A previous intelligence test, taken about a year-and-a-half previously, had won them entrance to gifted primary schools. So how many of the kids still classified as gifted just eighteen months later? Only half
Now, that's disappointing. Newsweek has a fascinating article there, but they missed the best part. Sure, a 5 minute test is interesting, and the correlations are too, but that is fascinating fact. Only 50% of the gifted students are gifted a year and a half later? That really makes you think. What about the other way around? How many students, not originally classified as gifted would be classified that way after a year or two? It also seems to help the claim that school dumbs you down.
This replicates the finding of Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of high-IQ elementary-age pupils that many of those young people did not qualify as "gifted" on a subsequent test that Terman gave them at high school age. But he kept them in the study group anyway.
Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.
An especially odd result of the Terman study is that Terman tested and rejected for inclusion in his study two children whose IQ scores were below his cut-off line who later went on to win Nobel prizes: William Shockley, who co-invented the transistor, and physicist Luis Alvarez. None of the children included in the study ever won a Nobel prize.
The last bit is in Shurkin's book, and also in a book by Eysenck, with the primary source in both cases cited as personal recollections of the two Nobel Prize winners.
I think it is independently historically verifiable that both Alvarez and Shockley attended schools where Terman did testing for ascertainment for his longitudinal study. It is definitely historically verifiable that neither Nobel prize winner was included in the study--Shurkin had full access to the study data files.
It also seems to help the claim that school dumbs you down.
I was with you and agreeing with you until this line. By itself this article provides no evidence of that.
Now, if something like "And of those who did not yet attend school or where home schooled 90% of those classified as gifted in initial testing retained that classification 18 months later..." But it did not do that.
As it stands, this is much better evidence of how much and how rapidly brains can change at that age, but nothing more without further facts.
I do agree with your other points though, and think that that portion is well worth following up on.
I was not trying to say the article had supporting evidence, simply that the study (showing a decrease in scores after having been in school for 18 months) helps the argument, rather than the argument simply being a anecdote. "School dumbs you down" is a sentiment that has been around for quite a while, but (as far as I have seen) hasn't been tested. This study, at least, shows that it may be worth testing (which was my point).
Not the same thing. Showing a correlation between the number of years of schooling a person had and their IQ is not the same as a decrease in IQ before and after schooling.
"In one 1932 study of children living in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, the I.Q.s of 6-year-olds were "not much below the national average, but, by age 14, the children's I.Q.s had plummeted into the "mentally retarded range," with the degree of falloff directly related to the years of school the child had missed. Likewise, a study done in the 1980s shows that I.Q. scores for kids on summer vacation drop by a statistically significant amount, as compared to their I.Q. scores before vacation. Swedish psychologists found that finishing high school bumps up I.Q. by about 8 points over what it would be if the same child had dropped out after junior high. Likewise, an American research team found that every year of schooling increases I.Q. by about 3.5 points."
Believe me, this subject has been studied quite a bit.
(however "gifted learners" are defined). Another concern about United States schools is that they appear to badly underperform compared to schools in many other places, for learners of all ability levels.
Concerns of these kinds have motivated hundreds of college-educated parents I know to choose to homeschool their children, to make sure the children aren't slowed down academically. Some seventeen-year-olds find it fun to study abstract algebra with the Artin textbook (through dual enrollment at the local university as a "twelfth grade" homeschooler) or algorithms with the Cormen textbook. The standard K-12 school curriculum doesn't fit all learners, and especially not the most able learners.
Please correct me if I misunderstand, but I generally take "helps the argument" and "had supporting evidence" to be very close to the same thing. And this article does neither.
These are great questions and ones we're beginning to explore. For instance, suppose the frontal cortex of a precious 8-year-old looks more like that of a ten-year-old. They could have simply developed faster but will regress to the mean by the end of maturation (early twenties). Or they could continue to be more advanced for their age.
Conversely, I'm more interested by the kids who are "delayed" in their cortical development. Those are the kids that get shunted into remedial programs and stigmatized throughout their schooling. It's perhaps an undeserved regressive cycle rather than the progressive one in the case of gifted kids.
One thought I can't shake: Imagine a day where kids are sorted into classrooms, and subjects, based on the state of their brain development. Of course, there's a simplifying assumption in there that it's a passive process of cortical development. Still, we can do so much better than sorting kids based on age and IQ.
The thing I have noticed as I watch my friends and family is just how much their personality and mental acuity changes with environmental factors and new interests. I think the vast majority of these tests are laughable because they provide a snapshot without measuring any derivatives (not that you could easily). It's like trying to play the stock market by only looking at current prices.
I can see how you might want to do that to pick out kids that are probably teachable, but the downside is that everyone else is penalized despite their current level. I know in college there were several times when I wasn't ready to be taught something, but a year or two later I was.
How could we do it better? The only option I can think of that would solve many problems adequately would be to fund all the students so they can seek out a teacher that is right for their level. Too bad that's a pipe dream.
Perhaps assigning them to the gifted group actually undermined their future performance. A couple of possible mechanisms: (1) they adopted the dreaded 'fixed mindset' and no longer challenged themselves as much; (2) they decided despite teacher and parental pressure, they'd rather be with the general population -- so threw the second test a little, as an assertion of personal sovereignty.
I read that book, and Paul Tough explicitly says that the HCZ school programs aren't designed based on research, and there is little evidence to suggest that their pedagogy is sound.
He does have more praise for the curriculum of Baby College, but that is completely different.
I think that turn of phrase "dumbing us down" was popularized through the title of the book by John Taylor Gatto, New York State teacher of the year in some year in 1991.
Now, that's disappointing. Newsweek has a fascinating article there, but they missed the best part. Sure, a 5 minute test is interesting, and the correlations are too, but that is fascinating fact. Only 50% of the gifted students are gifted a year and a half later? That really makes you think. What about the other way around? How many students, not originally classified as gifted would be classified that way after a year or two? It also seems to help the claim that school dumbs you down.