A Better Way: Part 6

What to Do in the Meantime

An expensive college simply isn't worth the money. The definitive review of the literature (Astin, 1997) finds absolutely no relationship between a college's cost and the amount of learning that accrues. And a study in the American Economic Review concluded that even in terms of earnings, "What matters most is not which college you attend, but what you did while you were there. (That means choosing a strong major, choosing professors carefully, getting involved in leadership activities, getting to know professors)...Measured college effects are small, explaining just one to two percent of the variance in earnings." A more recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (Krueger & Dale, 1999) produced similar findings: when controlling for student input variables, an Ivy League education confers no economic advantage on its graduates.

This makes sense. Sure the designer-label on an Ivy diploma opens career doors, but put an Ivy-caliber student at Podunk College, and she can accrue benefits that fully compensate. For example, although my daughter was admitted to prestigious Williams College, she turned it down in favor of an easier-to-get into public institution that cost 70% less. There, the honors program functioned as a patch of Ivy, small classes with Ivy-caliber students taught by top professors. Honors extracurriculars extended the elite experience beyond the classroom. Perhaps more important, as a top student, she was taken under wing by professors, got appointed to university-wide governance committees, and got touted for terrific post-college opportunities--she spent a year in the White House writing Hillary Clinton's daily briefings. If she had attended Williams, she would likely have been lost among its many top students--and we would have been nearly $100,000 poorer.

So, unless your annual income is under $40,000, which would make you likely to get significant cash (not loan) financial aid, or are too wealthy to care, your child should apply to colleges with a low sticker price. He will learn as much, you'll save a fortune, and you will spare your child the inordinate stress and waste of time (studying for the SAT, waking at 3 AM to do crew because it will look good on college applications) of trying to get into designer-label colleges that well may not be worth the money and effort.

What is the Best School Strategy for Bright Kids?

For more than 30 years more and more school resources have been reallocated from high-ability/achieving kids to the lowest achievers. Especially in states like California, most school districts have eviscerated gifted programs and pushed teachers to prioritize "the most vulnerable among us." This, of course, is exacerbated by the Democrat-initiated, Republican-embraced No Child Left Behind, which has fundamentally shifted how schools treat and help low-achieving kids but has actually taken resources away from above-average to do it.

A final nail in gifted kids' education coffin is that the average IQ of teachers, especially in the elementary school, has declined. I won’t delve into the fact that many of the best teachers in previous generations were the best and brightest women in the job field (who were unlikely to attain great positions in other fields at the time) and that today women have moved into high positions in nearly all industries (example, they represent half of medical school and law school students). I’ll just say that it is possible that the newer teachers are, perhaps, less capable of teaching gifted kids. And they're less motivated too. Many new teachers are likely to think that the gifted kids will do fine on their own. And they focus on the low achievers.

So, a lucid approach to helping bright kids to live up to their potential accepts that many teachers will do little to help them. That explains why the research finds that the most powerful strategy for helping gifted kids to live up to their potential is grade skipping: for gifted kids to skip between one and six grades, depending on the student. That requires far less teacher ability or effort than, for example, providing more cognitively complex instruction for the gifted student(s) in their increasingly heterogeneous classes.

Now, parents' main concern about grade skipping is social maturity. Even if your high-ability child isn't socially adept, in many cases, it's wiser to have him or her skip a grade(s) than to endure the ongoing boredom and lack of learning that comes from being in a too low-achieving class. Also, grade skipping reduces the chances of a gifted child being ridiculed by classmates as a snob or showoff.

You can mitigate the social risk of grade-skipping by:
• Trying to get another gifted child accelerated into your child's new class.
• Having your child sit next to a kind, socially adept student(s) who can teach your child the higher grade's social and academic norms.
• Ensuring that the receiving teacher will welcome your child and be willing to keep an eye on your child to ensure s/he's being welcomed into the class and to give your child needed feedback, social and academic.

To maximize your chances of getting permission to have your child skip a grade, present to the principal a portfolio including:
• Samples of your child's in- and out-of-school work that suggest the ability to handle the work in a higher grade.
• Samples of work assigned in his current class that demonstrate how beneath his ability or achievement level that work is.
• Standardized test score results.
• Research supporting grade skipping, including those studies that address the social maturity and knowledge-gap issues. An easy way to assemble the research is to print pages from the book Genius Denied. Because principals tend to be very busy, highlight the key sentences.
• If your child writes well, include a letter from your child explaining why it's important s/he be allowed to skip a grade(s).
• Have your child verbally join you in making the case for skipping a grade(s).

Remember that this strategy is best for students in elementary and middle school. Most high schools still have the Advanced, Honors, and Advanced Placement courses to help gifted students thrive and learn. For more on accelerating gifted kids, see the Hoagie's Gifted website on acceleration: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/acceleration.htm and/or the book, Acceleration Strategies.