifts, teachers may overlook them as well. Rita Dickinson (1970) found that half of the children she tested with IQs of 132 or above were referred for behavior problems and not seen as gifted by their teachers or parents. Parent advocacy is critical for gifted children’s emotional and academic growth.
4. Children and adults can be assessed at any age. However, the ideal age for testing is between 5 and 8 years. By the age of 9, highly gifted children may hit the ceiling of the tests, and gifted girls may be socialized to hide their abilities. 
5. IQ testing in childhood clearly demonstrates the equality of intelligence between males and females. Until the IQ test was developed, most of society believed in the “natural superiority of males.” Even now, the fact that most of the eminent are men leads some to believe that males are innately more intelligent than females. On the contrary, we have found more than 100 girls with IQ scores above 180.  However, parents are more likely to bring their sons for assessment and overlook their daughters, and this inequity appears to be getting worse.
6. Gifted girls and gifted boys have different coping mechanisms and are likely to face different problems. Gifted girls hide their abilities and learn to blend in with other children. In elementary school they direct their mental energies into developing social relationships; in junior high school they are valued for their appearance and sociability rather than for their intelligence. Gifted boys are easier to spot, but they are often considered “immature" and may be held back in school if they cannot socialize with children their own age with whom they have no common interests.
7. Gifted children are asynchronous. Their development tends to be uneven, and they often feel out-of- sync with age peers and with age-based school expectations. They are emotionally intense and have greater awareness of the perils of the world. They may not have the emotional resources to match their cognitive awareness. They are at risk for abuse in environments that do not respect their differences.
8. This asynchrony is often seen in large discrepancies between index scores on the fourth edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV). In these cases, the Full Scale IQ score should not be used to select gifted students for programs. Instead, the General Ability Index (GAI), which omits Working Memory and Processing Speed, provides a better estimate of the child’s reasoning ability. The GAI has been endorsed by the National Association for Gifted Children. 
9. Creative children, culturally diverse children, mathematically talented children, children with attention deficits, highly gifted children, learning disabled children, and underachievers often are visual-spatial learners who require different teaching methods. Visual-spatial learners usually think in pictures or rely on “sensing” or feeling, whereas auditory-sequential learners usually think in words. Typical educational strategies are a better match for auditory-sequential learners than for visual-spatial learners.
10. Gifted children have better social adjustment in classes with children like themselves. The brighter the child, the lower his or her social self-concept is likely to be in the regular classroom.  
11. Perfectionism, sensitivity and intensity are three personality traits associated with giftedness. 
12. About 60% of gifted children are introverted compared with 30% of the general population. Approximately 75% of highly gifted children are introverted.  
13. Mildly, moderately, highly, exceptionally and profoundly advanced children are as different from each other as mildly, moderately, severely and profoundly delayed children are from each other, but the differences among levels of giftedness are rarely recognized.
14. There are far more exceptionally gifted children in the population than anyone realizes. Approximately 18% of the 5,600+ children we have assessed in the last 30 years are exceptionally gifted, with IQ scores above 160 IQ. As of January 1, 2009, we found at least 988 children above 160 IQ, including 281 above 180 IQ and 87 above 200 IQ.
15. Many cases of underachievement are linked to chronic early ear infections (9 or more in the first three years), with residual effects of auditory sequential processing deficits and attentional problems.  
16. Gifted children may have hidden learning disabilities. Approximately one-sixth of the gifted children who come to the Center for testing have some type of learning disability—often undetected before the assessment—such as central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), difficulties with visual processing, sensory processing disorder, spatial disorientation, dyslexia, and attention deficits. Giftedness masks disabilities and disabilities depress IQ scores.
17. Giftedness is not elitist. It cuts across all socio-economic, ethnic and national groups (Dickinson, 1970). In every culture, there are developmentally advanced children who have greater abstract reasoning and develop at a faster rate than their age peers. Though the percentage of gifted students among the upper classes may be higher, a much greater number of gifted children come from the lower classes, because the poor far outnumber the rich (Zigler & Farber, 1985). Therefore, when provisions are denied to the gifted on the basis that they are "elitist," it is the poor who suffer the most. The rich have other options.
18. The more egalitarian gifted programs attempt to be, the less defensible they are. Children in the top and bottom three percent of the population have atypical developmental patterns and require differentiated instruction. Children in the top and bottom 10 percent of the population are not statistically or developmentally different from children in the top and bottom 15 percent, and it is not justifiable to single them out for special treatment. More and more school districts are realizing this in this new millennium, and are providing in-depth services for those who need them the most. Self- contained, multi-age programs for the gifted and radical acceleration are gaining in popularity.