Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

(More seriously, I really find those Touchpoints books by Brazelton to be good. I also turned often to the American Academy of Pediatrics books for nuts-and-bolts issues.)

Good luck.

Just to follow up, the false argument that riled me up was the claim that " there just aren't that many super-high achievers academically-speaking" is private schools. That's just wrong -- there are lots of them.

The discussion seems to be shifting now to a "which is better?" argument between private schools and magnet publics. I think there's lots of fodder for argument on both sides, but it's not really a fight that interests me personally. Ultimately, I think each family should focus on which situation is best for its own individual children, and not on some artificial contest between the two.

But like I said, if people want to argue about it, it's very debatable. There are lots of statistics that could point either direction. Have fun.

Anonymous wrote:SAM2, I believe the discussion was comparing the top publics with the top privates. In that case, if you use something like SATs, I'm not sure it's so cut and dried.

What are presidential scholars, anyway?

I was using the SAT data only to get estimates of how many kids are in public vs. private. I was not comparing SATs between public and private. I agree with you that SATs would really measure the middle of the class and not the super-high achievers, so they would not fit in this discussion. My apologies -- I should have made that more clear.

Presidential Scholars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_scholar . Only something like the 60-100 students with the highest SAT scores in each state are even eligible to apply. Ultimately only 121 nationwide are selected each year. They seem to fit the definition of super-high achiever pretty clearly, so they make for convenient comparisons in this discussion.

Anonymous wrote:... And even at the most academically elite private schools, there just aren't that many super-high achievers academically-speaking -- measured in absolute terms, as a percentage of the class, or compared to elite public magnet/selective admission schools.

There's a ton of evidence proving you're wrong. Here's just one set, using the number of Presidential Scholars 2000-08 (http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/CFAPPS/PSP/search1a.cfm):

DC (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/DC_09_03_03_01.pdf)
Public schools have 56% of students, but only 10% of Presidential Scholars (2 total)
Private + religious schools have 43% of students, and 90% of Presidential Scholars (18 total)

MD (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/MD_09_03_03_01.pdf)
Public schools have 83% of students, but only 76% of Presidential Scholars (28 total)
Private + religious schools have 17% of students, and 24% of Presidential Scholars (9 total)

VA (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/MD_09_03_03_01.pdf)
Public schools have 90% of students, and 95% of Presidential Scholars (20 total)
Private + religious schools have 10% of students, but only 5% of Presidential Scholars (1 total)

Total for DC/MD/VA
Public schools have 86.5% of students, but only 64% of Presidential Scholars (50 total)
Private + religious schools have 13.5% of students, and 36% of Presidential Scholars (28 total)

(Note that I've lumped private & religious schools together, which actually is not really fair to them, because many of the religious schools don't even hold themselves out as focused on top-tier academics. But some do, so they're have to suffer this unfairness in my calculations.)

None of this is meant as criticism of public schools. They clearly have lots of extremely smart kids and are capable of great teaching. I went to public school, and several of my close relatives are public school teachers. If PP had simply been posting that public schools have tons of super-high achieving students, I'd completely agree with her. But PP's claim that private schools are lacking in super-high achieving students is just absolute horseshit.

Thanks, PP! That's exactly the sort of stuff I've been reading. I'm a big fan of Lohman's research.

"Identification of Young Gifted Children"
http://www.geri.soe.purdue.edu/PDF%20Files/yang_WCGTC_paper_mg7.pdf

Data on G&T student testing in Fairfax County (2006)
http://fwd4.me/XDQ

Several research papers from the University of Connecticut Center for G&T Education:
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/nrconlin.html

At some point, when I have more time, I'll add brief (2-3 sentence) summaries of each article. If anyone wants to post a summary, I'll be happy to paste it in.

"Teachers' Conceptions of Giftedness & Talent" (2007)
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/rm07232/rm07232.pdf

"The Predictive Value of IQ" (2001)
muse.jhu.edu/journals/merrill-palmer_quarterly/v047/47.1sternberg.pdf

"Assessing and Advocating for Gifted Students" (2002)
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/rm02166/rm02166.pdf

"Parenting the Very Young Gifted Child" (1993)
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/rbdm9308/rbdm9308.pdf

"Transitions in the Development of Giftedness" (2007)
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/rm07230/rm07230.pdf

"Teachers Nurturing Math-Talented Young Children" (1996)
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/rm96228/rm96228.pdf

"Improving Assessment and Curriculum for Diverse Gifted Learners" (2005)
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/rm05206/rm05206.pdf

"Practices for Identifying Potentially Gifted Preschoolers" (2005)
http://www.usm.edu/gifted/gifted_research/AppropriatePracticesPreschool.pdf

I have been reading a lot lately about issues associated with gifted & talented kids, and I am starting to suffer from information overload. I am starting this thread as a place to summarize interesting articles I find, and hopefully for others to suggest additional reading. I hope others will find this help and will contribute.

I'm not sure which forum best fits this topic. It often gets discussed in the independent schools forum, and also in many of the state-specific public school forums. It's not necessarily a school-related topic, but that's where it most often gets addressed. If someone comes up with a better idea for where it should reside, we can ask Jeff to move it later.

jsteele wrote:A personalized forum list is a feature that I've thought would be popular. It doesn't exist, but probably could be created. However, it would require logging in.

Yes, more perks for logging in! Can we get free coffee too?

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't want SAM2's request, that posters give evidence supporting their opinions, to havb a chilling effect on the haring of opinions in this forum.

I agree with not wanting to chill opinions. And I definitely don't think anyone ought to limit herself to objective data. But I do think opinions are much more useful if they are (1) detailed, and (2) sourced.

For example, if someone just posts that "GDS lower school stinks!" without more, I consider that completely useless and quite possibly misinformation. It's much more credible and useful if people will post something like "my child went through GDS lower school, and I found the math and language arts teaching to be terrible and really no better than my child could have received in a local public school!" And of course if you can show that your personal opinions/experiences are supported by other corroborating data ("and recently 15 teachers quit the lower school too!"), that would lend more credibility.

(By the way, in case it's not obvious, I am completely making up those statements about GDS and just using them as an example. I have no reason to doubt its strength as a school. It seems like a great place.)

Anonymous wrote:So, does that mean that you have no opinion re whether the Sidwell and/or GDS lower schools (and/or middle schools) are coasting based on the reputation or performance of the upper schools?

I have absolutely no opinion on whether younger grades at GDS & Sidwell are stronger/weaker/equal to the upper grades at those school. I asked PPs to explain themselves because they had offered no basis for their claims, and because it seems like many people like to make claims about schools (particularly those schools) without having any basis. I offered up the objective data because it's the only data I've seen on the point. Truth be told, I was hoping that one of those PPs would offer up some similar objective data, but no luck there.

I suspect that the younger grades at GDS, Sidwell, and most other private schools in DC are pretty good at educating children. Exactly how good, I don't know yet. That's really why I participate in this forum, so I can try to figure out things like that.

Thanks to the PPs for clarifying that your assessment of GDS/Sidwell LS & MS are your own anecdotal experiences. There's a lot to unpack from the GDS parent's post. (Are you the same person I was trading PMs with a couple months ago?)

I did not mean to suggest that anecdotal evidence is not valid. It certainly has its place and often is the only evidence available. But I personally treat all anecdotal evidence (including even my own experiences) with a fair amount of skepticism unless it can be confirmed by objective data. (Yeah, I know, I'm a real Dorothy Parker as a dinner guest.) And on DCUM, it's even harder to decide whether anonymous reports are valid or not. So thanks for explaining the basis for your comments.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same post could be written about Sidwell, esp. the part about the LS and MS resting on the reputation of the US.

Actually, I think it's more true of Sidwell than GDS wrt the Lower School.

Sorry to butt in here, but do either of you have any basis for your claims about GDS & Sidwell lower and middle schools being less strong than the upper schools? I've seen similar claims on DCUM a few times in the past but no one ever backs them up with much support, so it's impossible to judge whether the comments are valid or just pure snark. I've never been able to prove/disprove them with research. The closest I've come is finding some reports on how different middle school students (6th-8th) fare in math contests. Here is a link to a report from 2009-10: http://www.themathleague.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=125&Itemid=84 (follow the Maryland link). It seems Sidwell and several other area private schools are doing fine, but it doesn't look like all schools are part of the competition.

Do either of you have children at these schools? If so, I guess that's valid anecdotal evidence, for whatever that's worth.

Thanks for your responses. Sorry to distract further from the discussion.

Don't worry; 4:56 is just messing with you. I asked the original question ("Do any of you trading insults for the past several posts actually have any children at Sidwell?"), and I did not post any answer.